Though most of the home's interior comes without a splashy designer's name attached, the bathroom is kitted out with a toilet, sink, and bath/shower from Jasper Morrison's line for Ideal Standard. The cabinets are from an Ikea kitchen system.

A 606 Universal Shelving System by Dieter Rams for Vitsoe hangs tough on the only opaque wall of the living room. Russell-Clarke and Moolsintong designed the coffee table, and Marcel Wanders gets credit for the Bottoni sofa for Moooi.

Rocks that were unearthed while digging the foundation make up the hardscape in the rear, beyond the open porch. “It’s one of my favorite parts of the house,” says resident Laura Sohn. Sanders Pace Architecture finished the exterior in western red cedar treated with Sikkens Cetol.

Just adjacent to the house is Whitlock's small shed which houses many of the tools that he used to build the home.

Light floods the living and dining rooms, meaning Schneider rarely needs to turn on a lamp during the day.

A Bright Idea After build-out, the family realized they needed a light for their dining room. Tanya and Jackson took to their storage container, where they found fake flower branches they had bought at Ace Hardware, and paired them with a crumpled string of old Christmas lights. “We plugged it in and that was that,” says Tanya.

Despite a tight site, light floods into every room, including the restroom in the guesthouse.

Natural bamboo flooring was used throughout the home, as well as dimmable LED lighting. The house incorporates a hybrid heat pump water heater, which draws in ambient heat from the surrounding air, moves it across condenser coils, then transfers it into the tank to heat the water. This device creates the same amount of hot water as a traditional electric water heater, but reduces water-heating expenses up to 62%.

The hallway terminates in the bathroom, flooded in natural light.

Architect Michael Cobb used Douglas fir harvested from the site throughout the house, such as on a sliding door outfitted with Swiss Rod SS hardware from the Real Carriage Door Company.

Because the residents wanted lighting “to fade away,” the home makes the most of natural light and minimizes fixtures. Each room has two sources of daylight, usually in the form of floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights. Fluorescent lights integrate into the surface of the skylights so they don’t protrude into the space.

Large Natural Wreath If you really prefer the tradition and smell of an evergreen wreath you can still modernize with scale and styling. via Habitually Chic. Photo by Virginia MacDonald.

Still, it’s possible to remove or relocate non-structural walls in a home with good bones.

The triple-glazed windows provide plenty of natural light.

Plants found in the surrounding landscape were used to obscure the lines between designed and natural worlds.

Though the daughter didn’t want all-glass walls, natural light and airflow were key. Levy and Connect:Homes fellow cofounder Gordon Stott used an LED system to offset light from windows and doors. Says Stott, “It’s about 150 watts to light the whole house.”

Black and blond are a natural match in Bornstein's largely wooden kitchen.

The Food Zone Fine-tuning your cooking and dining areas pays off in more ways than just saving resources. As in other functional zones, their success starts with awareness: Where exactly does your food come from? Where exactly does your trash go after you haul it to the curb? Playing an active role in your family’s food cycle can be eye-opening, and it often helps spark an interest in improving other house zones.

How House, the site of the May 17, 2014 reception and talk, and included on the May 18 tour. Photo by Tim Street-Porter.

Large and small Natural Pod made from black ash and cassein paint. From $6,000

For the walls surrounding the living room fireplace, Cobb specified high-volume fly ash concrete made with a by-product of burning coal in power plants that usually ends up in landfills.

“Things that have the virtue of being simple have become some of the most complicated forms of construction,” Cobb says.

In the kitchen, Santa Rosa–based Reliance Fine Finishing applied a conversion varnish tinted with a green hue.

Wood is a favorite material of owners Daoust and Baker, who select pieces that show off the natural grains of each cut.

Balou Lounge Armchair in Natural by Kenneth Cobonpue for JANUS et Cie , $2,747, janusetcie.com

The outside deck, made of local celery-top pine, welcomes both humans and the natural landscape further into the house.

The spatial drama on the interior comes from the staircase and tatami room upstairs. The daffodil pendant overlooking it all is from Ikea. The butterfly stool is by Sori Yanagi and was a birthday present from Konishi to Gaffney.

Find out how Passive House standards are being integrated into affordable housing projects in the United States.

The adjacent extra-wide stairs provide easily accessible storage space; the custom bookcases, made of the same Douglas fir plywood as the treads, follow the rise of the steps to the bedroom.

The natural spring.

Julia: How to Make a Concrete Camera Are you looking for a creative project for the weekend? Well look no further! Why not make a pinhole camera out of concrete? I came across this DIY tutorial and was surprised that this unlikely material was being used to make a camera. How wonderful!