Thomas Phifer is one of the most subdued architects you’ll ever meet. Sitting in his all-white New York office in a navy suit, reclining diagonally in a straight-backed chair, he speaks in a low and measured tone. When he’s being pensive—–which is most of the time—–he closes his eyes as he talks and bobs his hand gently in front of him like a conductor, as if coaxing out words. To hear him better, I lean in, block out the blaring car horns outside. In this way, he is like his architecture: exquisitely quiet, subtle, and absorbing.

Phifer has been practicing architecture for 34 years, as a partner at Richard Meier’s office from 1986 to 1996, and as founding principal of his firm, Thomas Phifer and Partners, since 1996. He designs beautiful buildings—–minimalist steel-and-glass houses, a daylit museum—–but his architecture is about much more than eye candy. “We work a lot with nature, trying to bring people more in touch with their environment in a subliminal way,” he says, in a subtle South Carolina twang (he grew up in Columbia and went to architecture school at Clemson University). “Our buildings want to be helping hands, bringing people closer to understanding the sun, and light, and the change of seasons. For far too long, buildings have been fortresses, cutting people off from nature.”

His masterwork to date—though he’s far too humble and cool-headed to call it that—may well be the Fishers Island House, a second home he designed recently for Tom Armstrong, the director emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and his wife, Bunty. Set on an island off the coast of Connecticut and surrounded by gardens, the house embodies Phifer’s design sensibility. The pavilionlike building sits lightly in the landscape, both aesthetically (with its wraparound glass facade and minimal interior walls, the place is literally see-through) and ecologically, thanks to geothermal heating and natural ventilation. An aluminum-and-steel-rod trellis encircles the house at roof height, modulating natural light that washes in through the 12-foot-high glass walls.

During the design process, Armstrong stopped by the office weekly to check on the house and discuss the latest drawings. That could be an architect’s nightmare, but Phifer embraced the opportunity to relate so closely with a client. “The closer the collaboration, the better,” he says. “To hear the voice of the person who will inhabit a place and see it come alive in the built work is for me what architecture is all about.” While the house was still on paper, Phifer’s office made Armstrong miniature, to-scale models of both the interior walls and the couple’s collection of 20th-century abstract American paintings, so he could figure out the best way to display his art. “He gave me this incredible toy,” recalls Armstrong. “With most architects, it’s ‘Give me the program and I’ll give you the design.’ But Tom really worked with me. He’s not a screamer or a monster ego. But when he’s on the right track, he proceeds with great strength and brings you along.”

Phifer traces his evolution as an architect back to 1976, when at age 22 he took his first trip to Europe (and first flight anywhere). He stepped off the plane and his mind was promptly blown. “Oh my god, this is outrageous, this is incredible,” he recalls thinking. “I was kind of skipping along in life, and then I went to Europe and my world opened up. Seeing the work of James Stirling in London, Aalto in Finland, Gaudí in Spain, the ruins in Rome—it was just an outrageous experience.” Later, while managing projects in Paris, Basel, and Barcelona for Meier’s office, Phifer observed and internalized the priorities that shaped European design—–such as access to natural ventilation and daylighting—–but that were largely neglected in American architecture at the time. “In countries like the Netherlands it’s literally against the law to put people away from a window,” he recalls now. “It’s a human right to have contact with nature. In America that wasn’t really a concern. It’s just a completely different idea about how to make a building.”

In 1995, Phifer won the prestigious Rome Prize and took a leave of absence from Meier’s office to spend eight months in residence at the American Academy in Rome. Dedicating himself to “studying daylight,” he visited the Pantheon almost every day, rain or shine. “It’s really a metaphysical experience to go in and understand what that building does and how that building represents eternal light,” he raves. “It’s the magic of the oculus, like everyone says. It was built for the ages. You can’t talk about that kind of permanence very easily in the archi-tecture that we make today.” When Phifer returned from Rome he decided to start his own firm, working, at first, out of his living room. His firm is now in west SoHo, with a staff of 25 working collaboratively around a hundred-foot-long table.

His first major commission was the Taghkanic House in upstate New York’s Hudson Valley, a collaboration with his mentor, the legendary modernist landscape architect Dan Kiley, then age 87. “I’d never designed a house in the landscape before,” Phifer says. “We talked about how to embed architecture in the land, how to choreograph the arrival, how to allow buildings to deal with daylight and the land”—–guiding principles that continue to shape Phifer’s designs. The resulting house is a white-painted steel-and-glass box that rests on a hill; the rest of the structure is sunk into the earth, with a shaded glass face open to light and views. Since then, he’s designed airy and luminous houses and office buildings across the country, a United States courthouse in Salt Lake City, a student center for Rice University, and, most recently, the new North Carolina Museum of Art, an open-plan 120,000-square-foot museum where, as in the Fishers Island House, controlled daylighting illuminates the art and transparent walls reveal gardens and reflecting pools just outside. His firm also won an international competition to design a new streetlight for New York City, a taskhe found more difficult than conceiving a building. “It was so technically challenging,” he says of their design, which employs an energy-efficient LED bulb. “To my knowledge, it was one of the first designs for an LED streetlight, so we really had to push the technology.”

By all measures, Phifer’s firm is flourishing. But Phifer shrugs off any applause. “You have to practice for so, so, so many years before you even get a glimpse of the right way to do a building,” he demurs. “The more you see—–the Salk Institute and the Kimbell Museum that Lou Kahn did—–and the older you get, the more humble you get, because you begin to understand how those buildings are true masterpieces. Architecture is extremely difficult to make at that level.”

When I point out that not all architects get humbler with age, he raises his eyebrows and leans forward insistently. “Just one trip to the Kimbell and you feel like you’ll never do a building that’s even close to that. The building is completely timeless. The natural light is just breathless. It’s incredibly simple and powerful. When you’re a young architect, you look at it and you say, yeah, that’s beautiful. But when you get older you really begin to appreciate what a masterpiece is.

