Concrete

A palette of stone, concrete, and greenery greets guests at the home’s front entrance.

Pros: Concrete countertops are durable, resistant to heat, and can be less expensive than natural stone, especially when completed as a DIY project. Cons: Concrete must be sealed before being used; otherwise, its porous nature means that it will stain very easily.

Light Show: Resolution: 4 pierced a concrete wall edging the exterior stairwell with acrylic cylinders to make a clever lighting installation. The cylinders transmit sunlight during the day, Tanney explains, and at night the installation becomes a “backlit constellation” triggered by motion sensors.

The bathrooms feature the same polished concrete flooring and poured concrete counters found elsewhere in the home. A honed granite recessed shower provides a visual counterpoint to the sea of white and steel.

A minimalist approach to design can make spaces feel thoughtful, bright, and more spacious than they really are—qualities that are paramount to a recent project in Poznań by Polish architecture firm mode:lina. The architects employed several tricks to make the home feel more spacious. Among them, mirrors were installed to visually enlarge the room, and smart storage spaces—even a recessed dog house—were built directly into the home’s walls. “The less visible [storage is], the better,” they say.

Concrete stairs leading up to a sleeping loft are illuminated with wall sconces.

A spacious deck was created as part of the addition. A cantilevered concrete bench stretches out to the rear garden and complements the adjacent concrete wall.

Sofia von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo’s reinforced concrete home in Chile stacks rooms for working in a vertical column atop horizontally-oriented spaces for living.

House in Matosinhos is a minimal home located in Matosinhos, Portugal, created by nu.ma. The lot, where the house is inserted, has a non-regular shape, longitudinal, and perpendicular to the street Nossa Senhora da Conceição. It was important to keep the alignment of the house with the existing buildings in order to avoid formal irregularities within the street development. The interior spatial distribution is separated by function and by floors. Due to the longitudinal nature of the lot, the architects proposed an internal yard at the center of the home to allow for natural light to enter the dining/living room and kitchen.

Board-formed concrete planters hold species fitting for the Pacific Northwest, including conifers and moss.

A mesh steel bridge sits above a cast concrete outdoor canopy on the patio. Concrete floors are polished on the inside, and kept rough on the outside. A pine door leading to a lower level bedroom adds warmth.

Casteñada explains, “Everything starts with an interview that I personally conduct with the owner in order to understand his lifestyle and expectations. The final result needs to satisfy the owner’s lifestyle, dreams and expectations, as well as my firm’s vision and design concepts.”

The Coleman Bar Stool is a sophisticated design that blends mixed materials, color, and geometry to create a distinctive seating option for a kitchen bar. This stool is comprised of a sculptural powder-coated steel base that is met with a hand-cast concrete seat. Shown in Aspen Green.

For the desktop itself, there's the Merge Concrete Desk Set (from $48 to $178 for the entire set). Made from stainless steel and concrete, these coloful designs unite function with a fun take on form.

The lower level has a reinforced concrete frame. The timber and concrete surfaces are left exposed throughout the home. Tolomeo lights from Artemide hang above one of the beds.

Strata Bench for Landscape Forms It's hard to believe this sleek bench was fashioned from concrete. But according to designer Jess Sorel, a proprietary material blend and new molding technique gave him the freedom to play with the material. "I wanted to take the perceptions about what [concrete] should be and counter that," he said. "I wanted to create something with a visual edge and have it float like a cantilever. How do we push concrete so it's not a brutalist chunk of material, but instead something elegant?"

Nakada works from an Alvar Aalto table in the living and dining area, adjacent to the kitchen. He saved on some elements, such as the plywood cabinetry, and splurged on others, such as the Finn Juhl chairs and Vilhelm Lauritzen lamp. A skylight beneath the angled roof allows in a sliver of constantly changing light.

Architect Lukáš Kordík gave his own 516-square-foot flat in Bratislava a modern makeover. For just a little more than $23,000, he transformed his home from a thicket of small rooms into a continuous, light-filled abode. Busting through a few walls took up much of the scant budget, but Kordík—who works for the Bratislava firm Gut Gut—also managed to redo the electrical, pipes, sewage, and heating while imbuing the place with a hip, old-meets-new vibe.

In the bedroom, walls painted with benjaminmoore.com Aura matte paint complement the insulated concrete panels that clad the exterior walls. The floors are walnut, and sealed with Osmo Polyx-Oil, a finish made with sunflower, soybean, and thistle oil.