Sitting lightly above the eelgrass, this tiny dwelling serves as a port of entry for a family getaway on the Salish Sea.
The couple took advantage of numerous municipal programs when landscaping the backyard. Mandy recently completed a free course through LADWP, who also promotes resources for the SoCal Turf Replacement Program, to become a certified California Native Plant Landscape: “There is an amazing amount of knowledge and resources for transitioning yards with more native/drought-tolerant plants through LADWP and the Theodore Payne Foundation,” says Mandy.
After renting in San Francisco for a decade, DIY couple Molly Fiffer and Jeff Waldman bought 10 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the pair and their friends built a cabin compound complete with sheds, tree decks, a pavilion, a wood-fired hot tub, an outhouse, and an outdoor shower. The cabin is made from locally sourced, rough-sawn redwood, which the couple stained with nontoxic Eco Wood Treatment to give the panels an aged appearance and a dark patina.
After more than 15 years spent in construction, high school friends Simon Fyall and Richard Egli started to imagine an architecture that blended in with the landscape of British Columbia better than industry-standard buildings. Soon after, the pair founded Blend Projects to build their vision: crisp gabled homes strung together from eight-foot-long cedar-sided glulam sections.
The open-plan kitchen, dining area, and living space are arranged in a 16-square-foot volume that features a vaulted ceiling, lending a sense of spaciousness.
The primary bedroom cabin sits in a natural clearing amongst the trees, allowing for a water view and copious sunlight. The boulder-studded coast offers gently sloping paths to the ocean for a quick dip.
In the midst of the pandemic, a family leverages industry connections and modular construction to quickly rebuild a cliffside getaway on a fire-ravaged site in the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve.
The overall home is constructed with larch timber, a British wood, and features a central ridge beam that gives it a butterfly-shaped roof. Shou sugi ban was done on the wood to give it a charred finish.
“The tent-like shape resembles a mountain. When the snow falls, the triangle becomes embedded in the landscape,” Tham says.
The cottage is located on a site just over an hour from Gothenburg and two-and-a-half hours from Oslo, Bohuslän was the ideal location. “We immediately fell in love with the slightly hilly site and its location along a narrow dirt road with cows grazing on the other side,” says Helena. “Until then, I had never thought of building a summer house but when we got the chance, we just had to take it. Especially when my old friend Susanna said she could design a house for us.”
Having bought and restored several quirky properties in Washington over the years, including a five-story tree house and a 100-year-old barracks, architect Jason F. McLennan and his wife, artist Tracy McLennan, bought the camp-like retreat in 2020—even though it had no power or running water at the time and is on a secluded island with no ferry service.
The house was designed to minimally interfere with the hilltop vegetation, which is what attracted the family to the site.
A view of the master bedroom portion of the apartment illustrates how the designers made every square inch of the home multifunctional. The bed platform is surrounded by smart storage, including various drawers, and doubles as a stage for singing or extra seating on movie nights.
Designed by Arba, the retreat’s enclosed garden provides outdoor space out of the wind while the cuts give it a strong connection with the setting.
Now, built-in sofas line the perimeter of the room and utilize the room’s shape better.
The Berm House, built into a meadow slope in the Methow Valley, North Cascades
Contemporary kitchen plus wall-mounted beer taps and concealed shuffleboard table
“Sometimes you go with emotions rather than logic,” says Woodhull founder Caleb Johnson. “I just wanted to renovate the little Pizza Hut look-alike my son told me looked like a blowfish.”
Lake|Flato designed a weekend home on North Fork, Long Island that nods to the rustic agricultural structures dotting the region. Western red cedar siding is stained black to help the home's three structures recede into the landscape.
To avoid excavating the land, Pang and Boyle designed a structural platform to keep the cabin level.
Greenway Studio designed this home addition In Victoria, British Columbia, to blend in with an existing natural rock formation.
Beacon Hill Cedar Cottage at dusk, Shou Sugi Ban exterior
The ladder-like staircase was designed as a modern, whimsical addition to an otherwise midcentury-focused design. "I use it as a drying rack,
In the living room, a new wall of glass connects the house to its landscape, while a family-heirlume Persian rug adds softness to the new ceramic tile floor.
“The pitched ceilings and ribbon of clerestory windows make the interior feel more spacious than it is,” notes Gooden.
70 more saves