Indoor outdoor

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

The “lifeguard tower–like” bay window is a bold counterpoint to the original home and offers rewarding ocean views. One of Garcia’s guiding principles is to design “as small a building as practically possible.” This responsible approach was echoed by the owners, who agreed that reusing and rehabilitating the existing house was the best and highest use of the structure. By thoughtfully adding in a way that was minimally impactful to the current structure, the family chose to grow with the home that was already their own.

What this cottage lacks in size is made up for by stunning views of the ocean. The homeowners lounge on a Crate & Barrel sofa underneath a Hausers umbrella.

To allude to the nearby ocean, the architects designed a seaweed patterned for the interior of the garage door (seen here raised). It successfully reads like a leather padded wall and makes “the cube” feel that much more customized.

The living and dining room look out to the central courtyard, promoting indoor/outdoor living. Here, five doors slide into a pocket in the wall to create a nearly 23-foot-wide opening on one side looking into the garden. Another set on the opposite side enhances cross ventilation.

Protected by an overhang, and floating above ground level, this tertiary space is known in traditional homes as the "engawa." To sustain a unified look throughout, the floor and ceiling are clad in ipe wood.

Architectural designer Sebastian Mariscal and project manager Jeff Svitak created a house in Venice, California, for Michael and Tamami Sylvester. Known as Dwell Home Venice for its role as an exemplification of modern architecture, the house is an homage to indoor-outdoor living. Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.

A slatted walkway leads into the new library, which the Gimons have outfitted with a Topissimo rug by Nani Marquina, Grove Garden wallpaper from Osborne & Little’s Tara collection, and a pink Chroma Sassy sliding wall panel by 3form.

The tearoom, reached by breezeways on either side, provides a transition from the main house to the pavilion, which measures 1,800 square feet. “The pavilion has a distinctive Japanese flair to it, like the original house,” says Parco.

Sliding doors by Mountainview unite the garden and interior of a residence in British Columbia. The underside of the deck overhang is covered in Benjamin Moore’s Turmeric paint, a shade also used on the house’s front facade. A Canyon sofa by Bensen joins Fat Fat tables by Patricia Urquiola for B&B Italia in the living room; a cinderblock wall with a stove by Stûv divides the space from the kitchen.

The mirror-top table in the living area is the Vanity table by Stefano Giovannoni for Magis. It’s surrounded by Naoto Fukasawa chairs. “The glass floor emerged as a way to visually interconnect the different spaces. It makes the living room feel twice as tall, and from the inside of the apartment on either floor you can look up and see the sky (very rare in Paris).”

How a highly productive collaboration among a trio of creative Angelenas—and a good dose of Barragán—turned a dark and beleaguered midcentury house into a family home for the ages. The resulting design acquired its own flow, full of colorful narrative, spirited counterpoint, and anecdote. Now, in place of dark, disconnected spaces, outdoor rooms echo luminous indoor ones, and experimental filmmaker Laura Purdy and her family’s eclectic collections of art and personal artifacts share space with flashes of pattern and interior planes of saffron and pink stucco.

The house that Fleetwood Fernandez Architects designed for contractor Mehran Taslimi and his wife, Laila, embraces its surroundings. “They wanted doors that they could just throw open,” designer Hunter Fleetwood says of the retractable wall system from Vitrocsa.