20 Modern Living Rooms
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A glowing interior palette of bright pinks and reds is defined by jet-black steel frames, water tanks, and roofs in this Australian weekend home. Organic spacial form harmonizes to cohesive effect with the contrasting elements of black window frames and joinery. Refreshingly, the architect departed from a prevailing school of thought that insists rural dwellings blend sympathetically with the Australian bush. Instead, he imagined his building as a bold insertion. (Or the inside of a whale, ribs and all, according to the architect's friends.) Bold though it may be, the house is also practical, making use of clever solutions for resource use and child safety. Read more about the Judd home here.
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Geometric elements such as square windows and a semicircular lounge frame the ample light coming from a southern greenbelt in this living room. Despite lot and permit limitations, the home is a remarkable ode to modern living in Austin—complete with a special family backstory. Click here to see every room.
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A path of dark stone flooring creates a strong visual line through the open rooms and floating furnishings (such as these Metropolitan chairs by Jeffrey Bernett for B&B Italia). But there's much more to see in this home: Loyal readers will recognize the House of Earth + Light as the cover feature of the premiere issue of Dwell. See it all here.
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Once a warren of small, dark rooms, the main floor now offers a clear sight line from the patio straight through the kitchen, dining room, sitting area, and spare room to the street-facing window. Skylights deliver additional light into the 9.5-foot-wide home. Read more about this iconic San Francisco house that is often (erroneously) cited as the city's smallest.
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Architect Chad Everhart demolished a rotting Depression-era home (evidenced by cardboard-stuffing as insulation) and rebuilt it from the foundation up for just $159,000, land included, using locally-sourced pine and salvaged materials. Learn how he did it in Farmhouse Redux.
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Guitarist Andrew McKenzie built his first home squat in the middle of a commercial apple orchard. Resembling a floating barn on the exterior, the interior is all modern, including McKenzie's choice of "honest" plywood walls over New Zealand's popularly-used GIB (a brand of plasterboard). A high ceiling - viewable as an asymmetrical apex from the outside - aids acoustics and makes the home feel larger than its modest 26x26 footprint. Read more about the McKenzie Residence here.
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The soaring living room of architect Alejandro Sticotti could stand in for a furniture showroom: The architect designed the couch, coffee tables, and stumplike stools, while shelving was impressive enough to be picked up by Design Within Reach for production. But the Sticotti house is also remarkable for presenting a distinctively Argentinean dose of modernity, which stands in contrast to the century-old Tudors surrounding it. View the entire slideshow here.
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The second level of this reinvented factory features an open kitchen and dining room that does double duty as office. But this isn't your typical live/work space. Basic Village brings the entire business operation (factory, office, retail) of its owner, Marco Boglione, under one roof and throws in a bank, bar, supermarket, salon, roof garden, and residence for good measure. See all of "Basic Living."
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When Los Angeles architects Alice Fung and Michael Blatt began building their own home, they became their own ideal clients: Open to adventurous ideas, but still within the mainstream. They were also mindful of the historic Mount Washington neighborhood on which the home is built, avoiding the locale's development trend toward too-high dwellings. A high ceiling in the living room is architecturally stunning, but also serves a neat purpose of better capturing the home's northern-slope light. Modern and livable, Eames chairs are equally at ease with a sod seat on the deck. Take a peek into Domestic Democracy.
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A modern three-story Boston residence features an innovative roofdeck, making use of the area's flat roof style. Inside, this "big room" contains a kitchen, a washer-dryer, and ample work surfaces. Three may be company for the owners (an architect duo and an elder brother), but it didn't take long for a restlessness at living in one's own project to develop. "It’s hard to live with stuff you designed,” John Hong, the younger brother and one-half of Single Speed Design, says. “It’s like having a painting you made hanging over the bed. When you see it every day, you can go nuts thinking about what needs reworking.” There is plenty else to work on: Single Speed Design garnered enough attention with this project to begin new projects, including the world's first home to be made from highway beams and roadbeds. Read more.
