In a chaotic stretch of Brooklyn, architect Nicholas Hunt built a 55-square-foot reprieve from the bustle in his own backyard. The studio, crafted with salvaged fence pickets and cedar planks, is crowned with a Plexiglas skylight.
Located in a historic mining neighborhood, the house is a modern take on the 19th-century cabins that dot the area.
The screen porch serves as an auxiliary dining area and extends past the house to capture views and cross breezes.
Buyers should cast as wide a net as possible in terms of location and amenities.
Constructed on land he had owned for years, this tiny cabin is also totally green.
Architect Jesse Garlick’s rural Washington vacation home references its rugged surroundings. The steel cladding has developed a patina similar to the ochre-red color of bedrock found in the area.
Large gum trees offer a natural barrier for the house. Harkness designed the house's footprint in order to minimize the effect on tree roots. “The retained trees offer a sense of layering and age that new vegetation won’t be able to for a long time,” Harkness says.
Inspired by the small scale of Japanese residences—in particular, Makoto Masuzawa’s 1952 Minimum House—architect Andrew Simpson designed his own economical 538-square-foot home set into a wooded site in Island Bay, a coastal suburb outside Wellington, New Zealand.
Eric Schneider and Michael Chen take in the space-efficient renovation.
In realizing their dream to build a country retreat in upstate New York, Sandy Chilewich and Joe Sultan—proprietors of the textiles firm Chilewich|Sultan—eschewed a mountainous view for an understated wooded plot. At 800 square feet, the flat-roofed home is a modest structure for the expansive 10-acre property.
Native New Yorkers, the Merola family have long held a tradition of spending summers in Rhode Island. When they learned the costs of renovating their existing cottage would significantly outweigh the benefits, they instead opted to build new. The result—a distinctively modernist box structure clad in milled slats of charred, brushed, and oiled cypress manufactured by Delta Millworks—sits nestled within the marshy landscape of Quonochontaug Pond.