“More and more I’m thinking about life span,” he continues. “A lot of work we’re trying to make more permanent, making simpler and simpler forms. We’re into very quiet architecture.” Prodding him to think big, I ask him to name his dream project. “Another museum,” he says evenly. “Another house.”

“Cannabis buyer’s clubs” began cropping up in San Francisco in the late 1990s, after Proposition 215, which passed in California in 1996, removed criminal penalties for people who grew or possessed cannabis for their own medical use. Since then, a hodgepodge of legislative enactments and judicial decisions has more or less legalized the medical use of marijuana; today Sparc is one of 24 licensed dispensaries in San Francisco. In November, residents will vote on Proposition 19, a statewide ballot initiative that could legalize marijuana for recreational use in California.

Sparc’s founder, Erich Pearson, has legally grown cannabis in Sonoma and San Francisco Counties for the past 12 years, selling it to medical dispensaries and supplying it for free to critically ill patients in hospices. (Marijuana has been shown to alleviate nausea, neuropathy, pain and insomnia, and to stimulate appetite.) Two years ago, wanting more direct contact with patients, he decided to open his own dispensary, and in the process created a new model for marijuana distribution.

Pearson enlisted Sand Studios, a local architecture firm, to design a space that would help “remove the stigma around cannabis and make people feel marijuana is normal.” After all, as he acknowledged, “if we’re asking the government and citizens to allow medical cannabis, we have to show them a model they can feel comfortable with.”

The designer Larissa Sand toured a handful of Bay Area dispensaries to gain a better understanding of the business. (“Nothing against marijuana, but fine wine is my drug of choice,” Sand said.) While she was impressed with the sense of community and professionalism among growers and retailers, she found most dispensaries lacking when it came to aesthetics. “There was nothing current,” she said. “I wanted to create something beautiful, to elevate the product and give it the proper milieu.”

To that end, Sparc is spare, modern and well lit. Vaguely bong-shaped lights made of borosilicate science glass drip from the ceiling. Steel shelving holds dozens of apothecary-style wood boxes, each containing a different strain or form of lab-tested cannabis. Along another wall, a similar rack displays baby plants for sale. The sales counter is made of local oak, with inset glass-topped drawers exhibiting buds, salves and edibles like snickerdoodle cookies and “cosmic caramels.” According to Sand, such attention to detail sends a message to regulators and members alike that “this isn’t just some backyard moonshine.”

Of all Sparc’s design moves, Pearson is proudest of the facility’s semitransparent facade — a cascading grid of steel and glass patterned loosely on marijuana’s DNA and peppered with clear aquamarine panes. It was inspired in part by the Twin Peaks Tavern, a still-extant gay bar in the Castro that is said to have been the first in America to have clear windows (rather than blacked out) when it opened in 1972. “A glass facade represents transparency, legitimacy and a sort of coming out of the closet,” Pearson said. “It lets people know we’re not afraid of anything, that there’s no shame in it. It’s therapy for a lot of people.”

If you close your eyes and block out the visual cues — the red ocher 18th-century buildings, the brightly colored bazaars, the monkeys scrambling maniacally over the dusty rooflines — you would still know you were in Jaipur, India. The country’s center of traditional craftsmanship has a distinctive soundtrack: from one corner of the old city come the sounds of the braziers, pounding brass disks into wide-mouth bowls; from another, a cacophony of hammers, as hundreds of men beat tiny squares of silver until they ease and spread into airy silver leaf. Over there is the metallic chipping of the marble workers, carving busts of Gandhi and Hindu goddesses in their turquoise-painted workshops. And in the distance, the sandpapery ch-ch-ch of the city’s gem polishers, who sit cross-legged at their grinders shaping precious stones for Cartier.

Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan in northwestern India, has always been a magnet for artisans. Founded in 1727 by the king Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, a mathematician and astronomer well versed in principles of architecture and civil engineering, it was the country’s benchmark for urban planning. In an effort to establish a vibrant economy and to secure bragging rights as India’s most exquisite court, Sawai Jai Singh invited the country’s top craftsmen and merchants to set up shop within the walls of his new city, offering perks like free land and guaranteed royal patronage. A grid of streets and wide, straight avenues divided the city into distinct quarters, each dedicated to a different skill, from tent making to enameling to tie-and-dye.

‘‘Sawai Jai Singh was a man of great foresight,’’ the jeweler Munnu Kasliwal told me when I visited him at the Gem Palace, the boutique that’s been in his family since 1852. As we talked, he sat in a pile of hot-pink pillows and fondled a necklace dripping with emeralds and rare rose-cut diamonds. (The style is ‘‘very popular in Aspen,’’ he confided.) Kasliwal’s ancestors, court jewelers to India’s royal families and Mughal emperors, were among those recruited at the city’s inception. Now he plies his trade just off a street where cows and hairy pigs snuffle through piles of trash — a very different scene from the Jaipur he remembers as a boy. ‘‘There were a little over 100 cars and probably about 500 scooters,’’ he said. ‘‘There was no pollution, no traffic, nothing around but farmland and beautiful private gardens.’’

Today, Jaipur has burst at the seams. Designed for 50,000 residents in 1727, the greater city is now home to 3.1 million, with the population growing an average of 4.5 percent every year. The neatly gridded streets of the old city are perpetually snarled in traffic of every imaginable conveyance — scooter, taxi, rickshaw, elephant — and outside the ancient walls sprawls a 565-square-mile modern city that swallows its rural surroundings whole.

After independence in 1947, the power and wealth of the royal courts quickly dissipated, the patronage system died out, and many formerly titled families, their fortunes much diminished, eventually turned their palaces and haveli mansions into hotels. Nowadays the stoneworkers whose forefathers carved columns for Rajasthan’s famously ornate palaces and the musicians who played at the royal court are struggling, with few exceptions, to eke out a living. The younger generation, swept up in India’s heady economic growth, has moved on to more lucrative and less labor-intensive work.

