America’s Northwest region speaks in rustic architectural terms. It is deeply reflective of its environment and resources materials from surrounding forests and plains. It is uniquely modern and thoroughly green.

Embarking on a hike and spending the day among the Pines and brush, it might set you back to stumble upon a contemporary home tucked in the woods.

But if the house is regional, appreciative of its environment and minimal, the sight is rewarding; it signals a healthy relationship between man and nature. It’s provocative, smart, and just plain cool.

The Neal Creek Residence in Portland, Oregon is such a place.

Architects Paul McKean and Amy Donohue designed this award winning home in 2007. Basically two boxes — a large box settled on top of a smaller box –and located among the century-old Neal Creak flood plain, the architects adhered to the environment during the planning and building process. The smaller box is used for storage and mechanical space. It was designed with water in mind. Since the home is located near a creek that floods, the bottom box allows water to flow through it. The residence, which overlooks the sky, meadow and horizon, is in the second story box.

The house received an AIA Built Honor Award in 2007.

From the jury: “The jury was taken by the way this building sits on the landscape and found it to be an example of elegant and innovative use of space on a very restrictive budget. They described the project as very humble in its concept - very tight in plan and beautifully executed with a vertical circulation for the meadow up into the house. The jurors particularly enjoyed the creation of outdoor space within the rectangular plan with no additive features on the outside.”

Go to Paris. Eat the food, drink the wine, tour the streets. And absorb the views. Along Champs Ellysees, Boulevard Saint Germain des Prés or Av Montaigne, surely there is no shortage of visual stimuli.

Maybe your eyes land on a passing stranger, a child dragging her fingers along a stone wall, or a cafe in the Left Bank, where an afternoon wind swoops under white table cloths and makes them flap. Maybe your eye catches glimpse of a stooped man, zigzagging over sidewalks, collecting fallen branches and knobby sticks.

This is architect Philippe Rahm, and he is gathering supplies.

He is participating in the Maison & Objet show, exhibiting his latest creations. One of which is called Ventilation — an air exchanger made from wood and glass — that scents the air as it enters a room.

Here it is, ready to go.

And here it is again, disassembled.

Rahm’s contribution to contemporary architecture and everyday practicality signal his rise as a preeminent modern designer.

The Grid House is making rounds on the Web, garnering attention for its visual appeal and unique construction. And for good reason, too. The home combines green technology and modern architecture, which results in a decidedly new structure sitting among history and tradition.

The Grid House was designed by Moto Design Shop and is located in the heart of Philadelphia, on Pine Street, on what used to be a landfill. The home is comprised of three levels, each grid-like squares with long, spacious windows that suffuse the rooms with plenty of natural light. The rooms roll into one another as spacious living quarters.

Some of the home’s more interesting specs include a rooftop garden spa and private yard, an automobile elevator (the garage is in the basement, below the home) and  solar shades. Its completion marks a significant addition to Philadelphia’s modern homes.

Sell Modern is not alone when it lists San Francisco as one of its favorite architectural cities; the culture, urban development and progressive mindset keep us coming back, despite the stratospheric cost of visiting.

Indulge us then as we take a look at a modern Pacific Heights home that has made news, spread rumors and enamored passerby since it was built, way back in 1938.

Designed by John Ekin Dinwiddie in the 1930’s, this home steps away from SF’s traditional and ubiquitous Victorian style, and captures instead a sharp, modern aesthetic that stands apart from its Pacific Heights neighbors.

Do you see a metaphor here? While the street angles downward (current real estate market) the Dinwiddie home keeps its balance and stays afloat (reflects the appeal of modern homes despite the economy).

Hey, what can we say? We’re optimists here at Sell Modern.

Living in Phoenix means living in dry heat. Watch the orange sun slip towards the earth’s yardarm, see the dusty light ripple and drop as another day settles on this desert city. When the sun goes down the lights go on, and one home’s lights shine brighter — or at least differently — than the rest.

The Xeros residence ( Xeros is the Greek word for dry ) is a one bedroom, 2,200 square foot home designed by Matthew Trzebiatowski of Blank Studio. It won the 2008 Project of the Year by Residential Architect.

