These Properties Prove the Most Striking and Sustainable Homes Naturally Frame Their Lush Surroundings

Paul Clayton photo by Nick Simonite, Brian Korte photo by Josh Huskin

These Texan architects (with offices in Austin and San Antonio) aren’t intimidated by wide-open spaces or expanding their reach outside their native state. This vineyard home in Buellton, California, is a prime example of the firm’s work, which lets the landscape steal the spotlight and has vista points to soak in majestic surroundings.

Trina Severson

Leave it to the partners at AAHA Studio to make a monolith of poured concrete feel both warm and airy. The 22-foot glass doors slide into pockets to open up the first floor to the enclosed backyard, creating a seamless indoor-outdoor flow.

Cantilevered over the hillside and stretched to the sea, this coastal Oregon home designed by Seattle-based chadbourne + doss architects utilizes durable materials like zinc, cedar, and concrete to create an elegantly minimal perch that hovers over the rugged Pacific.

Joe Herrin and Mike Mora of Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects think of the houses they design as frames for the surrounding landscape. This hillside residence, which overlooks the San Juan archipelago, is a prime example: Comprising two structures built around an old-growth tree and nestled into boulders, it’s a low-impact home that takes major cues from the midcentury masters.

Back in the winner’s circle for the second year in a row, the San Francisco firm Feldman Architecture has mastered the art of discretion. While Feldman houses can’t be described as modest, exactly, they project a relaxed confidence that’s hard to find in a field of more strident competitors.

Thomas J. Story

Founded in 1989, Marmol Radziner is a design-build practice led by architects Ron Radziner and Leo Marmol. Their multi-award winning cross-disciplinary team of 200 employees, including interior designers, landscape designers, metal fabricators, carpenters, furniture makers, and a full construction crew, has been at the forefront of the West Coast design scene for decades. This Toro Canyon pool cabana and guest house nestled into a steep 10-acre plot, with its modern geometry and quietly luxurious finishes, exemplifies their building philosophy. But their work isn’t available exclusively to the ultra-rich. In 2025, in response to the wildfires in their beloved city, the firm developed a new line of prefab homes that uphold their commitment to thoughtful design, spatial harmony, and a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor living.

Built around lichen-covered boulders and majestic trees, this St. Helena home from Zack de Vito Architecture + Construction is decidedly modern, yet it feels like it’s been there forever. A special nod goes to Randy Thueme Design for assistance with this glorious pool.

Lisa Romerein/OTTO

The Aspen-based firm Rowland + Broughton was charged with the task of building a vineyard home that would function as both a private residence and a base for growing eight acres of Cabernet grapes in Walla Walla, Washington. Blend barn-inspired gabled forms with modern amenities and sleek construction, and the resulting property is a wine-lover’s dream.

Perched as lightly as a heron on the shores of the Salish Sea, this new-build boathouse is from Seattle-based PBW Architects. Its steel and glass frame may look delicate from the water, but its construction was built to withstand coastal climate extremes.

For this Edmonds, Washington, retreat on a narrow bluff overlooking the Puget Sound, Seattle firm Hoshide Wanzer created two barrel-roofed forms, connected at an angle, to maximize the views and reduce “visual mass.” But the curvilinear ceilings remind us of a tall ship’s hull.

Aspen-based Charles Cunniffe Architects did not come to play. Known for focusing on the topography of a lot and maximizing killer views, this firm understands how clients with deep pockets want to spend their downtime. Each home is built with environmental sensitivity and wellness in mind, enforcing the firm’s commitment to “ensuring beauty, performance, and a timeless sense of belonging.”

A Portland-based firm in practice for about 40 years, Giulietti Schouten Weber shows no signs of slowing down. It nominated this Kalama Ridge house as a representation of how its work has evolved. Soaring above the Columbia River Valley, the home’s broad eaves make it look as though it could take flight.

Courtesy of Ogawa Fisher Architects

These Palo Alto architects are no strangers to 20th-century ranch houses, but this remodel of a classic Eichler home commissioned by a lively family of five was exceptionally satisfying. Keeping the bones and pedigree of the structure intact, they reconfigured the kitchen, dining, and living spaces to create a more open flow to suit the family’s active lifestyle.