One of the people most concerned with the loss of traditional artisans in modern Jaipur is Faith Singh, a pink-cheeked Briton with a shock of bright white hair who moved to Jaipur in 1967. When she arrived, hand-block printing was on the decline, with machine-printed fabrics flooding the markets. Demand for handiwork was disappearing, and hand-block printers were mired in debt to cloth merchants. In 1971, driven by her own interest in textiles and fashion, Singh and her Jaipur-born husband, John, started Anokhi, a clothing and housewares label dedicated to fair wages, good work conditions and new ideas for a centuries-old industry. They broke with tradition in bold ways: they hired women (wage earners at the time were predominantly male), scaled and colored prints in a contemporary way and, perhaps most important, provided the printers with fabric, releasing them from their greatest financial burden. The label’s success jump-started the revival of the hand-block printing industry — one of the rare examples to date of a dying art yanked back from the brink of extinction. Now run by Singh’s son, Pritam, and his wife, Rachel, Anokhi does a brisk business in stylish, hand-printed garments and bed linens and provides steady employment for more than a thousand people.

Singh’s mission to keep Rajasthan’s cultural heritage alive has particular urgency in a state where the government means well — for example, it pays folk artists to perform in state-sponsored festivals and hires stoneworkers for conservation projects — but can’t fill the void left by the collapse of the patronage system. It has bigger things to deal with, such as the frequent and devastating droughts. ‘‘Who is going to nourish these artisans?’’ Singh said over lunch at Anokhi Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant her son opened in 2006. ‘‘The greatest challenge is that India inherited a system designed to rule rather than enable. We’ve got all this fermenting democracy, but we’ve still got a mind-set conditioned by centuries of feudalism. The prevailing attitude is: the state should provide.’’

The concept of public-private partnerships may be relatively new in India, but Faith and John have managed to create the Jaipur Virasat Foundation in conjunction with Rajasthan civic leaders. Besides leading weekly heritage walks through the back alleys of the old city, the group runs a community space that doubles as an art gallery and lecture hall. It also organizes a wide range of music, literature and cultural festivals, from small gatherings in rural villages to large-scale events like the new Rajasthan International Folk Festival. Held every October in the nearby city of Jodhpur, it has stoked global interest in Rajasthani folk music. (Mick Jagger is a patron.)

Now, as similar initiatives are taking hold throughout the region, Jaipur’s traditional arts, crafts and music have started to hum with a new vitality. In the fabric-dyeing district, I followed a stream of bright orange water to the tie-and-dye workshop of Mohammed Sabir, a potbellied man in a checkered sarong. His family has been in this business for 140 years, he told me, and though the work is painstaking and slow, he’s determined not to let their craft die. In recent years, he’s begun developing custom fabrics for top Indian designers like Rina Dhaka. ‘‘I want to take it forward, make it more contemporary,’’ he told me, hoisting into my lap armfuls of his signature striped, multihued silks.

Another day I visited the textile designer Raj Kanwar, who is using old techniques to modern effect at her workshop on the outskirts of Jaipur. A former professor at a state-run art college, Kanwar applies tie-and-dye, brass-block printing and gold embellishment to garments and invents designs based on classical Indian architectural elements: a flourish from a jali lattice window, for example, or a pattern from a floor tile. ‘‘Citizens have long had an attitude of ‘let go.’ We’ve become very dependent on the government helping everything,’’ she said. ‘‘But I felt it was people like me who have to improve things.’’ Behind her, half a dozen printers stood working at their padded tables, positioning brass blocks above silk stretched taut and then bringing their fists down with an authoritative thump.

Ayush and Geetanjali Kasliwal are also hoping to ignite an entrepreneurial spark with their company, Ayush Kasliwal Furniture Design. The husband-and-wife design team commissions pieces that put more than 1,000 artisans throughout Rajasthan to work. At their shop, Anantaya, Ayush showed me one such design, a wrapped-wire coffee table made in a remote village once known for its iron bird cages. ‘‘Being a wire worker is no longer a sustainable livelihood,’’ he explained. ‘‘Bird cages are not really in much demand anymore.’’ Ayush gave his drawings to the ironworkers with no constraints on their use; he ordered some products for his shop but also encouraged them to make and sell the items directly for their own profit. ‘‘When there is a potential skill base of hundreds of craftsmen, and at the same time it is impossible for us to support them all, why not? Very often that is all these communities need — a little impetus.’’

Later, I went with Singh to visit Anokhi’s central workshop, set among blooming frangipani and jacaranda trees. ‘‘Advertising makes people think that having Nescafé and light skin and high-rises and wearing short skirts are signs of being modern,’’ Singh said. ‘‘But in a society like ours, culture is an integral part of development.’’ Glancing anxiously at her watch, she shepherded me to a spot near the main exit so I could witness firsthand the moment that still elated her, after all these years: the daily exodus of workers going back to their lives. Sure enough, at 6 o’clock a bell tolled and almost instantaneously a pixelated, shimmering stream of women in bright saris burst forth, chattering and gleeful, accompanied by a chorus of tinkling ankle bracelets. ‘‘This is it — look at this!’’ Singh exclaimed as they disappeared down the lane on foot, scooter and motorbike. ‘‘They’re how they are, and how they were,’’ she murmured appreciatively. Within five minutes, they were gone, nothing but gauzy dust in their wake.

Essentials Jaipur, India

GETTING AROUND It’s best to hire a car and driver; V Care Tours & Travels is one reputable company (011-91-141-400-1853; carhireinrajasthan.com; about $22 per day). You can also schedule a heritage walking tour with Jaipur Virasat Foundation (by appointment only; 011-91-141-222-2140; $4 per person).

