The ceramic design of this birdhouse will keep the sparrows out, yet create a welcoming home for smaller birds like wrens and chickadees.

The exterior of the Field House, designed by Wendell Burnette Architects in Ellington, Wisconsin.

Bistro Bird Feeder Your friends will be tweeting this once they see how colorfully you feed your bird friends!

An Egg vase.

The kitchen uses laminated chipboard for the countertop and cabinets, and the same plywood used throughout the house for the table. The lamp is IKEA.

The White House, 2006.

Steel rods surround the staircase. A MayDay lamp by Konstanting Grcic for Flos is affixed to the rope wall.

Given the spatial constraints, the staircase leading to the upstairs loft needed to be a short and steep. Since the residents wanted a workspace in the living area, the architects turned the underside of the stairs into a handy bookshelf.

The home’s informal dining space has a slightly rustic feel, sporting bronze and wood in the form of a Lindsey Adams Adelman chandelier for Roll & Hill and a table by Terry Dwan, mixed with folk-art touches like the Eames House Birds and a cuckoo clock from Diamantini & Domeniconi. The PK8 chairs from Republic of Fritz Hansen were designed by Poul Kjærlholm and sourced from Kuhl-Linscomb in Houston, Texas.

Eames House Bird, $195

Smitten Kitchen's Baked Eggs with Spinach and Mushrooms: A last minute Easter Brunch solution and gorgeous food photography.

Resembling its neighbors, the pitched form of the Compact Karst House is made of a mixture of local limestone and concrete, cast on site. A small perimeter wall in reinforced concrete surrounds the structure.

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.

Jessica Helgerson Interior Design updated a split-level ranch house in Portland by introducing a clean white palette and vintage furnishings.

The outdoor fire pit.

The kitchen, living area, and bathroom are located on the ground floor. Large windows overlook the surrounding forest, and Italy to the west.

Socializing is for the birds. Thanks to a clever design that absolves the need for metal hardware on the roof, your avian neighbors can perch atop their swinging modern home, the better to chirp hello.

The front of the house was originally a storefront, with large windows overlooking the street.

The interior dry walls are made of layered spruce plywood panels, rubbed with transparent oil. The ceiling is concrete.

Orgone chaise longue by Marc Newson for Cappellini

The upper level contains the master bedroom and the kids' room. "We wanted the upstairs gallery that connects the two bedrooms to be as open as possible," principal Aljosa Dekleva says. "The rope mesh works as a fence for security, but is also performs as a multifunctional transparent wall on which one can hang different objects." A desk provides an additional workspace.

Exbury Egg, PAD Studio and Stephen Turner, 2013 Constructed with traditional yacht-building techniques, this 20-foot-long floating oval on an inlet in southern England functions as a self-sufficient studio and home for artist Stephen Turner. His work, which is inspired by water, relies on data he collects here on the rising and ebbing tides.

With mountains as its backdrop, the home was built on the only area of the site without trees. Rough, natural basaltic stone makes up the home’s exterior, and the surrounding vegetation grows around and within the built structure.

A palette of stone, concrete, and greenery greets guests at the home’s front entrance.

The existing cottage has been on the site for “a long time” with various extensions and refurbishments taking place ad hoc between the 1930s and 1990s, including the garage and utility room at the rear that has been replaced by the newest extension. Like many typical cottages in the area, the cottage is built from local stone with timber shutter windows.

An outdoor sink ties indoor living spaces into outdoor living spaces, adding to the fluidity and openness of the home.

A modern stone fence made of galvanized steel mesh filled with stones surrounds the house. “We got the stones from the local stonecutter—they use the stones washed up on the beach, not the stones from the fields,” Lassen explains.

From certain exterior angles, the house appears hidden by its environment. The surrounding trees envelop the stone facade, casting organic shapes and shadows over the angular dwelling.

The home is seen in the context of the natural surroundings, with the iconic Tepozteco mountain in the background. By continuously opening to the outdoors and favoring materials that will age gracefully, the home forms a dynamic, symbiotic bond with nature.

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.

Silestone Quartzite by Cosentino Based in Spain, Cosentino produces the granitelike Ocean series of Silestone quartzite surfaces, shown here in Pacific.

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