Man vs nature has been a time honored battle but what if instead of trying to argue both sides of the case you combined the two? That is what the architects of four homes in Venice and Santa Monica did on the American Institute of Architects Spring Home tour this year.

Using what they call “indoor/outdoor living” these four designers created a sense of being outside when you’re really in or being in a room when you’re sitting in the wide open outdoors. Taking a cue from Mother Nature each of these designers used what they call eco friendly materials and their surroundings to create a symbiotic relationship between the house and the landscape.

The first house on the tour, called the Venice Prefab and designed by Jennifer Siegal, is a one floor prefabricated home. Prefabricated is the movement where parts of the home are built off site and then transported to the housing location where they are assembled and connected to the rest of the structure. In the case of the Venice house Jennifer and her clients kept a few of the existing structures on the lot as a basis for their home. Using a model the homeowners and Jennifer worked on together different spaces of living were formed.

“I really wanted to respect their lifestyle. They have two kids, two dogs, two cats they have a very social environment. I really wanted to create a private realm for them but also have a public space,” said Jennifer, designer and principal owner of Office of Mobile Designs.

So it came to be that the original structures became the sleeping domains, with the master suite and the children’s room and play area shooting off the original building. The new structure, made up of 4 modules, the living room, dining room and kitchen are all open and free flowing into one another allowing for movement and socializing, as the family’s life demands.

What’s so unique about the house is that it surrounds an internal grass courtyard where the children, animals and even the parents can run and play or merely pass through to get from one end of the house to the other creating a feeling of a grassy room where the earth and sun are the foundations.

“I added 4 modules to create this courtyard shape that would then give them the privacy, the fluidity between the indoors and outdoors and try to really fold nature into their dwellings,” Jennifer remarked.

The second house, designed by John Friedman and his wife Alice Kim is full of light and wonder. With walls made of floor to ceiling glass doors the house feels spacious and natural. Hardwood floors cover the entire place from top to bottom creating a warm surrounding. The landscape around the house is made up of grassy knolls for the kids to play with a small bubbling well that feeds peaceful sounds into the air.

“The openness is important. Also using wood walls and wood cabinetry is a way of contrasting the white walls and all that,” said John Friedman who was at the event.

The glass walls and there are several of them upstairs and down in the two story house, giving each room a feeling of infinite space, as though walking outside is merely going into another part of the house. With so many open walls throughout the house there is constant ventilation and a smooth breeze that passes through making it easy for the owners to opt out of air conditioning, a huge energy tapping resource.

“The big picture, being located so close to ocean means everything, cross breezes, cool breezes. It’s not hard to make a house work passively in an area like this,” John remarked.

With three bedrooms, two bathrooms and growing kids the houses high ceilings was a treat for both the tall homeowners and architect to design.

The third house on the tour, a Michael Lee design, has a similar sensation of living inside and outside all at the same time. Where one part of the dinning room starts inside, a glass wall opens onto another dinning area, with a small patio for the table and chairs, and concrete columns all around, giving the sensation of yet another room.

What made this house so appealing is its ability to convey space at the same time that it felt like a lot of different rooms. There was a room for lounging, a room for cocktails, two dinning rooms (the one inside and out), a kitchen and so on. The surrounding landscape was filled with a lap pool and greenery creating a contiguous paradise that at once felt like a space separate from the house and a part of it.

“We wanted to have indoor/outdoor spaces. The courtyard we are standing in, for example is like another room in the house. ” Mr. Lee said.

In the upstairs arena, walking straight off the stairs, is more living space for the children to play and the parents to work, with of course huge glass doors that open onto another patio space. From walking into this open space you could then walk to the left or right of the open room to the children’s room and play room, or to the other side of the house where there is the parent’s large, sunlight filled suite and bathroom. If you take a sharp right off the stairs, you can go to the children’s quarters or continue straight onto a small bridge hanging over the living. It beings inside and continues outside the house leading to a workout room and a downstairs office, creating a sense of separation and yet conjunction with the house it is attached to.

“We tried to use the whole property to break up the house. And have as much natural light as possible,” said Mr. Lee proudly. Walking throughout the house that day there were no lights on yet the entire space was filled with rays of daylight.

The fourth and final house on the tour, located in Santa Monica was the most exotic, called “the Painted light Studio”, designed by home owner and architect Jennifer Wen. The outside of the house is a bright pastel blue with various windows that are different colors creating a rainbow effect in the day and a neon effect in the night.

“It’s a place I wanted to raise my family and I wanted it to be a happy house. I love to play with light.” Mrs. Wen said smiling.

In an effort to stay within the strict zoning regulations of Santa Monica, Mrs. Wen’s house became a veritable playground of angles and shapes. “The reason you have never seen a house this shape is we literally built to the zoning code envelope, whatever is allowed. We utilized every inch of it. To me shapes mean problem solving,” she said enthusiastically.

For this reason the house has a very different feel with every step you take. The master suite had a curved ceiling and wall which created what she liked to refer to as a womb effect. Like the other houses on the tour there were ceiling to floor glass doors all over from the living room to the master suite, that led out onto her own version of oasis outside, a cute little flower garden in one corner of the ground floor, a wooden patio for sun bathing shooting a step up off the ground from the living room.

The main stairs inside are reminiscent of an escalator where the climber can choose to either get off the stairs, going left or right onto the second floor where the four bedrooms and more sitting rooms are or they can continue on the same set of stairs from the ground floor all the way to the third, where Mrs. Wen’s office lies. Mrs. Wen also utilized the outdoors around her house, where on each floor there are outdoor rooms and spaces on the various levels of the roof with a spiral staircase outside of her bedroom leading up to her office.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) whose purpose is to lead in improving the built environment, used the Santa Monica and Venice tour as a way of showing what’s new, edgy and sustainable within the areas of LA, according to the Associate Director of the Los Angeles Branch of the AIA, Carlo Caccavale.

”Each of the homes on this particular tour was a slice of a different life style in the same community. They were all very different in style but they all carried on a peculiar and personal conversation with the neighborhood and expressed a strong personality,” Carlo said.