Tall and surprisingly open, the Tel Aviv Town House by Pitsou Kedem Architects continues in the tradition of its Bauhaus-inspired neighbors with a white facade and black window frames.

Architect Janna Levitt devised a creative emellishment for a residence in Canada. Photo by: Philip Cheung

Another simple, white kitchen with black countertops is this diminutive kitchen in Singapore. Light pours in through the large window, and a tiny but tasteful farmhouse kitchen table rests in the middle of everything.

The triple-glazed windows provide plenty of natural light.

Six staircases, many open to outside light, serve as pathways between the private interior spaces.

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.

Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

The clients and design team chose to forego an open floor plan in favor of defined, separated spaces. In this scheme, the vertically oriented spaces act as a cinematic "hard-cut" to their horizontal counterparts. The custom hot rolled steel kitchen, one of these vertical transition spaces, receives light from above through a Velux skylight. A GE Profile Induction cooktop and oven and Miele refrigerator complete the space.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

“In this house, the roof is the only facade—the rest is dissolved beneath it.” —Architect Aljoša Dekleva

At the entry looking upward towards a Velux skylight, a vertical "sleeve" is made of stacked end grain plywood. The theme of vertical and horizontal architectural elements providing different environmental perspectives carries through to the rest of the home. Horizontal forms look out to the lake, while the vertical columns look up the sky.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

From the Nordic Pavilion: Celebrating 50 years of the Nordic Pavilion designed by Sverre Fehn, 32 young architects from Finland, Norway, and Sweden expressed their ideas for a conceptual "Light House" that merges architectural character (site, material, tectonics, light) of the pavilion, the environmental/cultural character of the Nordic region, and the core principles and techniques of every participant and practice. The featured models seek to evoke feelings, sensory experiences, and concepts, rather than objectively describe reality. Openness, lightness, depth of experience, rest, emotional resonance, and "noble poverty" come to figure out the up-to-date assertion of an architecture identity in Nordic countries.

A ‘light soffit’ offers a dynamic view of the stream below, providing both visual and audio stimulation. Throughout the year, the studio is filled with the sound of water, from the ocean waves to the rain and drizzle, to the flowing stream below. The artist, who has a longstanding connection to the site, focuses on “art which leaves marks at once permanent and delicate,” much like the structure itself.

The bedroom is outfitted with a bed and side table from Ikea.

Minimal interventions by architect Andrew Simpson allowed this former jam warehouse outside of Melbourne, Australia, to be turned into a family residence. "To draw light and ventilation into what was a poorly oriented and deep footprint, an extensive number of operable skylights were introduced on the north- and south-facing roof pitches, and a large void connecting the floors was strategically positioned to also take advantage of this amenity," Simpson says. American oak floorboards and Dulux paint were used throughout the property for continuity.

INsite: Farnsworth House Light Show. These photographs are offered as pledges to backers of the Kickstarter, which ends May 31. Photo by Kate Joyce

Photo by Patrick Barta

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

Above the sink in the kitchen, you can see one of Bocci’s first 57 chandeliers. Photo by José Mandojana.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

A classic Ball Bubble Lamp hangs in The Opdahl House, designed by Edward Killingsworth for Richard and Joyce Opdahl on the island of Naples, in Long Beach, California.

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.

Color is one way the architects differentiated the structures, as in the custom doors they designed for the entrances in contrasting light and dark light finishes.

Emilio Fuscaldo sits in the garden outside the brick house that he designed for himself and his partner, Anna Krien, on a small subdivided lot in Coburg, a suburb north of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Nic Granleese.

Another view of the deck.

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.”

“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.

Located in Aarhus, Denmark, Villa R is a minimalist, serene structure clad in zinc panels. "The objective was to create a house that brings the forest inside through large glass panels—and create an ever-changing seasonal backdrop for the interior living spaces," stated the architecture firm, C.F. Møller, of the 3,200-square-foot abode.

Karen White, David MacNaughtan, and their sons, Griffin and Finlay, hang out on the front deckof their narrow home in Toronto’s leafy Roncesvalles neighborhood. A narrow modernist composition of glass panes and purple brick, the house slips like a bookmark between two older buildings, a bright three-story abode on a lot narrower than most suburban driveways. Photo by Dean Kaufman. Read more about the small house here.