Where open field meets wooded hillside at White Oaks Savanna, near Stillwater, Minnesota, Strand Design designed a low, grounded home drawn from the region's agrarian buildings. Dark, vertically clad gabled volumes with metal roofs sit in a meadow of grasses and wildflowers, and natural wood siding lets the house settle quietly into the landscape.

The gables frame a planted courtyard and are joined by a glass link, so the plan reads as a small cluster of farm buildings rather than a single large house. Patios, a dining terrace, a screened porch and a covered entry tie the house to the lawn and plantings around it. Inside, the open living, dining and kitchen rooms sit under timber ceilings, with light wood cabinetry and black-framed windows that look back out to the fields.

A vaulted great room and an oak kitchen with a dark island form the center of the house, and light wood continues up the stair and into a cedar sauna. The landscape, by NELO, returns the surrounding ground to prairie and savanna. Builder: Cates Fine Homes.