HOTELS Nana Ki Haveli Cozy bed-and-breakfast with 15 stylish rooms and delicious home-cooked dinners (an additional $7). Fateh Tiba, Moti Dongri Road; 011-91-141-261-5502; nanakihaveli.com; doubles from $44. Rambagh Palace Seventy-nine luxurious rooms in a fairy-tale Mughal palace, once home to the Maharajah of Jaipur. Bhawani Singh Road; 011-91-141-221-1919; tajhotels.com; doubles from $572. Samode Haveli Ornate 19th-century manor house, managed by the nobles of Samode, with 30 marble-floored rooms. Gangapole; 011-91-141-263-2407; samode.com; doubles from $153.

SHOPS AND MARKETS Anantaya Modern lighting and furniture made by traditional artisans throughout Rajasthan. B-6/A-1, Prithviraj Road, C-Scheme; 011-91-141-236-4863. Anokhi Woodblock-printed clothing and housewares, with a vegetarian cafe next door. (Anokhi’s hand-printing museum, in a 16th-century haveli in nearby Amber, is also worth a visit.) 2nd Floor, KK Square, C-11 Prithviraj Road, C-Scheme; 011-91-141-400-7244; anokhi.com. Bapu Bazaar One of many colorful markets in the old city, just west of Sanganeri Gate, with a good selection of textiles and jootis (pointy-toed leather shoes). The Gem Palace Exquisite jewelry and stones from the eighth-generation jeweler Munnu Kasliwal, whose clients include both Indian and Hollywood royalty. Mirza Ismail Road; 011-91-141-237-4175; gempalacejaipur.com. Ojjas Here you can buy Raj Kanwar’s gorgeous block-printed, hand-loomed silk and cotton saris, shawls and linens. 663 Hanuman Nagar Extension, Khatipura; 011-91-141-224-6916; ojjas.org.

A modern eccentric with an architectural sensibility drawn from ancient Japanese traditions, Terunobu Fujimori designs projects that are exercises in playful experimentation and sophisticated craft.

One of the first things you notice about the Japanese architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori is his voracious appetite. His particular brand of hunger extends not only to food—which he devours swiftly and animatedly, crumbs flying Cookie Monster–style—but also to an ardent intellectual curiosity about the world, especially as it relates to architecture, his all-consuming passion for more than 30 years. A longtime professor at the Institute of Industrial Science at the University of Tokyo, Fujimori came to designing late—he got his first commission at age 44, 19 years ago—but he has since conceived some of Japan’s most startlingly original buildings, on average one per year.

Leading the way to his office at the university (he calls it his “laboratory”), he walks swiftly and steadily, as if propelled on a Segway, his salt-and-pepper hair waving behind him. We sit at a table sipping green tea, and Fujimori thumbs through his sketchbook, discussing the atypical genesis of his career while gobbling tea cookies and sketching almost continuously with a blue pencil. Fujimori grew up in a tiny, rural village two hours south of Nagano, where he helped care for the surrounding forests, as the local villagers have done for more than 400 years. He studied architectural design in college but quickly became disillusioned by the lack of hands-on technical training—he was more interested in building than in design, he realizes now—and moved to Tokyo to pursue a PhD, spending the next 20 years as a scholar and professor of modern Japanese architectural history.

Fujimori basically fell into designing buildings after his native village commissioned him to design a small history museum for a local family with ancient ties to the area. As he pondered what form the building should take, he felt the weight of all of architectural history bearing down on him. “Since I was a famous architectural historian,” he says, “I thought my architecture should be totally unique, dissimilar to any architecture that came before. I figured that if I did something traditionally European or Japanese, everyone would say ‘Oh, it’s because he’s a historian.’ I didn’t want that criticism.” But at the same time, he wanted to stay away from anything too contemporary. “Some of my closest friends, like Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito, were architects who were starting to get famous, and I didn’t want them to laugh at me and say, ‘Oh, you mimic my work.’”

His peers found the building intriguing. “Terunobu Fujimori has thrown a punch of a kind no one has ever seen before at ‘modernism,’” wrote the architect Kengo Kuma. Encouraged, Fujimori decided to continue designing. With no other clients in sight, he built a house for his family in a Tokyo suburb. Inspired by the plant-covered thatched roofs prevalent in Normandy, the Tanpopo (Dandelion) House has strips of volcanic rock affixed to the facade, with flowers and grass blooming in the grooves between them. The thick walls mean that the house is extremely well insulated and energy-efficient, a by-product of the design rather than a direct goal. While Fujimori admits that his buildings tend to be ecologically sensitive and extremely energy-efficient, he is wary of the contemporary conception of green design. “As an architect, I deal with the visual effects. Energy conservation is an engineer’s work. My intention is to visibly and harmoniously connect two worlds—the built world that mankind creates with the nature God created.”

Earlier that day we’d met in Kiyosumi, a town 60 miles north of Tokyo, to visit his most recent project: a 1,080-square-foot concept house he designed for the Tokyo Gas Company Ltd., Japan’s largest natural gas provider. Coal House, as Fujimori calls it, uses exclusively gas-powered appliances and is full of quirky details: Squat, hobbit-scaled doors conceal a bathroom and side entrance (you literally need to duck to enter); the children’s room is accessible only by a steep ladder (“It’s okay,” Fujimori reassures me when I inquire about late-night bathroom runs, “children are like monkeys”); and a tiny tearoom hangs off the second story like a jutting upper lip, echoing the silhouette of his earlier Charred Cedar House from 2007. Both projects are extraordinarily striking, thanks in large part to their exterior siding, charred cedar boards with a crackled, crocodile-like texture—an ancient Japanese technique that seals the wood against rain and rot but is seldom used by contemporary architects. This is in part because it’s labor-intensive—it takes seven minutes to char three boards—and also because the method is considered primitive. “No educated architect would use this material,” says Fujimori with pride, grinning broadly. The effect certainly makes an impression; as we chat in front of the Coal House, a neighbor walks by slowly, swiveling her head, her mouth visibly agape.

