When New York firm Hariri & Hariri unveiled a design for a futuristic residence they called the Digital House in 1998, it caused a stir.

The Delaware River’s East Branch, meandering through New York’s Catskills region, is famous for fly fishing. So, when Gad Soffer—a passionate amateur fly fisherman—got the chance to purchase a pristine nine-acre parcel there, he and his wife, Katie Donnelly, leapt for it.

When Seattle-based designer John Van Dyke visited Cabo Corrientes for the first time nearly a decade ago, he found a kind of place he thought no longer existed.

As more architects get their hands literally dirty with the design-build process, this form of project delivery is resulting in some quite elegant structures.

A house by architect Ben van Berkel rarely could be described as a glass box. Instead the principal of the Amsterdam-based UNStudio avoids the rectilinear modernist approach for a more organic direction.

Toshiko Mori designs a modernist house in picturesque Camden, Maine, that is embedded in the earth but opens out to the view.

For a house in a lush Miami precinct, Brillhart Architecture explores a vernacular modernist idiom.

In the far reaches of a peninsula in Wisconsin, Johnsen Schmaling has designed a textured wood structure with a green roof and expansive views of nature.