Friends from Tonko's hometown of Bregenz, Austria, commissioned the studio when they acquired some land next to their home. They use it for drawing and sketching, as well as creating clay and gypsum sculptures that are later cast into bronze. Since the area is close to where he grew up, Tonko was incredibly familar with the view from the hillside.

Located on a steep site with limited suitable building ground, the firm decided to cantilever the home over the hillside, which has the effect of helping the structure blend in with the landscape.

Architect Sven Matt mixed basic shapes with rich details in this Austrian home. The lattice shell was hewn from silver fir sourced from a nearby forest. Eternit shingles clad the roof.

An unadorned spruce wood staircase leads to the upper level.

GilBartolomé Architects says the metal facade looks like "the skin of a dragon set in the ground when seen from below" but "waves of the sea when seen from above."

The home is embedded in a hillside with five feet of soil above it. In addition to blending the structure into the landscape, the surrounding earth provides natural insulation.

A Movie sofa, by CB2, and a Rais wood-burning stove are in the living room.

Taking inspiration from Arlberg Valley, Austria to classic Nordic materials, the Troll Hus certainly adds a European touch to the California landscape. “The inspiring concept is that of a treehouse that, as if suspended between treetops, seamlessly and ingeniously blends with its surroundings.” Casper says.

Roberto Burneo designed this home for his eldest niece, her husband, and their three young children in a suburb outside Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The house is set on a flat expanse of land with fruit trees, and Burneo's design "guides the social areas inward in order to link them to the gardens.”

Burneo took advantage of the perpendicular orientation of the volumes to create outdoor spaces that look out to the gardens.

Architect Christian Tonko played with a double metaphor when designing the Camera Lucida studio. The name of the cantileverd hillside space, Latin for "bright chamber," references the open window facing the valley below, as well as the skylight that bathes the workspace in natural light.

Sawn wood planks add texture to the interior walls.

Burneo oriented the house in a pair of perpendicular volumes. The ground floor houses the public areas, including a study, while the top volume, housing the bedrooms and a family room, is oriented north-south, allowing for warm sunlight and a visual orientation toward the gardens.

The custom kitchen counters are concrete, and the yellow dining chairs add a welcome splash of color.

Burneo added exposed brick to his palette of interior materials.

Get the whole family involved in the kitchen, whether it be teaching young ones a tried-and-true recipe or exploring a new dish together.

Darcy Miro and her son, Lucien, enjoy a moment in their new double-height living room. The Charlotte Perriand wall sconces are vintage finds.

The latticework shell becomes a visual motif in the bathroom, furnished with appliances from Keramag, Kludi, and Laufen.

The architect placed the windows at Sabrina’s eye level so that she’d be able to see her son, Rocco, playing in the yard outside. "You can feel the seasons changing here," says Chiavelli. "I grew up three miles from here, outside in nature. This is a house for experiencing life."

Miha hangs out with Kea, the dog, on the wooden deck that extends the living space outdoors.

The extended clan, which includes about two dozen members, collaborated with Gray Organschi Architecture to design an inclusive home for three generations.

This room can be a family room, office, or guest suite. The flooring is the same throughout: Riva Floors, Engineered Wood Select Grade, in Crystal Thunder, and the couch is from Restoration Hardware. Unseen is the foosball and ping pong tables.

Olson Kundig Architects' Delta Shelter, in Mazama, Washington, is a 1,000 square-foot steel box home with a 200 square-foot footprint. Photo by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects/TASCHEN.

The family room becomes a meeting point

A skylight floods the loft space with daylight and offers views of the stars at night.

Aside from its dramatic appearance, the home's subterranean construction comes with an energy efficiency advantage: the surrounding soil is a constant 67 degrees, thereby helping to keep the interiors comfy year-round.

Olson Kundig Architects' Delta Shelter, in Mazama, Washington, is a 1,000 square-foot steel box home with a 200 square-foot footprint. Photo by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects/TASCHEN.

Spruce wood also lines the floor, walls, and ceiling in the bedrooms. The residents must climb a ladder to access the loft above.

The house's simple gable form helps the house blend in with its neighbors.

When Austrian entrepreneur Erich Sattler refocused his family’s business from mixed agriculture to grape growing, he needed headquarters to house the budding wine enterprise. He turned to his architect brother, Kurt, to design a winery capable of production, bottling, and cellaring on the ground-floor wine hall, with guest accommodations, presentation space, and an office in the wine loft above. Read the full story here.

Matthew Hufft designed the house that he shares with his wife, Jesse, and their three children to sit inconspicuously among its neighbors in the Roanoke Park area of Kansas City, Missouri. The backyard and porch, which is furnished with a Saarinen Round Dining Table and Emeco Navy chairs, is a popular setting for warm-weather entertaining.

The butterfly-roof pavilion by architects Kate Simonen, Benjamin Parco, and Phil Kaefer connects to the low-slung home Joseph Esherick designed in 1954 via two covered walkways and an open-air tearoom. All three structures sit lightly on the landscape designed by Lawrence Halprin and updated over 50 years later by Gary Roth, a former employee.

The skylights are constantly changing the home's interiors. It's "not just day/night, or dark/light," says Bernheimer, "but the quality of light...changes at any given hour, depending on where clouds are, where the sun is, whether the moon is full or not, all dependent on the time of day, time of year, and so forth."

BSC designed suspended powder-coated and walnut open shelves to demarcate the kitchen from the rest of the living space. The detailing on the cast-iron columns inspired the perforated pattern of the semi-transparent screens.

The Den

The family’s two cats, Baron and Jula.