Little about the way Fujimori works is conventional. He doesn’t have a firm per se but rather recruits promising graduate students to help him flesh out the details of each project after he’s done all the drawing. He makes his architectural models by hacking tree stumps into abstract, sculptural shapes using a chainsaw. Galleries abroad have offered to buy them, but he refuses. And when he’s completed the final drawings for a project, he invites his clients to his weekend house in Nagano for a little ceremony he’s devised. Sitting in his private Too-High Tea House, perched 20 feet in the air and wavering on two forked tree trunks, he hands them a hand-rendered version of the final plans. “If they don’t like my design, I shake the building!” he says, laughing heartily.

Fujimori hires professionals to do all the structural and electrical work on his buildings but handles many of the interior finish details himself, with a motley group of volunteers that he calls the Jomon Company—so named for the Neolithic period of Japanese history and for the primitive tools they use to give Fujimori’s interiors a warm, roughed-up feel. When the structure is nearly complete, this loose collective of close friends—a painter, a novelist, a book publisher, a sake brewer, a priest—gather to do whatever unusual task Fujimori has set aside for them: planting hundreds of leeks in individual pots atop a gabled roof; weaving a bamboo screen for a copper-plated pottery studio; or cutting irregular chunks of wood with stone-carving tools and embedding them in a tea house’s vaulted ceiling. “Instead of playing golf that weekend, they work,” says Fujimori, hastening to add, “I never pay them. If you pay, it’s labor!”

Fujimori clearly relishes his iconoclast role, even as he receives increasing recognition and respect as a designer: At the 2006 Venice Biennale he exhibited his unconventional architectural models, and in 2007 the Japanese publishing company Toto released a monograph of his work. But increasing fame and more prestigious commissions don’t mean he’ll change his unconventional working methods anytime soon. He’s spent the past several years roaming the globe for new ideas, applying his historian’s mind to collect inspiration from ancient models: mud architecture in Mali, adobe buildings in the American West, and the famous Caves of Lascaux in southwest France. These spare, stripped-down structures remind us that we all share primal instincts that can be aroused and satisfied through design: for shelter, warmth, and community. Fujimori may dismiss sustainability as a side note in his buildings, but his modern interpretation of the Neolithic captures a truth too often lost in our scramble for eco-credibility: Working with nature is sometimes the most radically green approach an architect can take.

My first glimpse of Lake County, California, was a flash of silver through the trees. Clear Lake, the second-largest freshwater lake in California, shimmered and rippled in the sharp afternoon sun. Two hours into my drive north from San Francisco, the familiar sights of Napa — winery-lined roads, faux Italianate tasting rooms, chichi shops — had given way to a more countrified scene. I passed ramshackle trailer parks with names like Holiday Harbor and Starlite Resort, where ‘‘Overniters Are Welcome,’’ and sagging family resorts painted the faded colors of a ’70s postcard.

Lake County, north of Napa Valley and east of Mendocino County, has been in a funk for decades. Until recently, anyone who knew the place associated it with R.V.’s, fishermen (the 63-square-mile lake is filled with bass) and nudists soaking in hot springs. They’re all still here, to be sure. But simmering just below the surface is a new identity: an emerging wine region in the mold of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Which, as it happens, constitutes something of a comeback. In the early 1900s, Lake County had 33 wineries and a solid winemaking reputation. But when Prohibition hit, growers yanked up their vines and replaced them with walnut and pear trees. The county didn’t see grapes again until the ’60s, when a few enterprising farmers planted vineyards to supply the growing number of wineries down valley in Napa and Sonoma.

Today Lake County is one of the fastest-growing wine regions in the state, with more than 8,500 acres of vineyards, 5 distinct appellations and 25 wineries, compared to just 4 in 2002. Sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel all thrive in the region’s volcanic soils, high elevation, hot days and cold nights. Although the bulk of Lake County’s grape crop still goes into Napa- and Sonoma-branded blends (Kendall-Jackson, Hawk Crest and Beringer all use some Lake County fruit), a handful of growers have begun producing their own wines, to wide acclaim — several have received 90 points or more from Robert Parker and have won awards at contests like the New World International Wine Competition. ‘‘For the first time since Prohibition, you’re seeing ‘Lake County’ on bottles,’’ said Matt Hughes, a 34-year-old winemaker and vice chairman of the recently established Lake County Winery Association. ‘‘Lake County is finally beginning to get some respect.’’

Just don’t call it the next Napa. ‘‘I have a lot of respect for the wines coming out of Napa, but it’s become so commercial, like a Disneyland for wine,’’ Hughes said. ‘‘They can do the dog-and-pony show better than anyone. I’d like us to stay the alternative.’’ And that alternative, at least so far, is a place where winemakers are eager to meet visitors, tasting bars are uncrowded and snob-free (‘‘If you say you like ice in your wine,’’ Hughes said, ‘‘they’ll plunk a few cubes into your glass without batting an eye’’), and restaurant meals end with a ‘‘Nice to meet you’’ to your neighboring diners. As Hughes put it, trying out the winery association’s newly minted catchphrase, it’s ‘‘wine country with altitude,’’ not attitude.

The former logging town of Upper Lake, on the county’s northernmost edge, is so unassuming that you might miss the turnoff for Main Street, wedged inconspicuously between Hi-Way Grocery and Woody’s gas station. The street has a sleepy Wild West feel, with frontier-style buildings, wooden awnings and hand-painted signs advertising sewing notions and the like. At its far end sits the white clapboard Tallman Hotel, the county’s first high-end place to stay. Built in 1896 as a stagecoach stop and hotel, the formerly derelict building was restored two years ago by Bernie and Lynne Butcher, a San Francisco couple who have been coming to the lake since the ’80s. The 17-room hotel and its adjacent Blue Wing Saloon and Cafe — a redwood-clad bistro that serves nouveau comfort food and local wines — have single-handedly revived this former ghost town, drawing weekenders from the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. It’s easy to see why: my room, No. 4, was stylish and comfortable, with tall ceilings, opulent wallpaper and a toile-draped bed. It also had the most elaborate bathroom I’ve seen in a while, the centerpiece being a 19th-century nickel-plated rib-cage shower with 500 spouting jets. Lynne speculated that the Tallman is ‘‘a couple years ahead of its time.’’

I discovered, with something like relief, that there wasn’t much to do in Upper Lake (nor is there reliable cellphone service). I spent a leisurely afternoon combing the town’s dusty antiques shops, sampling local vintages at the Lake County Wine Studio and, at the Butchers’ suggestion, paying a visit to Sheldon Steinberg, a local eccentric who sells antique plumbing fixtures out of an impeccably restored barn adjacent to the hotel. ‘‘Sheldon only talks about three things: restoration, plumbing parts and the L.A. Lakers,’’ Lynne had warned me beforehand, with affection. ‘‘That’s typical up here: interests tend to run very narrow and very deep.’’ Sure enough, Steinberg, who outfitted four of the Tallman’s bathrooms, waxed rhapsodic about ‘‘the finest thing ever made in this country’’ — an $18,000 fired terra-cotta china tub that he called ‘‘the Bugatti of bathtubs’’ — and showed off his collection of treasures that he’d never sell, including a baby blue toilet once installed in the castle of an Austrian baron.

The pace of Lake County is likely to pick up in the coming years, as more and more winemakers bank on the region’s rising status. At Brassfield Estate Winery, about 20 miles southeast of Upper Lake, the winemaker and co-owner Kevin Robinson showed me sketches for a new tasting room and 25 Tuscan-inspired guest villas, then led me through a 75,000-square-foot wine cave, still under construction, that will eventually house a ballroom and 8,000 aging barrels. And at Shannon Ridge Vineyards and Winery, in the mountains above the town of Clearlake Oaks, the owners, Clay and Margarita Shannon, have big plans for their thousand- acre property, including the construction of an on-site winery and a guest ranch. Clay, a longtime vineyard manager, produced his first wine under his own label in 2002. ‘‘I’m a farmer, first of all,’’ he said. ‘‘I got into wine because I thought it was time to diversify my operation, and I wanted to see if I could make wine that was any good.’’ Turns out he could: Wine Business Monthly named Shannon Ridge one of the Top 10 small brands of 2006.

For a glimpse of what else the future holds, I swung by Ceago Vinegarden, Lake County’s most ambitious project to date, on the border between the downtrodden towns of Nice and Lucerne (so named by hopeful developers in the ’20s and ’30s). Jim Fetzer, one of 11 children in the Fetzer wine family, bought the former walnut ranch in 2001 and transformed it into a 163-acre biodynamic farm (an organic approach that farms in tune with the sun, moon and seasons). Ceago blooms with stripes of lavender and rose geranium, fig and pomegranate and kiwi trees, and contains a 54-acre lakefront vineyard that’s accessible by boat, float plane and helicopter. Fetzer, a handsome man in his 50s with light blue eyes and a shock of white hair, met me in the wood-beamed, terra-cotta-tiled tasting room wearing work boots and a Façonnable plaid shirt.

As we wandered the grounds, among century-old olive trees, Fetzer described his plans for turning the property into a 50-room resort and spa — ‘‘America’s first biodynamic resort,’’ as he described it — where guests can prune grapevines, press olive oil, distill lavender and stuff cow horns with manure and silica (a typical biodynamic technique). The county unanimously approved Fetzer’s proposal — the kind of sweeping agreement practically unheard of here — and the Sierra Club has endorsed it as a model for sustainable development. Fetzer’s ultimate vision for Lake County is as a new center of California’s wine country — ‘‘the fun center,’’ he is fond of saying. He is pushing the county to create a network of ferries and water taxis that will crisscross the lake, with terminals in each of the eight major lakeside towns.

Fetzer’s enthusiasm for Lake County and his own personal investment — $12 million so far — have made him something of a local celebrity, at least judging by all the handshakes he received when we met later that night for dinner at the Blue Wing Saloon. Over mushroom ravioli, braised short ribs and a bottle of 2005 Ceago Clear Lake Cabernet Sauvignon, we caught up on the latest gossip with a pair of locals at the next table. After speculation about whether Lake County really would be, as popular legend has it, the best place in California to be in the event of a nuclear explosion, the conversation turned to the noticeable change in the kind of folks who’ve come to live in the area. ‘‘You meet some incredible people up here, especially of late, that you’d never expect to meet in Lake County, that’s for sure,’’ said our neighbor, a blues musician. We all agreed that no one, not even those pioneers who stand to benefit most from Lake County’s development, wanted things to change too fast. I was reminded of something Lynne Butcher had told me the previous day when I asked her what her hopes for the county were. Without hesitation she’d said, ‘‘To remain as real as possible as long as possible.’’

Essentials Lake County, Calif.

HOTEL Tallman Hotel 9550 Main Street, Upper Lake; (707) 275-2244; tallmanhotel.com; doubles from $149.

RESTAURANTS Blue Wing Saloon and Café California comfort food and wines from within a 30-mile radius. 9520 Main Street, Upper Lake; (707) 275-2233; entrees $12 to $24. Saw Shop Gallery Bistro Great food, giant portions, local art for sale. 3825 Main Street, Kelseyville; (707) 278-0129; entrees $18 to $30. Studebakers Coffeehouse and Deli Homey spot with gourmet sandwiches and lattes. 3990 Main Street, Kelseyville; (707) 279-8871.

