The owners of Chicken Point Cabin and their two young children bought the northern Idaho home and wanted to use it year-round, especially during summertime. The designers integrated a large (23’ tall x 18’ wide) pivoting window wall to provide full view and access to the lake and surrounding landscape. It’s a simple feature that can be opened to truly bring the outdoors in.

Simple, low-maintenance materials were used throughout the home — concrete blocks, steel, concrete floors, and plywood. These materials were carefully selected to reinforce the notion of a what a humble rural cabin should be. And, because these materials are largely unfinished, they will naturally age and acquire a patina that will blend in with the natural setting.

Though it may be remote, the home is very much connected to its natural, stunning surroundings. It took a mere 45 days to build the 80 square meter home and just six hours to install it on the Chilean seaside. And while it may have been inexpensive when compared to a more traditional home, the Remote House features fine finishes and high-end fixtures, including real pine wood flooring, ceilings, and accents, as well as energy efficient appliances and materials.

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk believed there was a better way. Why couldn’t solar panels look like an ordinary roof tiles? And, why couldn’t the entire roof be made of panels, instead of bolting on solar panels to an existing roof?

Tesla and SolarCity have introduced a better way that makes solar technology less of an eyesore. Their newly introduced solar tiles will soon be available in four distinct styles, letting home owners embrace clean technology without interfering with the style of their home.

The solar roofing comes in four distinct styles, including “Textured Glass Tile,” “Slate Glass Tile,” “Tuscan Glass Tile, and “Smooth Glass Tile.” Each of these achieves a different look, but all are assembled with similar material. Each is also transparent to solar, but appears opaque when viewed from an angle.

These panels deliver a two percent loss on efficiency, so 98 percent of what you’d normally get from a traditional solar panel, according to Musk. The company is working with 3M on new coating to deliver even better efficiency and less energy loss in the near future.

While these new tiles are perfect for discriminate homeowners who want to reduce their energy bills but don’t want to add traditional panels to their home, there is a draw back. Although the cost, according to Musk, is competitive with the cost of a new roof, the application of these tiles is far more expensive than the addition of traditional solar panels.

Still, replacing a roof with standard tiles brings no financial benefit, as these tiles do. And with Tesla new new Powerwall 2.0 battery unit, homeowners could not only power their entire home from solar energy, but they could also store and use excess energy generated from these tiles.

The new solar roof tiles should be available next summer. New options and styles are expected to be added to give homeowners even more to choose from.

Beyond its traditional, wooden facade conceived by architect Blaze Makoid is a highly modern interior designed by New York-based Axis Mundi Design. The interior is bright with clean lines made for the minimalist. While the majority of the home uses a sparse and rather basic color palette, pops of blues and other bright colors add personality.

Warm wood in the bathroom and bedroom ties the indoors and outdoors together. The texture it brings also lends a sense of calm to the space. Overall, the look is modern but it still brings in plenty of natural elements to make the home incredibly warm.

The home’s boxy, rectangular design was intended to make the most of its compact lot as well as maximize light inside. In addition to creating a home where natural light ideally fills each room, the designers also made use of warm wood to make the interior even more inviting. Sliding wooden doors on the home’s exterior gives owners the chance to adjust the structure’s permeability, depending on weather conditions.

Sitting back on the property, away from the nearby street, the home offers ample privacy. The four story structure also offers incredibly wide viewpoints of the surrounding landscape. A pool is also on the property to provide refreshing swim sessions for the owners and their guests.

The home’s unique design not only helps it blend into its surroundings, but it also curbs water runoff to ensure it doesn’t go to waste. The living roof even contains a thermal mass to keep the home warm, again helping to save energy through smart design. It’s east-west orientation also improves ventilation and helps to naturally cool and heat the home’s interior.

The Avalon House is perched on several posts, keeping the 1140 square-foot home largely elevated from the ground. It has been wrapped in FSC certified external blackbutt hardwood timber that’s been milled from sustainable forestry methods. The modular design also helped to cut construction time dramatically, allowing residents to move into this beautiful, contemporary beach home in about six weeks.

The HAO Design project, dubbed Blue and Glue, combines a playful atmosphere ideal for children, with a modern look for young parents who don’t want to give up either their romantic life or their yuppie lifestyle.

With two pre-school aged children, the living room became a dedicated play space. Furniture in this area is large, round, and low, lending the look and feel of a children’s reading room in a library. For the parents, this space also provides the best views of the city’s skyline.

While the kids have laid claim to specific areas of the home, the owners still wanted to have a modern feel. Glass, metal, concrete, and other contemporary finishes provide that desired look and feel. Light blue colors and wood accents still help the space feel playful. Lastly, a large chalkboard and LEGO artwork, lend other element that make the home hip and homey.

According to the architects, their clients also demanded a strong connection to nature, as they enjoyed gardening and eating meals outside. As the home was built on an uneven plot, architects made the kitchen and dining areas recessed into the ground, providing occupants with a perfect eye-level view of the garden just outside.

Like traditional Japanese homes, the spaces on the ground floor flow together, where the kitchen and dining, living room, and utility areas, are open yet remain separate and distinct. Upstairs, there are two bedrooms and a balcony.

Another key traditional element added was the pitched roof, which incorporates exposed steel roof trusses that add to the home’s airy feel.

The 2,000 square foot guest house is intended to be a contemplative retreat for weekenders, providing vast unobstructed views. It will also keep guests comfortable through geothermal heating and cooling, radiant floors, natural ventilation, motorized solar shades, and photovoltaic panels. It’s even able to capture rainwater for irrigation.

It uses steel beams for its structure and a wood core, but the real focus of this home are its windows. The façade of the house was designed as a thermally robust system of high-performance, triple-paned glass units that in some places are as wide as 20 feet. Much of this structure was prefabricated off-site and assembled later.

Weekend visitors will be able to enjoy a carefully developed landscape featuring native vegetation. Local bluestone slabs and shale were also added to create outdoor seating areas and pathways.

Perched alongside Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior, Minnesota, the home is ultra modern, complete with exposed concrete and steel. But the modern design is far from austere, as it also provides a playfulness fitting of its residents.

Inside, the open floor plan is perfectly suited to a family with young children. Sliding glass doors off of the living room open up to a screen porch to facilitate indoor-outdoor living and connects the space to the lake just steps away. A mix of colors and textures were used throughout, again mimicking the spirited personalities that inhabit the space.

While modern and minimal, this is a lake house that is also a multifunctional and practical space for a lively, active family.