Favorites

The bedroom wing steps out to the pool. Cor-Ten steel encases the doors and windows, and forms the custom cantilevered canopies.

Riffing on local farmhouses, architects Patrick Walker and Elizabeth Demetriades covered the 4,000-square-foot house in rough-sawn red cedar and capped it with a standing-seam galvalume roof.

A view of the Abel House and its classic Sea Ranch design. With sloping rooflines and a naturally aged wood exterior, the minimalist aesthetic is meant to blend with nature.

Herron Horton Architects converted a garage into a place for kids to study and play.

The mirror was replaced with a long window. The buffet moved with the owner from her childhood home. Black Eames chairs surround a generous wood table sourced by Annie Wise.

The 1894 Queen Anne Victorian features an open floor plan that juxtaposes classic original features with cool modern elements—many of which are customized for the home.

“We chose a gray veined marble (Vermont Royal Danby, from ABC Worldwide) for the kitchen counter,” Barker says. “We found bleached walnut floors from Madera to tie the parlor floor together.”

The serene, Japanese-inspired midcentury home features interiors that are fully connected to the outdoors.

The open-plan great room is bright and airy, with a modern feel that nods to the home's midcentury roots.

In the South Bay, San Jose–based BLAINE Architects expanded this Eichler by transforming the old carport into an atrium. A folding glass NanaWall system allows the owners to watch their kids in the playroom from the kitchen.

This single-family residence in Bloomfield, Michigan, known as the Treehaus, embodies the iconic style of midcentury modernism. Thanks to a thoughtful renovation, this rare dwelling has been restored to its original state of refined elegance.

"We installed a lot of ceiling-to-floor glass and connections with the window systems that may have been atypical but so we could include as much glass as possible," says homeowner and architect Matt Loosemore of SUM Design Studio + Architecture. Since the design was not for a client, he says, "We skirted around recommended detailing, but it was for our own use, so we were happy to explore alternatives."

After: The kitchen faces the back garden and benefits from a double height atrium space. Pine has been used for the kitchen flooring and cabinets. Extensive glazing gives the ground floor living spaces a direct visual link with the courtyard and terrace.

The entryway features a Studioilse Bench 443 in walnut with a leather pad by De La Espada.

When Rob and Mary Lubera started pulling threads to uncover the origins of their new home—the lone midcentury house amid rows of Tudor Revivals in suburban Detroit—not even architecture scholars could have anticipated what they would find. Theirs is the last surviving residence by Alexander Girard (1907–1993), a modernist visionary who made his name in textiles but tried his hand at virtually everything, architecture included. The shoji-like laminate screens, seen in the entryway, are characteristic of his Japanese-influenced work.