WINERIES Pick up a free winery and tasting-room map from the Lake County Visitor Information Center (6110 East Highway 20, Lucerne; 707-274-5652; lakecounty.com). Brassfield Estate Winery Tasting room open to the public; tours by appointment. 10915 High Valley Road, Clearlake Oaks; (707) 998-1895; brassfieldestate.com. Ceago Vinegarden Tasting room open to the public; tours by appointment. 5115 East Highway 20, Nice; (707) 274-1462; ceago.com. Lake County Wine Studio Tasting room open to the public; no tours. 9505 Main Street, Upper Lake; (707) 275-8030. Shannon Ridge Vineyards and Winery Tasting room open to the public; tours by appointment. 12599 East Highway 20, Clearlake Oaks; (707) 998-9656; shannonridge.com. Steele Wines Tasting room open to the public; tours by appointment. 4350 Thomas Drive, Kelseyville; (707) 279-9475; steelewines.com. Wildhurst Vineyards Tasting room open to the public; no tours. 3855 Main Street, Kelseyville; (707) 279-4302; wildhurst.com.

“People always tell me, ‘Finally I feel like I’m in Australia,’ even if they’ve been in the country for weeks,” Craig Wickham said as we barreled down a red dirt road on Kangaroo Island. Wickham is tall and graceful, with tan skin and a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. He grew up on a farm on the island’s north coast and now owns the Exceptional Kangaroo Island touring company, which has been taking travelers around this island, 10 miles off the coast of southern Australia, for nearly 20 years. Beyond the dusty windshield of our Land Cruiser scrolled great arcades of silvery gum trees, tossing dappled sunlight onto the road. Every once in a while the greenery dropped away, revealing the island’s famous limestone cliffs and aquamarine water, bright flashes of color amid sedate browns and greens. “K. I. encapsulates everything people were hoping to find here in Australia,” Wickham said. “You can have a lot of people lost in the landscape and you never feel that the land is crowded.”

In many ways, Kangaroo Island does epitomize the entire continent. Only 1,700 square miles, it has most everything visitors to rural Australia dream about: hills freckled with sheep and cattle, air that smells of eucalyptus, trees clung to by the occasional koala. Secluded coves and fawn-colored beaches stud an otherwise rough and rocky coast. All the Australian mascots are here, from the island’s namesake marsupial to giant goanna lizards. And increasingly, the island also has creature comforts, from cafes serving fresh seafood to top-notch wine producers and a handful of high-end hotels-most notably the $18 million Southern Ocean Lodge, which began welcoming guests in late March to the tune of $1,700 a night.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at the one-room airport in Kingscote, the island’s biggest town (population: 1,200). The block-long main street feels like a frontier town—there’s a hardware store, pharmacy, butcher and hotel all in a row, with awnings over the sidewalks and a big sky overhead. But I didn’t linger; I was determined to make it to the lodge by dusk, when the bounteous wildlife comes out in full force and, as the guy at the rental desk stressed, my car insurance would become void until dawn. “Remember: never give a kangaroo the benefit of the doubt,” he said somewhat cryptically, handing me the keys to a dinky Hyundai.

I crept carefully toward the lodge, eyes peeled for animals, passing through charred patches of forest, reminders of the island’s near-annihilation this past December when a lightning storm sparked 12 fires in a single afternoon. (Eucalyptus trees literally explode in a fire, since their oils are almost pure hydrocarbon, and 20 percent of the island burned before the fires were contained.) I spotted an echidna—picture a short and stocky porcupine—wiggling its way into the brush, and then had to slam on the brakes for several wallabies, which are basically small kangaroos with, apparently, a death wish. (Island joke: What’s the past tense of wallaby? Wassaby.)

Southern Ocean Lodge snuck up on me. On the approach I could barely make out its silhouette: a slim wisp of a building snaking along a ridge, just visible above the dense waves of bright green mallee. Designed by the Adelaide-based architect Max Pritchard to be as environmentally sound as possible, it’s laid out to maximize sunlight, airflow and natural heat. All the water used onsite is filtered rainwater, harvested in an elaborate system of roof gutters. The property’s footprint is only one hectare, or about two and half acres; the hotel’s owners, Hayley and James Baillie, donated the surrounding 102 hectares back to the state in a heritage agreement, precluding any future development.

“We’re like a little satellite village here,” said Hayley, her eyes sparkling, her long blond hair tucked behind her ears. “We generate our own power, treat our own waste, use local products as much as we can. We want to give the impression that we’ve just floated gently down onto the landscape.” I sat with the Baillies in the lodge’s great room, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking two seas: a seemingly endless expanse of eucalyptus to the north and the pounding Southern Ocean to the southeast.

“Nothing but water until Antarctica,” said James, a 41-year-old with tousled hair and a boyish face. James used to run P&O Australian Resorts (later renamed Voyages, known for ultra-high-end properties like Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef) and now manages the couple’s two lodges. Their first, Capella Lodge, opened on Lord Howe Island in 2004; they’ll break ground in Tasmania next year.

Every object in the lodge was handpicked by the Baillies, who share a deep interest in design and a rare talent for co-decorating without killing each other. They commissioned wooden furniture and textiles from South Australian designers, and also showcase work by local artists and craftsmen in the lodge, including paintings in the 21 guest rooms and a hand-hewn limestone wall that curves through the main building, built by a sheep farmer who moonlights as a mason. The palette derives from the environment: blues, grays and whites, with natural woods. Overall the effect is stylish but organic and unfussy, a low-key backdrop to the jaw-dropping views.

Although there’s plenty to keep you occupied at the lodge—Aboriginal-inspired treatments at the spa, extravagant multicourse meals—I was grateful every time I dragged myself away for a suggested outing: seal-watching in the early morning, cocktail hour in a kangaroo habitat, stargazing at night.

One day I headed out to get a sense of the food-and-wine revolution that has taken off here. Sheep farming and wool production remains the top industry—sheep outnumber people 136 to 1—but after a collapse in the market in the early 1990s, many farmers began repurposing their land and diversifying production. Some planted vineyards; others started dairies. And in the process, artisanal production has gone from a sideline project to a big business.

Vineyards like Islander Estate and Bay of Shoals now process their own grapes and employ full-time winemakers. At Bay of Shoals, where rows of grapevines seemed to spill over the hills and into the ocean, I talked to the winemaker Ruth Pledge in the nautical-themed tasting room about the differences between her fruity 2006 and the more herbaceous 2007 sauvignon blanc, as a chorus of chickens clucked in the background.