The home’s perch and corrugated steel, its wire mesh and sharp lines make it a natural crowd-pleaser. It has been featured in numerous architectural and modern home magazines, and was recently named one of the best 10 projects of 2008 by Fast Company.

Says Trzebiatowski: “I wanted to wrap one material around the entire house—as sort of an architectural lingerie.”

We first reported on this year’s Las Vegas Builders’ Show back in November. And now the work–and our expectations–have come to fruition.

Builder: Living Homes sponsored the event. The theme was sustainability, green architecture, modern design.

The result?

A sleek, modular home, with amenities, character and style to boot.

The online rag Interior Design recently announced its favorite work from 2008. The designs are practical, modern and easy on the eyes. Granted, there were thousands of new, important design-oriented products assembled last year, but the ones listed here–at least to us–seem to be both–and this is a compliment–somewhat common and unique.

To our tastes, these are crucial elements. Sure, it’s cool to see a brand-spanking new product, designed like nothing has ever been designed before. But show us a chair that’s going to change the way we feel about sitting all day, or a table that makes us want to spread all of our important papers (if we still have anything on paper), or a rug that’s as rugged as it is sophisticated, and we’ll be happier for it. Here’s few to give a sense of what we mean.

Conference Furniture: T-NO.1-Fritz Hansen

Conference & Task Seating: Kron USA - Dana

Rug: Ruckstuhl - Legno-Legno 236

Chaewon Kim and Beat Schenk are ascending architects. Founders of the design/build company UNI, their work has attracted scores of writers, admirers and detractors, each of whom is motivated by a desire to explain just what it is that Kim and Schenk are up to.

The couple lives and works in Cambridge, MA, where their renovated home is the Boston Globe’s Home of the Week.  In 2002, after they purchased the small cottage, the architects stripped down the walls, the plumbing, the shingles–everything. They wanted to renovate and design the house using affordable, do-it-yourself products. The result is a natural and unnatural hybrid, tucked within a plot of land that otherwise knows only of Colonial and Cape-cottage styles houses. Still, the home captures New England’s antiquity while celebrating a modernistic approach to 21st century architecture.

Corrugated Steel envelops the A-Frame cottage.

A wide, spacious kitchen with a slate backdrop.

Polycarbonate walls and incoming translucent light are features in an upstairs bedroom.

A combination of new and old, this project exemplifies the best of Boston’s modern homes.

Rappahannock County is a small region in the Washington DC area. The name is an Algonquian word that means, “river of quick, rising water.”

Unlike metropolitan DC, Rappahannock is a lush rural county with rolling hills and rushing rivers. Its proximity to the city and its tranquil country lifestyle make it an ideal location for an architectural experiment.

McInturff Architects took advantage of the opportunity and went to work plotting and constructing a modern Washington DC home in the center of this Virginia County.

The Rappahannock County House

Built on 300 acres in Rappahannock County, the house takes its inspiration from farm buildings and their assemblages, abstractly recalling local rural building traditions through color, form and organization. The linear form of the house gives each major room a view of the mountains in the distance.

Color is used inside and out to articulate the length of the building as three ochre pavilions with barn-red connectors. Grey-green shed-roofed volumes form wings defining a parking court on the approach side and a terrace on the view side.

Within, rooms are general in function and informal in use. A long room for music and gathering fills one wing, and a large table fits comfortably in the kitchen. The screened porch is also a room, identical to the seating area the kitchen, but screened and unheated. Bedrooms make up all of the second floor, and on top, a tower study provides a getaway from those gathered below.

Locally familiar materials, such as galvanized roofs and concrete block fireplaces, make it all feel at home in the local vernacular.

(Courtesy of McInturff Architects)

Indianapolis has a buzz. We hear it all the time, that this once sleepy and often overlooked Midwestern city is in the nation’s modern spotlight. And judging by the swath of blogs, articles and references to Indy’s architecture, there are plenty of other people who agree.

Skyscrapers needle the sky, The Transamerica Building

Others inspire contemplation, The Pyramid Buildings

Modern parks designed for a unique urban experience, The Congressional Medal of Honor

Outlying suburbs and metro neighborhoods feature Indianapolis’s modern homes.

Williams Creek

Meridian Hills

And Greenwood