The wall beneath the stairs holds hidden storage, including an Enomatic wine dispenser and Sub-Zero refrigerated drawers.

Shibata made the 10-person dining table using $130 sawhorse legs from Maruki Wood Products Company topped with a sheet of birch plywood. A hole in the sliding wall fits over the table, enabling it to be used in both the library and the meeting room. malki.jp A movable wall clad in wainscoting on one side slides along tracks in the dining-room ceiling, dividing the room into a meeting space and a library. The Shiro Simple Modern Pendant lights can be easily removed and reattached after moving the wall. vanilladesign.jp

They purchased a historic duplex and bracketed it with two new houses, similar in form to the originals but wholly modern.

Their tenants include veterinary student Leslie Carter and intern architect Brad Raines.

This revamped Montreal flat includes a rooftop sauna lined with torrified, or dried, cedar. Outfitted with glass paneling and oriented to capture views of Mount Royal, it is the ideal haven for this hardworking homeowner.

Rocks that were unearthed while digging the foundation make up the hardscape in the rear, beyond the open porch. “It’s one of my favorite parts of the house,” says resident Laura Sohn. Sanders Pace Architecture finished the exterior in western red cedar treated with Sikkens Cetol.

The table is situated in front of the house’s rear wall of skyscraper glass. Laminate kitchen cabinets by Ikea are framed in wraparound bluestone; the 48-inch commercial range is by FiveStar.

The bedroom takes up the small second floor of the house.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”

Maja demonstrates another use for the guest bed: a trampoline. Behind her is a wall of storage, an essential attribute in the 1,260-square-foot house. Extreme editing of material possessions also helps.

In the bathroom, plain white tiles line the walls and ceiling. The floors are natural stone and the fixtures are by VOLA. Lassen built the sink himself.

A rear view of the narrow house shows how Chong twisted the house’s volumes to bring daylight into each room.

The bathrooms are lined in luxurious Estremoz marble.

In the living room Daphne the dog keeps company with a Case Study Day Bed from Modernica, a LCM chair by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller, and a painting by the Brooklyn artist Joyce Kim.

A massive white island range is anchored by locally sourced Italian slate floors in black. In this black and white kitchen, cabinets, countertops, and walls are finished in white so as to prevent the space from feeling too dark. To shed even more light, a glass ceiling at the far end of the kitchen presents an open-air feeling.

Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

The clients and design team chose to forego an open floor plan in favor of defined, separated spaces. In this scheme, the vertically oriented spaces act as a cinematic "hard-cut" to their horizontal counterparts. The custom hot rolled steel kitchen, one of these vertical transition spaces, receives light from above through a Velux skylight. A GE Profile Induction cooktop and oven and Miele refrigerator complete the space.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

“In this house, the roof is the only facade—the rest is dissolved beneath it.” —Architect Aljoša Dekleva

At the entry looking upward towards a Velux skylight, a vertical "sleeve" is made of stacked end grain plywood. The theme of vertical and horizontal architectural elements providing different environmental perspectives carries through to the rest of the home. Horizontal forms look out to the lake, while the vertical columns look up the sky.

Building with Cor-Ten steel—weathering steel's nom de plume—is a bit like watching a painting slowly come to life over time. Exposure to the elements adds textured hues of red and orange to the material until it steps into a character completely its own. From the Dwell archive, we bring you nine Cor-Ten steel homes with facades that will continue to shift through shades of ochre, amber, rust, and sienna.

Clean tropical modernism in one of Oppenheim's many domestic designs.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

Clerestory windows in Tyler's design studio provide plenty of light, while built-in bookshelves and flat files offer ample storage.

In keeping with Hayon’s goal of creating a serene and airy home, the master bedroom and sticks to a mostly neutral palette of whites and grays. The bench by the bed is a custom piece designed by Hayon and Klunder and fabricated by their carpenter friend Josep Joffre.

Mexican encaustic tiles with a geometric floral pattern from Mosaicos Terra line the bathroom in Austin’s studio, where a full-height window near the wall-mounted shower provides a view to the expansive outdoor scenery. A vintage kewpie doll sculpture sits atop the custom terrazzo-and-granite counter; the steel mirror is from Artes de México.

All it takes is gentle downward pressure to lower the desk to the floor, bringing the kid-size mattress into position for bedtime.

The Lyons’ younger daughter practices cello in her bedroom, which overlooks the central gallery space.

The owners furnished the living room with a mixture of new and old pieces, including a Hans Wegner lounger and Tuckbox coffee table. A timber-lined hallway leads out from it to the newer parts of the home. Sections of steel-framed double glazing separate and accentuate each “house” while letting in glimpses of sky.

Acoustics were the most challenging aspect of the project. "We met with many recording studios and found that there really is no one way to design recording spaces," Jackson says. "Everything from the proportion and form of the space to the materials and details all effect acoustic performance. We designed the recording spaces based on the ratio of the golden section 1:1.61 and angled walls to eliminate reflections. All of the windows needed to be two layers of glass with different thickness and a minimum two-inch airspace for soundproofing."

Wood salvaged from the original house covers the staircase. "It took a bit of effort to surgically deconstruct the house to save as much material as we could and clean it up for reuse," Jackson says. "I think it’s inspiring for the guests to the Collaboratory to know that the fireplace is in the exact same location, and consists of the original brick, as the original house, so that they can experience a space that’s still evocative of the home in which Memphis Slim lived." ViktorHall Construction carried out the deconstruction.

"I put everything that I've always loved into this house," says Tyler—and that includes white tiles edged with gray grout in the bathroom, a design move previous clients had balked at.

Drawing from Croatia’s rich—and only recently acknowledged—tradition of socialist design, Numen / For Use's Polygon chair is small, comfortable and easy to move.

Architect Jason Jackson recast the Memphis, Tennessee, home of blues musician John Len Chatman into a music collaboratory—a place equipped for career counseling, recording, workshops, and community events.