The Waterbridge House shows us what it means to live both inside and out. Set amid the pines of Pebble Beach, this glass-clad sanctuary floats above the landscape, a calm, geometric silhouette that is as much an homage to nature as it is a feat of architecture. Designed by a local artist, the home’s spirit is rooted in the Japandi style, where Japanese calm and Scandinavian restraint meet the warmth of the California coast.

Staggered concrete steps emerge from the hillside, guiding you toward the house’s signature feature: a glass corridor that bridges a tranquil pool. This floating link is more than an entryway. It’s a threshold—a moment of pause between the everyday and the restorative energy within. The two wings that it connects speak to both privacy and togetherness.

Designer: Emily Yang Bauer

One wing features a spacious open-plan kitchen, living room, and dining area—perfect for gatherings and everyday living. The opposite wing is dedicated to privacy, offering a primary suite that opens onto a generous deck, a separate den or office, and two additional en-suite bedrooms. Below the common area, a separate guest suite with its own kitchenette and private entrance provides comfort and autonomy for visitors.

Waterbridge House’s minimalist form delivers a thoughtful complexity. The facade is a study in contrasts: bare white stucco, punctuated by vertical frameless windows, melts into entire glass walls that slide open to expansive decks. The effect is seamless. Indoors and outdoors blend, and natural light pours through the space, transforming at every hour. Here, the forest is never just a backdrop—it’s invited in, echoing along every surface and reflecting off the pool below.

Central to the home’s philosophy is its relationship with water and landscape. The glass corridor doesn’t only serve as a bridge – it is a calm vantage point, suspended between sky and pool, framing the shifting patterns of light and shade. It’s no wonder the house earned its name: Waterbridge. On quiet mornings, you might cross this bridge with coffee in hand, watching fog drift between trees and sunlight skip over ripples below.

The inspiration for Waterbridge House traces back centuries and continents. The staggered layout and bamboo-accented calm draw from the Cui Linglong, an 11th-century building in Suzhou, China. That legacy is felt most strongly in the home’s floating tea house—a conceptual pavilion accessed by its own set of concrete steps, perfect for contemplation or quiet gatherings. This gentle nod to history grounds the home’s modern lines, adding a layer of serenity and depth.

The house is blessed with light-filled spaces and a connection to nature, creating an atmosphere that is both calming and invigorating. The design offers privacy without isolation, and the floating glass bridge is a daily reminder of the home’s unique vision. The few cons—perhaps a less urban location or a minimalist palette that may not suit maximalist tastes—are far outweighed by the sense of peace and spaciousness.

The post Japandi-Inspired Home Showcases Floating Teahouse, Glass Bridge, & Sunlit Spaces In California first appeared on Yanko Design.

Los Angeles has long been at the epicenter of America’s housing crisis, with high costs and limited inventory making homeownership unaffordable for many. The multiple fires this year have also made the situation worse. This year, a new wave of optimism and hope arrived with the “Small Lots, Big Impacts” initiative, a collaboration between the City of Los Angeles, UCLA’s CityLab, and advocacy group LA4LA.

Their design competition invited architects to reimagine starter homes for city-owned small lots, challenging the notion that space is the primary barrier to affordable, family-friendly housing. The result is a collection of inventive, buildable homes that could reshape the city’s housing landscape. The competition was divided into two categories, “Gentle Density” and “Shared Future,” each encouraging creative approaches to maximize livability on minimal footprints.

Designers Featured: WORD, SSK, Light & Air & Olsun Kundig

One of the entries is Shared Steps, designed by California architecture studios WORD and SSK. Responding to the challenges of infill development, the team devised a composition of stepped buildings that reads as a single, cohesive residential facade from the street. Behind this unified exterior, however, are three separate, three-storey buildings, each accompanied by its accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

Also in the Gentle Density category, Brooklyn-based studio Light and Air presented 4X4X4, a scheme that brings four three-level houses to a single lot, each with the capacity for ground-floor ADUs. The design uses precast concrete panels punctuated with generous cutouts, allowing for floor-to-ceiling glass and expansive terraces. These features cultivate an indoor-outdoor lifestyle that resonates with Los Angeles’ climate and culture, while the stacked format delivers the density required to make a real impact on housing availability.