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In the living room, Caspar educates his young son Roemer about the finer points of modern design. The red leather Gigi is van den Berg’s racy yet refined swivel armchair. Looking at this chair, it comes as no surprise that the designer drives a Porsche. “It’s from the late ’90s, but it’s already a classic,” says Caspar. “I just love the versatility of this one—you can sit forwards or sideways in it.” The window wall behind is one of a pair at each end helping to bring light in while maintaining the aim of "living behind walls." See the entire Collette Residence here.
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White lighting elements, finishes, furnishings, walls, and moldings create a feeling of modern openness to this traditional floor plan in New York. Architect Stephan Cassell helped the transplanted couple see past the "43 layers of paint" to the modern potential within. “These old buildings always have interesting layouts that work well,” Cassell notes, “and have a certain elegance to them." See the transformation.
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Zahle and Rich’s home has just one bedroom, so they put up a wall (hidden by the bookshelf) and sliding door to create a master bedroom at one end of the glass-walled main room. Thanks to modern insulation technology, “there is almost no difference between outside and inside,” says Zahle. It's a peek inside one home in the incredible urban development project of star architect Bjarke Ingles. Read more.
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The witty echo between skylight and ottoman is one of many clever features of this Poland dwelling. The resident inherited the apartment from his grandmother, and he cobbled her various wooden furnishings into a multipurpose storage and functional unit called the Hardbox. Soft elements contrast with the wooden unit (view it in our slideshow), including sheer curtains that softly conceal shelving and separate spaces.
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Clean white is supercharged with a background-to-floor-to-fore dose of coral. The adventurous decision to paint the floors makes the room. The background to the home's story is even more beguiling, as one urban resident brings Usonian design to a small city space. It works. Read more.
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In Jens Risom's living room, his sofa, rug, table, shelving and fireplace mingle warmly with an Egg chair, the only piece not his own. Unconscious or not, it's an appropriate reflection of a prolific professional career that is still active. Risom was one of the first great midcentury modern designers, and recent work includes a Pucci collaboration. Our interview reveals fascinating insights and history—including Risom's relationships with other leading lights of modern design. Read more.
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Massimo Iosa Ghini's Casa Fluida features an open layout of fluid space inspired by the "fluid city" of Memphis. Ghini, said to be the founder of Bolidism, traces an insightful line from the speed-obsessed movement's influence on Memphis design philosophy to the current culture. Read the entire interview here.
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The open-plan living spaces act like a “giant kitchen” that invites guests to mingle throughout the house. Fresh white light gets the bookend treatment with parallel ruby sofas. You'd never know this home is made from shipping containers—unless you look twice. See more.
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Rocks dug up during construction were saved and incorporated into the poured-concrete floors and walls. Hydronic heating coils in the floor are augmented by a wood stove during the damp winters. One of the home's most innovative features, a sliding wall, opens completely to the outdoors—sometimes, bringing it in. "We get lizards inside and don’t bother to run them out. We’ve had wild turkeys wander in, and a baby squirrel used to sleep with the kids," says the owner. Read more.
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A spare space gives center stage to the oversize Jens Risom conference table in Bob Weinstein’s live/work loft. The table, he says, “supposedly came from the conference room of the Kinney Shoe Corporation.” Previously working and living in three pieces of real estate, the 5,600 square foot loft in Manhattan is a spacious, successful execution of the perennial work/live space. Read more.
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Borrego Springs Eternal
A storied 1980 party house enters a mellower chapter of intimate gatherings filled with canapés, crooners, and cocktails.
Orchard Jam
The McKenzie residence sits within the grid of a commercial apple orchard, its roof and upper parts floating above the trees to echo the surrounding hills.
12 Beautiful Bedrooms
A holding cell for clutter, a landing pad for laundry. Why is the bedroom so often an afterthought?
All Work and All Play
When you're running a company out of your home, you'd better hope you've got the space to keep everything in its place. Luckily, that's not a concern for Bob Weinstein.
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