The home’s large main bedroom features a minimalist aesthetic and a super streamlined fireplace.
Joshua drew inspiration from the storage cubbies on ships for the shipping container home’s cabinetry.
The designer’s brother, Václav Valda, carved the cabinets for the container house using a milling cutter.
Each unit features a queen-size Nectar mattress, Baltic birch wood flooring, optional LED lighting, and ample storage. Wi-Fi and a single solar-powered battery come stock.
The broad, silver-toned leaves of the yarumo tree, seen on the hillside, are emblematic of Colombia. The door and gray wood finish of the home’s Superboard cladding pick up on its hues.
Amanda Gunawan of OWIU Design turns a cookie-cutter space into an Asian-inflected haven with an industrial edge.
A large sliding door provides privacy.
After architect Andrew Berman renovated a 2,800-square-foot, two-bedroom SoHo loft, designer Justin Charette fitted out the interior with minimalist furnishings and built-ins to complement the landmark building’s industrial and historical features—including a pressed tin ceiling and exposed wood beams. Designed as a pied-à-terre for a bicoastal client, the converted loft retains its high ceilings and tall windows that flood the open-plan interior with natural light while introducing a more streamlined aesthetic that includes a neutral palette of white oak, exposed brick walls painted white, and sleek contemporary furnishings—many of which were sourced from local New York designers and makers.
When OSSO Architecture first began renovating this loft in a Brooklyn paper factory, it hadn’t been touched since the 1980s. Owner Malik Ashiru says the project achieved his goal of “a big, open space where people could come in and not feel cramped.” The formerly constrained spaces in the 1,400-square-foot, two-story apartment have been reconfigured into an open-plan living space with an office on the first floor and a loft guest bedroom above. On the second floor, the primary bedroom and bath open up to a rooftop terrace. Level changes delineate different spaces in the open-plan first floor, which is stylishly furnished with Ashiru’s midcentury furniture and artwork collected from his travels around the world.
An expansive wood deck on the front facade extends the living space and creates an indoor/outdoor experience.
Materials for the interior were chosen to foster a relaxed vacation home atmosphere. Teak floors and pine beams create a warmth and easiness in the main living space, while helping to establish a natural dialogue with the forested landscape.
During frigid winter months, heat from the living room fireplace is strategically routed through the home through the opening and closing of shoji doors. When the fireplace is turned off at the end of the night, upper-zone shoji doors are opened to direct heat to the main bedroom.
On a rustic strip of coastline near Puerto Escondido, Mexico, S-AR designed a beach getaway with an open concrete grid that frames its natural surroundings.
With clean lines and fewer limitations in application, FENIX cohesively wraps around this floating vanity, an elegant solution for bathroom surfacing.
The rear bedroom includes two twin beds that can be converted into a large king.
The new interior also was designed with furry friends in mind.
Skylights and windows bask the warm birchwood interior in natural light.
The 25-foot trailer's reflective shell is made from aerospace quality aluminum.
While much of rural African life revolves around weekly trading gatherings, the economy of individual villages can barely survive. Atelier Masomi hopes to change this with a design that could, if emulated across the region, give communities in an arid landscape short on natural resources a much-needed economic boost and a sense of pride. The architecture firm built a permanent regional market in the village of Dandji with canopies made of cheap and recycled materials that now operates daily instead of weekly. Adapting the regions’s traditional market typology of adobe posts and reed roofs, the design uses compressed earth bricks and metal in a durable, quirky, and visually striking manner. It is also incredibly practical. Colorful, recycled metal disks provide shade usually cast by trees in less severe climates, while arranging them at different levels ensures good ventilation. The compressed earth bricks used for the stalls have similar cooling advantages of the more traditional adobe, but at a fraction of the cost. Bringing this dramatic upgrade to the village infrastructure full circle, the site is centered around an ancestral tree with landscaping that encourages newcomers to gather and sit with the local villagers, increasing interaction socially as well as economically.
The floors are all concrete, and the kitchen, which includes a mini fridge and microwave, has blue-gray stone countertops. “We had a stone company in Austin offer to help us with the project,” McKinney says. “Our seed neighbor was so excited as we looked at dozens and dozens of big slabs of stone.”
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