Modern Farmhouses

Rendely, who is also a product designer, prides herself on the way the house sits in the landscape like an object, as The Farm was her attempt to create architecture as sculpture. The residents are happy they have their rural retreat with a barn-inspired profile. "This is much more interesting than if it were white and flat," they said when it was finished. Don't miss a word of Dwell! Download our FREE app from iTunes, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!

Montrealers Yves Bériault and Diane Decoste worked with the Montreal firm YH2 to update their 1,690-square-foot vacation home in Havre-Aux-Maisons, in Canada's Magdalen Islands, into a modern retreat. The renovation work revealed that the house, first built in 1915 as a one-room schoolhouse, had a spectacular arched open space hidden above a false ceiling. Photo by Matthew Monteith.

The two structures are in constant dialogue. Not only are their forms in sympathy, but as they're set at right angles to one another, they are rarely out of view.

Before the Moumings built their house, they camped out on their six acres while preparing the land for farming, planting grass and clover in place of soybean stubble. As the house arose from its foundation, soil-fixing plants grew from seed. Now the couple can focus on growing food.

The long gangplank of a deck runs right out into the fields, a fact that Treanor relishes.

The new home’s porches glow like lanterns at night.