Not far away, at Island Beehive, where honey is made by the world’s last pure strain of Ligurian bees (they were brought from Italy in the 1880s to protect their genetic integrity), it was a weekly extraction day, and the air was sweet and sultry with the scent of warm honey coaxed from wooden frames by teenage boys in rubber boots. At Island Pure, a veterinarian-turned-cheesemaker named Susan Berlin offered me a platter of sheep’s milk cheeses. “Now, these are what we’d call tasty cheeses,” she said as I speared cubes of creamy kefalotiri and manchego, nodding in agreement: tasty! (Later I learned it’s another word for sharp.) Berlin keeps more than a thousand sweet-faced sheep—she calls them “the girls”—and visitors can watch them get milked by a giant octopus of a machine. Her piercing blue eyes, halo of frizzy hair and bright white jumpsuit make her look like a beautiful mad scientist. In fact, she is: she and her husband are developing a new breed of milking sheep.

As I drove around, it became clear that the island’s growing reputation as a modern land of plenty is well deserved. Within a 40-mile radius of Island Pure are two honey factories; eucalyptus and lavender distilleries; crayfish, oyster and abalone farms; shops specializing in local southern rock lobster and King George whiting; and 28 vineyards, six with tasting rooms. Walk into any of these and you’re likely to be greeted by an infectiously enthusiastic owner. And although the island’s restaurants have yet to catch up with the produce—there are a few memorable fish-and-chip shops, and a sophisticated menu at Sorrento’s in Penneshaw—the dining room at the lodge kept me well fed.

I returned from my epicurean outing eager to see more natural wonders, so I booked a tour with Wickham, the naturalist guide. As we stood in a field among Cape Barren geese, whose squawks sound like pig grunts, he painted a picture of what this place might have looked like millions of years ago, when it was populated by nine-foot kangaroos and wombats the size of rhinoceroses. At Remarkable Rocks, he described how the gigantic rust-colored boulders perched above the ocean had been bored away by wind and sand over time.

Wickham seemed to have an uncanny ability to summon even the most reclusive creatures. At one point, he screeched the vehicle to a halt and pointed up at a barely discernible gray lump high in a eucalyptus tree. “I think we’ve got an answer to the question ‘Can you spot a koala and drive at the same time!’” Pressed for the secret to his wildlife-spotting skills, he offered matter-of-factly: “Well, let’s just say I know what these hills look like without a wallaby in them.”

That night, a dozen guests gathered in the great room of the lodge for cocktail hour, sipping Champagne and comparing notes on our adventures. The sky was a stormy shade of blue, and as we gazed out at the ocean, two dolphins leaped out of the water and traced a perfect half circle in the air. We all gasped in unison.

“Can you picture this place during the winter?” said one guest, a 50-something former advertising executive who now runs a surf-rock record label. “It’s so dramatic!” chimed his platinum-blond wife, who had swaddled herself in one of the angora throws scattered about the room. They live in Adelaide, just a half-hour flight away, and vowed to return in July, when the turbulent winter storms would make for an even grander show.

“Kangaroo!” someone else hollered, and again we all scrambled to the deck. As we stood there silently, peering into the brush, the waves crashing below, we barely noticed that it had begun drizzling. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a keen sense of place: 2,500 miles of water ahead, and all of Australia behind.

TRAVEL ESSENTIALS: Kangaroo Island, Australia

GETTING THERE Regional Express flies between Adelaide and Kingscote (regionalexpress.com.au). Or you can take a 45-minute ferry to Penneshaw from Cape Jervis, a two-hour drive from Adelaide.

HOTELS Hog Bay Hill A new inn with three stylish rooms overlooking Penneshaw Harbor. 011-61-08-8553-1394; hogbayhill.com; doubles from $290. Lifetime Private Retreats Three villas on remote Snellings Beach. 011-61-08-8559-2248; life-time.com.au; villas from $1,400, all inclusive. Southern Ocean Lodge Brand-new architectural stunner with 21 ocean-view rooms on the southwest coast. Hanson Bay; 011-61-02-9918-4355; southernoceanlodge.com.au; doubles from $1,678, all inclusive.

RESTAURANTS Fish Fish and chips and salt-and-pepper prawns, from a former chef at the Ivy in London. Takeout only. North Terrace, Penneshaw; 011-61-08-8553-1177. Marron Cafe at Andermel Marron/Two Wheeler Creek Wines Farm-to-table crayfish dishes, and wine tasting next door. Harriet Road, Central Kangaroo Island; 011-61-08-8559-4128; entrees $6.50 to $11. The Rockpool Cafe Casual spot for lunch near rock caverns and one of the island’s prettiest beaches. North Coast Road, Flinders Chase; 011-61-08-8559-2298. Sorrento’s Creative dishes spotlighting local ingredients, with a view of the sea. 49 North Terrace, Penneshaw; 011-61-08-8553-1028; entrees $11 to $25.

ACTIVITIES Plot a food-and-wine driving route of the island at goodfoodkangarooisland.com. Bay of Shoals Winery Try the sauvignon blanc. Bay of Shoals, near Kingscote; 011-61-08-8553-0289. Emu Ridge Eucalyptus/False Cape Cellar Door Wander through the eucalyptus distillery and taste False Cape’s cabernet blends. Willsons Road, MacGillivray; 011-61-08-8553-8228. Exceptional Kangaroo Island Top local outfitter for private and group nature and wildlife tours. 011-61-08-8553-9119; exceptionalkangarooisland.com. Island Beehive Don’t miss the honeycomb ice cream. 1 Acacia Drive, Kingscote; 011-61-08-8553-0080. Island Pure Visit this dairy after 3 p.m. to watch them milk the sheep. Gum Creek Road, Cygnet River; 011-61-08-8553-9110.