After: The second bedroom is now a sunroom and TV lounge, and Michelle's favorite space in the home.
After: The front door opens into the living room, so Michelle positioned the sofa so that it creates an entrance corridor. The custom sectional from Croft was one of the designer's hardest purchases since she had never sat on one of the brand's pieces before. "I just really liked it online,
After: By knocking down a wall, they opened up the kitchen to the living room to create one great room, ideal for entertaining.
Architect Michelle Linden, co-owner and principal designer of Atelier Drome, sits in a leather armchair from Mexico City studio
By moving the foot of the stairway away from the front door, Bischoff and his team carved out a transition point from the stoop and sidewalk below, providing a welcome measure of privacy. (Visitors must scale the steps and stand at the door before they can peer in.) The concrete floor tiles were left over from an earlier MADE project. “We didn’t have an equal balance of black and white or even the right sizes,” Bischoff says, “so we made a design moment out of what we had.” Saving on the floor tiles meant that Casale and Crofton could spring for hand-finished wallpaper by Swedish company Sandberg.
This corner of the island reveals the hot-rolled steel cabinets topped with quartzite and wrapped with a walnut breakfast bar.
A walnut backsplash has integrated shelves for display. The counter is limestone.
"In some ways the strongest attributes of the house are probably the outside spaces,” says Court. The original cedar deck was replaced with Kebony decking that wraps around a century-old cherry tree. A pair of Andy rockers from Mamagreen face an ottoman by Kenneth Cobonpue. The accordion doors are a NanaWall SL-60 system that allows the main room of the guesthouse to open completely to the deck.
With a new baby on the way and the soon-to-be grandmother moving in, Seattleites Ilga Paskovskis and Kyle Parmentier asked Best Practice Architecture to expand their detached garage into a 570-square-foot ADU, which they now call the Granny Pad. “We can see the joy it brings Grandma when the baby comes over to visit,” says Kyle. “It’s the best part of her day.”
Assembled in just two weeks, this cedar-wrapped passive house near Woodstock, New York, designed by BriggsKnowles A+D, realized a couple's dream of rural living.
Maria Milans del Bosch’s Catskills home is attuned to the changing seasons. Sunlight pours into the double-height living room, where a Stûv fireplace and radiant floors keep the space warm in winter.
“We pulled apart one volume and staggered it along the buildable area of the property,” says architect Matthew Ahlberg of Portland firm Barrett Made. The home is clad in unfinished cedar, meant to weather over time.
"My goal was to carry on the client’s family legacy by creating a very special place that took inspiration from the landscape,” explains architect Tom Kundig.
The house that architect Renée del Gaudio designed for her family in Boulder uses energy-efficient Loewen windows on the south facade that incorporate triple-paned low-e glass from Cardinal.
Architects Joan Soranno and John Cook of HGA developed five site-specific cabins that tread lightly on the land at Marlboro College in rural Vermont. These deceptively simple structures update the regional vernacular. Every year, Marlboro College hosts the Marlboro Music Festival in which classical musicians join together to hone their craft. These cabins help support the musicians that live, work, and rehearse together.
A street view of the low-slung compound.
Fields of native grasses connect the main residence, situated at the top of the slope, to the new structures scattered below. A pergola extends from the post-and-beam structure that was maintained during the remodel of the midcentury home.
Innauer Matt Architekten designed the house as simple wooden building resting atop a solid, reinforced concrete plinth.
Affordable, adorable, and in many cases, transportable, these tiny homes made a big impact on our readers this year.
Outdoor Decks
A Taiwanese expat couple purchased a 1,352-square-foot apartment near the river in the Taiwan’s New Taipei City, and reached out to interior design firm KC Design Studio to help them turn it into a stylish, modern home. Industrial elements like steel, brick, and exposed concrete harmonize with vintage accents: in the open kitchen, wood-paneled sliding doors conceal dark cabinetry. These combine with a sleek, dark counter and a shiny, bronze-clad island for a luxe effect.
A Kennebunk family needed their forever home, and the old farmhouse and barn that stood on their property wasn't going to cut it. The architects at Caleb Johnson Studio started the process by salvaging everything they could from the old buildings, including the timber roof structure, interior wood cladding, and interior doors. Additionally, the architects also claimed cabinetry and fixtures from a midcentury home that was being torn down in Weston, Massachusetts. By incorporating such materials into the new home's design, they were able to create a modern farmhouse with soul.
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.
The home was positioned diagonally across the site, along a true east-west axis, allowing main living spaces and window walls to face due south.