Nationally recognized firms also made their mark on the competition. Olson Kundig’s entry envisions a “vertical neighbourhood,” using a scalable mass-timber structure clad with solar panels. This design weaves together three primary buildings with shared amenity spaces, and its modular units can be removed or reconfigured to carve out outdoor spaces as needed. The flexibility of this plan is particularly valuable in a city as dynamic and diverse as Los Angeles, offering the possibility for custom-tailored community spaces and a sustainable, adaptable housing model.

What ties these projects together is their blend of density, flexibility, and a deep sensitivity to context. Rather than imposing generic solutions, the designs respond to the unique qualities of Los Angeles’ neighborhoods and the economic realities of its residents. These refreshing and impressive concepts leverage small lots and innovative design strategies, and could help unlock thousands of new homes, making the dream of affordable homeownership and vibrant, walkable communities more attainable for all Angelenos.

The post Innovative Starter Home Concepts Are Designed To Tackle Los Angeles Housing Crisis first appeared on Yanko Design.

Amnesia House, designed by Edmonds + Lee Architects, introduces an uncommon sense of calm in the wilds of Northern California. Conceived as a minimalist retreat, the home steps away from the city’s demands, offering a space that feels both elemental and contemporary. Its structure responds not only to the shifting light and landscape, but also to the pressing realities of fire resilience, integrating function without sacrificing a certain quietude. The home’s geometry is simple, its palette muted, expressing a belief that beauty emerges from restraint.

Entering the Amnesia House, one notices how openness defines the experience. Expansive glass frames the forest, letting daylight move freely across polished concrete floors and white oak millwork. The main living space is open and uncluttered, anchored by a kitchen that blends seamlessly into the architecture. While every detail feels deliberate, nothing distracts from the view or the sense of escape. Amnesia House is not an exhibition of excess but a distillation of what’s necessary for rest and reflection.

Designer: Edmonds + Lee Architects

The architects created this design with a clear intention: to build a counterpoint to their celebrated Remember House in San Francisco. Where the urban project is layered and gallery-like, Amnesia House is more monastic, favoring horizontality and understatement. The roofline is crisp, echoing the brush of the landscape, while deep overhangs provide shelter from both sun and wildfire embers. This sensitivity to the environment is present in every aspect, from the fire-resistant materials to the way the building settles into its site.

Living here is about engaging with the elements rather than shutting them out. Windows slide open to the breeze, and the main terrace extends the living area outdoors, blurring the distinction between interior and exterior. The furniture is minimal, the art sparse, leaving room for the changing light and the sounds of the forest to become the home’s true adornments. There’s a deliberate absence of distraction that encourages a slower pace, a deeper connection with the landscape.

The plan of the home is efficient—two bedrooms, a flexible guest suite, and a main living core that adapts to both solitude and gathering. Every finish is chosen for durability and ease of maintenance, reflecting an understanding that a weekend retreat should never become a burden. The firewise strategies—metal roofing, non-combustible siding, minimal landscaping close to the house—are integrated so seamlessly that they become part of the architecture’s overall serenity.

Amnesia House champions an approach to living that finds luxury in simplicity and resilience. Rather than striving for spectacle, the architects frame the essentials: light, shelter, and a connection to place. The result is a home that fosters reflection and comfort, offering its owners not just a retreat from the city but a gentle reminder of the elemental pleasures of quiet design. In this way, Amnesia House serves as both a functional refuge and a subtle meditation on the art of living well.

The post Ultimate Fire-Resilient Minimal Retreat In California Is Designed For Modern Weekend Living first appeared on Yanko Design.