Angela Brooks and son Calder revel in the benefits of free solar energy, cheerfully opening the living room’s big glass doors when it’s time to play.

Keep the Home Fires Burning Using wood for heat and energy keeps the Wadhams’ environmental footprint small and helps avoid the use of coal- or nuclear-powered electricity. Come winter, the couple relies on an Esse wood-burning stove for cooking, heating, and feeding a set of small radiators. In summer, they use the stove’s electric component, which is powered by solar energy.

The bottom floor contains the kitchen and the dining area; the lounge is upstairs. The cabinets are from Ikea, as are the table and chairs, and the child’s Tripp Trapp chair is from Stokke.

Designer Sue Macintosh chose the Farrow & Ball Off-Black paint for the master bedroom.

Cor-Ten steel from a ship building yard clads the new structure, which connects via a glass “bridge” to a rebuilt stone farmhouse containing the bedrooms.

McAvoy worked with builder Stephen Campbell on structural elements such as the glass floor and walls.

Architect Andrew McAvoy created an earth-sheltered house in Scotland for Gavin and Angelique Robb and children Scarlett and Gus.

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.

Surprisingly, this cozy and partially earth-sheltered family home—which is, according to Gavin, "one step away from Passive House standards"—started life as a series of derelict and semi- derelict farmstead buildings in raw and rural Aberdeenshire, in the hinterland of Scotland’s northeast coast. For the new structure, Grace & Webb fabricated a laser-cut steel balcony.

The lounge, with maple flooring from an old school in nearby Aberdeen, has a Togo sofa by Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset.

The glass-enclosed master bedroom floats above the corrugated, oxidized steel exterior.

Reclaimed oak beams dominate the upstairs lounge, which leads to the guest bedroom.

Marcus Veerman, founder and CEO of Playgound Ideas, an organization that has given 250,000 children access to playspaces, highlights Freiburg, Germany. "Freiburg is a community in southwest Germany that is striving toward complete sustainability," he writes. "It has a whole suburb built on sustainable principles. It was created out of a movement supported by all levels of government and community." For more ideas, purchase a a copy of Designed for the Future.

Henkel North American Consumer Products Headquarters (Scottsdale, Arizona: 2010) Building in the Sonoran desert doesn’t immediately bring the word “sustainable” to mind. This 348,000-square-foot Scottsdale office space for Henkel, a German consumer goods company, is a stylish rejoinder to that impression. Here, nature is put to work. The roof is covered in a 1.5-acre garden of native plants, with solar panels that power the building’s banks of washers and dryers, a substantial green gesture for a company that makes laundry detergent. And the exterior, designed by CH2M Hill and Will Bruder + Partners, features custom glass etched in a pattern that reduces the intensity of the sunlight and a breathable skylight over the central atrium. Turning down the heat only seems fitting for the makers of a successful line of deodorants. Photo by Henkel

Barbara Hill's Dancehall/House in Marfa, Texas September 14, 2010 Misty Keasle

It just seems like an oversight that refrigerators don't automatically come equipped with locks. Disagree? See what happens when you help yourself to someone else's half carton of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey that you found in the freezer. If you survive, you'll see why the Fridge Locker that can protect tasty morsels from food thieves, is a whimsical addition to any kitchen.

Among the first Passive Houses in France, this bamboo-clad farmhouse by the Parisian firm Karawitz Architecture only uses a tenth of the energy a conventionally constructed home does. Photo by Nicholas Calcott.

Arango's 1,000-square-foot home in Amherst, Massachusetts is run entirely by solar power. He uses the home as an example in the class he teaches on renewable energy.

The entire cabin is powered by the rooftop solar system from Solarwinds Northernlights. "I still can't get over the fact that I can get an ice cube from the sun," Bruce says.

The Lai family—Mayuko, baby Shota on her lap, David, Maya, and Yumi sitting on a cushion on the deck—relaxes in their indoor-outdoor living space, made by opening the glass sliding doors to connect the living room and engawa deck.

The most sustainable element of all is the Lais’ intention to make their first home their last home as well. “Some people have this mentality of getting a starter house, then upgrading from there,” David says. “We just wanted to find a place to live in and then stay there forever.” Eventually they imagine passing the home down to their children.

A Woolly Pocket planter hangs on the steel beam above a polished-concrete floor warmed by radiant heat.

Solar power cells on top of the building collect energy that’s used for both water systems and electricity.

Although the refrigerator line wasn’t introduced until 1990s, its iconic mid-century design makes it feel as though it has been a kitchen staple for many decades.

The refrigerator comes in ten different color ways and a small size that tucks easily into a small apartment kitchen.

Conference Room, Modern Law Firm by Jill Dudensing Lifestyle + Design

By designing the custom cabinetry themselves, and journeying outside Houston to have them made, the Fords saved a bundle—money that they invested in appliances such as this highly efficient dishwasher from Asko, a Professional Series range from Bertazzoni, and an Energy Star–rated BI-30U fridge by Sub-Zero.

Conference Room, Modern Law Firm by Jill Dudensing Lifestyle + Design

The home's conference room, features herringbone reclaimed wood flooring and sliding glass doors that pocket allowing for an unobstructed indoor-outdoor feel.

Meg’s inspiration: The design of the Lucky Linden was something Meg carried along with from many years in her sketchbook. She loves the Art and Craft styled RV’s and was sure that if she built a tiny house RV someday, this would be a her inspiration. What she like most of this pattern is the low sloped roofs, pop out dormers on the front as well as back and especially the bungalow look from the Sears and Roebuck kit houses which were prevalent in the 1990’s.

The Pico Remote by Lutron is smaller than a deck of cards and operates the dimmable lighting in the great room.

In Scarpa and Brook' own house, they’ve mounted luminous solar panels in a rusted-steel-beam grid to form a modernist canopy that frames the façade. This imaginative “solar umbrella” hides the household power plant in plain sight, part of an artful composition that includes a hanging screen tied with bristles of industrial brooms.

Nick Cave’s emblematic Soundsuits occupy an amorphous space between costuming, performance art, and dance. Soundsuit, 2009. Human hair. Image provided courtesy of the National Academy.

Dulkinys uses the remote-controlled mountaineer’s harness to peruse the two-story bookshelf.