Favorites

Tasked with transforming a 93-square-foot brick boiler room into a guesthouse, architect and metalworker Christi Azevedo flexed her creative muscle. The architect spent a year and a half designing and fabricating nearly everything in the structure save for the original brick walls. "I treated the interior like a custom piece of furniture," she says.

In the tiny sleeping loft is a platform bed with two drawers beneath it. In place of wallpaper, Schönning enlarged a photograph he snapped in Rio de Janeiro. The inset spotlights and a small shelf at the end of the bed offer light and additional storage. Photo by Per Magnus Persson.

Of the seven steps in Michael Pozner’s not-quite-500-square-foot aerie in Greenwich Village, five contain drawers. His small set of table and chairs is from CB2.

“Wonbo had to be able to stand in the sleeping area,” architect Kyu Sung Woo says of his son. “By combining two dimensions—the height of the bed and that of the closet (the top of which forms the bedroom floor)—we made that possible.”

The room’s opposite side holds the companion Breuer nesting tables and an Eames Aluminum Group chair and ottoman.

The homes are painted wood, and include a shaded deck space, plus full insulation and electricity, for a price of about $29,000.

The homes are built on a concrete foundation and are typically constructed in only two days.

This archetypal Swedish building form, shaped like a Monopoly house, serves as an artist’s studio, with a simple plywood interior and massive skylights to let in natural sunlight.

With Lolipop bunk beds from Resource Furniture, the space can comfortably sleep four. Heavy red curtains pull out of the walls to enclose each room for maximum privacy and sound control.

In the living room, there is an iron fireplace by Danish manufacturer Aduro. A futon can be converted into a double bed for additional guests. Two sliding glass doors open onto the terrace. “It is a really peaceful and quite interesting atmosphere,” Laugsch says. “We have a fireplace in the boat to curl up on the couch with a glass wine after a day of sightseeing.”

The new floor plan maximizes social areas and minimizes sleeping spaces through the creation of “micro” bedrooms that fit a single bed. The rooms were sectioned off with full-height, pine plywood joinery — a nod to Shigeru Ban’s Furniture House. Sliding doors reminiscent of Japanese Shoji screens can be drawn closed for intimacy or opened to extend the visual space.

The Element House by MOS Architects stands on pylons, creating the illusion of it hovering over the desert floor. Nine thermal chimneys, one of which can be seen right, channel hot air out from the interior living areas.

The Element House stands on pylons, creating the illusion of it hovering over the desert floor. Nine thermal chimneys, one of which can be seen right, channel hot air out from the interior living areas.

“We did our best to tuck the buildings into the site—the goal was to get up high on a perch. It was a matter of setting that elevation and working back down with the topography.”—Riley Pratt, architectural designer

Designed by Taliesin student Dave Frazee, the Miner's Shelter in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a 45-square-foot dwelling that responds to its harsh desert environment with a special metal cover that keeps it shaded at all times. Copyright Nathan Rist.

Sebastian Heise’s wooden structure, seemingly atilt, overlooks a green valley in Oberwiesenthal, Germany. The two horizontal windows on the side and the front porch give the home its own unique sense of balance.

In a chaotic stretch of Brooklyn, architect Nicholas Hunt built a 55-square-foot reprieve from the bustle in his own backyard. The studio, crafted with salvaged fence pickets and cedar planks, is crowned with a Plexiglas skylight.

The ESCAPE Traveler stands out from other trailers by blending in. Designed to resemble a prairie cabin, its cedar lap siding makes it a strong visual fit for scenic destinations.

The design eschews right angles on the exterior and interior, which was one of the most challenging aspects of the design for Kallesø.