Whether collaborating with interior designer Noz Nozawa on a Victorian remodel or building a split-level farmhouse, Gast Architects’ work is so versatile that it’s hard to define. Some identifiable through lines for the Bay Area firm: crisp, clean lines, top-shelf materials, and meticulous attention to detail.

This project by L.A.-based Standard Architecture combines two lots into a three-generation family compound. A new house was built on the east half of the property, with large flexible spaces. On the west half, the existing home was remodeled, a large pergola joins the pool deck, and a flowing landscape effortlessly connects the backyards.

With its sinuous forms and black-and-white palette, the residence from the architects and urbanists at Studio VARA is a maximalist’s interpretation of minimalism. This 1894 Queen Anne in San Francisco, reimagined to resemble an art gallery, is pared back but also somehow extra, a non-conformist’s dream.

The Denver-based team members at Tomecek Studio are unapologetic futurists, pushing the boundaries of contemporary architecture without much nostalgia for old ideas. This Skinwalker Ranch property, sited in an area famous for (alleged) paranormal activity, looks like it may have been deposited, or at least designed, by aliens. And that’s just the way they like it.

Sweet, simple, and straightforward, this California Gold Country cabin by the environmentally conscious Oakland firm Studio Pear can be switched off the grid to be fully self-sustaining.

Sherri Kaven

Surrounded by towering Douglas firs and alders, and clad in dark steel, concrete, glass, and black bronze, this multi-story home designed by William/Kaven offers its residents the experience of living fully immersed in a 5,000-acre forested reserve in Portland without sacrificing the convenience of urban life.

Coming in at roughly 1,500 square feet, this Stinson Beach cottage by Kirley Architects is a masterclass in efficient design. A large skylight and motorized flip-up window open to create the impression of a large living space, and a blue-tiled fireplace at its heart makes a chic statement.

Generations of a single family have gathered on the shores of Flathead Lake at this floating home near the base of a rocky slope. MMW Architects updated the structure with glass connectors that link private and shared wings, creating sleeping quarters for a crowd. The roofline follows the hillside, helping the home blend seamlessly into its environment.

At the urging of its L.A. client, a guitarist with a clear sense of humor, the firm designed this single-story modern house with a rock wall and a monolithic asymmetrical roofline—which conceals attic storage and a small workspace—that would make Fred and Wilma feel right at home.

Rustic materials meet contemporary design at this 8,500-square-foot Park City mountain house, designed with multiple connected buildings to resemble early homestead communities in Utah. Two-foot-thick fieldstone “remnant walls” were deconstructed to look like they’ve aged over time, and a water feature mimics the construction of a mining sluice box. While the Bozeman, Montana-based JLF is focused on building rural and mountain homes that feel deeply connected to place, it spares no luxuries in the process.

This Carbondale, Colorado, firm understands that the view is always the main attraction, and the firm designs no-fuss, functional properties for enjoying a life that’s focused on, and centered in, the natural world.

Boulder, Colorado-based firm Rodwin Architecture took a 19th-century family farm and updated it for modern living, all without abandoning the property’s original charm and several working barns. The 80-acre property is being rehabbed from the inside out, now that the owners are working to restore the soil, plant hundreds of trees, reintroduce livestock, and turn it into a model of regenerative farming.

Photo by Brent Sumner

This Santa Barbara firm understands the fundamentals of a beach house and how to combine and transform existing structures to meet the benchmarks of contemporary luxury. This 1950s home, which was combined with a neighboring structure to expand the footprint to 6,500 square feet, stays true to its provenance and the original scale of the rooms.

A Sunset regular, San Francisco-based Butler Armsden Architects reimagined this elegant Beaux-Arts home in Presidio Heights as a light-filled space with sinuous curves and floor to-ceiling casement windows that open to a wrap porch, creating a surprisingly serene retreat in the heart of the city.

This Seattle firm treated the second-growth forest surrounding this glass box design as a collaborator, “opening it carefully, placing the house inside, and closing it again,” building the home with minimal disruption to the land. Inside the house, the architecture practically disappears, and only the view and quiet embrace of the trees remain.