“The upper floor includes the entry, cloakroom, guest bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, and terrace,” Hammer says. “In contrast to the lower floor and its separated rooms, the living area is composed as an open space with no walls.” Nerd Chairs by David Geckeler for Muuto surround a handcrafted nutwood table in the dining room.

“All interior walls were removed to create four individual rooms on the sixth floor,” Hammer says. The two children and the new baby share a bathroom. And in their bedrooms, storage continues to be key.

“Perhaps the most recurrent request from the client was to create as much storage space as possible, which they desperately lacked in the original apartment,” Hammer says. The kitchen’s medium-density fibreboard cabinets provide plenty of room to keep things tidy. Tom Dixon bar lamps hang over the island.

You may think that a library has to be its own room, but books can be stored and read just about anywhere. Lining a hallway with books turns it into a library that you’ll walk through, and be inspired by, every day. Cabinets below provide extra storage and even a place to sit and read.

A palette of wood, concrete, and painted brick forms a neutral backdrop for Kathryn Tyler’s vintage treasures, including a $30 dining table, $3 poster, and a set of 1950s Carl Jacobs Jason chairs she snagged on eBay for $400. Read more about this frugal furniture collector here.

An office nook and library can participate in the open plan or disappear behind pocket doors.

In 1962, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Arthur Witthoefft won the AIA's highest honor for a home he built in the lush woods of Westchester County. Having fended off a developer's wrecking ball, Todd Goddard and Andrew Mandolene went above and beyond to make this manse mint again.

Alex Gil and Claudia DeSimio created a duplex in an apartment building where they’d been renting for years in Brooklyn, New York, and set to work gutting the interior and adding a new rooftop addition clad in panels of Cor-Ten steel.

Ryan Anderson of RAD Furniture designed the stools as well as the table and benches on the pool deck.

The second bedroom, shared by two young children, offers a private space away from the rest of the home. The owners and architect alike made sure to maintain the apartment’s original features, including the ceiling moldings.

In the flat’s living room, midcentury modern art and furniture harmonize with the rich floor tiles, opulent molded ceilings. and original pine wood doors. Prints by Gordon Matta-Clark line the wall near a 1950s Danish dining table that’s paired with Eames chairs. A painting by Kuuti Lavonen hangs above a pink chair and ottoman by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Their creative confections may ruin our diets, but we’re happy to be their taste testers anytime.

Light streams into the bedroom through walls of floor-to-ceiling glass. The windows are triple-glazed, creating a tight, eco-friendly seal.

In this sleek kitchen renovation in San Francisco, the kitchen backsplash is an easy-to-clean glass backsplash that mimics the glossy finish of the surrounding white cabinets. Painters accomplished the high-gloss finish on the cabinets of a kitchen in San Francisco by applying a coat of paint, polishing it with very high-grit sandpaper, repeating the process for each layer, then topping it with three coats of clear varnish. "It’s like an auto body," says builder Jeff King. "It’s incredibly beautiful." The island provides shelving space and storage as well as a second sink, an is topped with pietra grigio marble.

The architects’ two young children occupy this bright bedroom, furnished with Ikea beds. Another custom lamp illuminates the space.

The challenge of renovating an iconic midcentury house is surely a daunting one for any architect, but apply this formula to a Richard Neutra house, and the responsibility rises exponentially. This was the situation for Los Angeles–based architect Peter Grueneisen, founder and principal of Los Angeles–based Nonzero Architecture, who inherited the task of taking on significant updates to an already-altered Neutra—the 1949 Freedman House in Pacific Palisades, California.

Saved from demolition, stripped of awkward alterations, and faithfully restored, these rehabbed homes prove how timeless midcentury design can be.

The original home was preserved and renovated. In the front bedroom, a small window was replaced with a large painted-steel window seat, a favorite of the residents' grandchildren.

At the opposite end of the studio, Framework Architecture created a partially enclosed sleeping nook that is spacious enough to fit a full-size bed.

The large patio leads to a newly landscaped back garden. An expansive glass wall promotes seamless indoor-outdoor living. Inexpensive brick pavers were chosen for the rear patio; they offer textural contrast with the steel of the door, brick of the rear facade, and pale gray wood of the interior floors.

“A critical aspect of the project was the incorporation of natural light and ventilation within a broad footprint,” Simpson says. Conventionally private areas, like bedrooms and bathrooms, are therefore reinterpreted with more openness in mind. For instance, this bathroom’s skylights mirror those found throughout the rest of the property. The bathtub, basins, and showerhead were all purchased at the Australian retailer Reece.

The renovation revealed a 30-foot-deep well beneath the bedroom, which the team half-jokingly considered turning into a fish tank. Instead, they opted for a simple bedroom with plenty of built-in storage.

Designer Jeff Sand’s Universal Chairs combine his love for classic French café chairs with an appreciation for “the beautiful metal casings on an old Moto Guzzi.” Sand Studios also designed the dining table and pendant lamp.

Provenzano says the mullion-less glass corners were sited to be as close to the outside perimeter as possible to provide an crystal-clear viewing experience.

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

In the living room, spare Scandinavian design takes center stage. Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chairs surround an Essay dining table by Cecilie Manz for Fritz Hansen; a mostly wood palette is enhanced by slate-gray brick around the fireplace. The paper lanterns throughout the home are a mixture of classics by Isamu Noguchi alongside those picked up in Japan and France.

Donut sits on a custom bed made by craftsman Pete Deeble. “Above the bed I hung a vintage Evelyn Ackerman textile discovered on eBay,” says Frank.

Built-ins reduce the need for furniture.

In the dining area, a single glass expanse provides a view to the backyard. "All of our efforts surrounding the glass are to make spaces have no visual barriers between inside and outside," says Provenzano.

A view of the home's rear facade, prior to the renovation and extensive landscaping updates, featured paneled windows and a darker palette.

The home's newly renovated rear facade, which contains the kitchen and dining room, were aligned along the same axis as the backyard pool to create unified, linear sightlines across the property.

At the client’s request the kitchen contains neither upper cabinets (Shino can’t reach them) nor an oven (they only used the old one once—to reheat a pizza). A modular Roche Bobois Mah Jong sofa adds a decorative flourish to the living area while maintaining as low a profile as the traditional Japanese furniture.

Yang Yeo and his girlfriend Ching Ian relax on the back stoop of their renovated and radically updated Singapore shophouse—an archetypal building type in this busy port city. “Shophouses brought back memories of our childhood,” says Yeo.

In the living area of Daniel Rozensztroch’s Paris apartment, an Eames La Chaise and a butterfly chair complement a Moroccan Berber rug.

The beanbag chairs and outdoor sofa and chairs are from West Elm and the Case Study Museum Bench is from Modernica.

Two San Francisco art and travel addicts overhauled a loft—and customized a pair of shipping containers—to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions.