Like a cave, rock on rock with primordial forest and majestic mountains. Luxuriously monastic and elegant in its simplicity. Serene yet strong. Raw and masculine. Scree, rock and gravel. Warmth, shelter and style. High country with Lake Wakatipu as view. The Mountain Retreat, Central Otago, Queenstown by New Zealand architectural firm Fearon Hay. Edgy and awe-inspiring.

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Whether the weather is hot and humid or there is just a nip in the air I couldn’t think of a nicer home to sit in the shadows and just chill. Like sitting under a big shady tree or the overhang of a cliff face with a fire scraped together from driftwood. The outside is definitely in. This is what Australian architects do so well. Mosman house by Katon Redgen Mathieson.

Photographer Simon Whitbread generously sent over his latest photo shoot. (See me posts on Simon here and here.) A small 2 bedroom house on Sydney’s Northern Beaches sits snugly on a tight block but screens and walls, awnings and orientation provide privacy, shade and cross ventilation. More importantly this Curl-Curl home by Clifton Cole of CplusC Architectural Workshop uses light and shadow to help define spaces, to bring the outside in and to make a small home seem larger. I love the way that Simon’s photography plays with light and shadows to emphasis this design feature. He seems to “get” a building and plays on this in his work. Simon you weren’t an architect in a previous life?

For when guests and extended family stay over. A perfect pod. Part prefabricated, part site built it is the work (again) of Craig Steely Architecture. Sitting lightly on a lavaflow site the modernist lines of the Ohanapod (family pod) provide connection to its surrounds. Tropical retreat with privacy, shading and cross flow. A cool pad in more ways than one.

Clean modernist lines address the site and explore the relationship between the inside and out. Craig Steely Architecture, based in San Francisco and Hawaii, explores what is possible, sustainable and stylish. If a site is a challenge then Steely not only accepts the challenge but his solutions are elegant and environmentally sound. Steep sites in San Francisco, modern renewal of old houses needing more than just a face lift and homes taking root in lava flows. It’s about respecting a space and building a future, and a home, from there.