Architecture firm NADAAA planned a striated addition to a brick neo-Georgian house in Boston with the owners’ primary goal in mind: to engage with the outdoors year-round. The walls of the rear kitchen and living space are virtually all glass, allowing sight lines to the existing gardens and new pool house through a series of framed vignettes onto the backyard landscape. The glass box is bookended by uniform “fins” that mark the edge of each picture window, as shown here. Photo by John Horner.

Architect Gregory Phillips connected the original house to a new modern extension that doesn’t interfere with the surrounding houses. “I try to be true to the location,”he explains, “so it doesn’t seem like some spaceship has landed.”

From the street, only the main house and one adjoining addition are visible, belying the spacious extension at the back. The architects call this the “Tardis effect,” named for the time machine on Dr. Who that looks much smaller on the outside than it does within.

White was used extensively throughout the addition, a choice that the architects say enhances the spacious feel of the rooms and draws attention to the views.

The roughly 5,000-square-foot Lens House renovation, which was finished in 2012 and just won a 2014 RIBA National Award, required six years, major remedial work on the roof and walls, approval from the planning committee, and even a sign-off from a horticulturalist to guarantee the backyard excavation didn't interfere with a walnut tree. "These things aren’t for people who are in a hurry," says architect Alison Brooks. The focus is the ten-sided trapezoidal office addition. "It wraps itself around the house with a completely different set of rules than the Victorian building," she says.

The clients insisted that none of the trees on the property be disturbed, so Kevin Alter and his team at Alterstudio Architecture built a deck and an overhang around two of them.

Another view of the deck.

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

Alterstudio Architecture of Austin designed this house in the Texas capital for a young family of four.

In consultation with the clients, Alterstudio opted to clad the house in local cypress rather than imported, FSC-certified ipe.

Modern bathroom vanities in white bathe the room in light, creating a relaxing atmosphere. Mirroring the kitchen of this home, the bathroom features custom wooden cabinetry and Brodware faucets.

Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton behind their London home.

Claire and Ken Stevens approached architect Ko Wibowo to create a modern addition to their 1970s home in Tacoma, Washington. The couple’s needs had changed since Ken was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago.

Bassam (left, with Fellows) hung redwood garage doors that match the house’s exterior.

The couple's house, designed by architect L. Jane Hastings in the early 1970s, is located on a steeply sloped site that backs up to a state park.

The bungalow had beautiful bones but some major problems, including a poorly designed addition to the back that had to be removed. In its place, Tribe Studio designed a gray brick box that connects directly to the garden. “The owners love the fact that the extension is compatible with the old part of the house, and is completely different from many renovations of this type, which simply open up the back in a single move,” Tribe says.

In the serene upstairs bathroom, Kennon paired Chinese Bluestone floors from Defazio with white ceramic wall tiles from local supplier Classic Ceramics. The tub is by Bette with a Roger Seller faucet, while the bathroom sink is by Argent with a Grohe faucet.

Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.

“Peter and I’ve got shockingly similar and far-reaching design inspirations. Our conversations would move easily from brutalism to driftwood to kachinas and then flow right back to something applicable to architecture. I can’t tell you how many times I will do that with a less-design-literate client and just get a blank stare!” —Architect Craig Steely

The glass balustrade and floor were sourced in Germany and installed by James Aiken. Angelique, the founder of Papillon Designs and Landscaping, clustered plantings around the exterior glass addition.

Kayak in hand, Tom and Will make a break for the beach.

The Mineral Springs house consists of a modern 1,000-square-foot addition to a farmhouse that's clad in Cor-Ten panels.

“It’s a great house for a young family—playful, practical and different,” Tribe says. “You can sit on the windowsill in the sun and feed the baby, kids can climb in and out, often through the windows, and you can see everything that is going on.”

The clients had an impressive collection of Scandinavian midcentury teak furniture that now pops beautifully against the concrete floors, white-painted brick, and pine v-joint walls.

For the the living room, the architects designed a cluster of picture windows that frame unique views—a jacaranda tree or a patch of sky—and block out neighbors from a nearby apartment building.

The custom kitchen cabinets sit on legs for easy sweeping underneath. They’re topped with white Corian counters and paired with sleek Brodware fixtures.

The entire living and dining space features tough polished concrete floors. The architects intentionally contrasted the darker concrete and veneered pantry against the neutral white walls and marble. This color play runs through the renovated areas.

“Segovia is a very central region, but an underdeveloped one,” de la Quadra-Salcedo says. “Traditionally devoted to agriculture and mainly livestock, it flourished in the sixteenth century but now that the older generations are disappearing, there is a problem of abandoned villages and fields.” The structure highlights the rural surroundings.

The Casa Cuatro sits above a 180-foot cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. The locally quarried stone makes the house blend in with the landscape and acts as a thermal-mass wall, absorbing heat during the day and releasing it through the evening.

Mark Word Design did the landscaping, with an emphasis on water conservation. "It's about usage levels, but it's also about the way we treat storm water and runoff since it all goes back into our supply at the end of the cycle," designer Sarah Carr says. Word and his team chose plants that help reduce erosion, require little watering, and allow storm water to percolate. Mulch and living ground covers—including Big Blue liriope, marsilea, and Palisades zoysia turf—keep moisture within the soil and lower the temperature of the soil, protecting the roots of the live oak trees.

Thellend Fortin Architectes designed this two-story addition in the OUtremont neighborhood of Monteal to capture views from the steeply sloping lot.

The interior combines modern and more traditional elements, such as this oriental rug.

The cypress cladding carries over from the exterior to the interior of the house.

The house was built on piers (save for the lower-level bedroom) so that little of the natural landscape would be disturbed.

Where once there was a timeworn 1950s bungalow in the Metropolitan Green Belt south of London, there now stands a dynamic house whose two volumes are joined by a glass atrium. The project was designed by Grant Freeman of OB Architecture.

Churtichaga and de la Quadra-Salcedo purchased a parcel of former farmland to build their vacation home twelve years ago but only recently completed the house—a timber-clad minimalist structure expertly designed to disappear into the scenic landscape.