Asymmetrical Homes

Prefab house in Muskö, Sweden

A screened-in porch was a must-have for the residents (they love to sit outside but hate mosquitoes) and influenced the building's asymmetrical shape. "The question became how can we integrate this into the design of a modern house," says architect Staffan Svenson. "Can it be a screen porch without looking like one?" He devised a plan to hang a horizontal louver system from the structure to give the illusion that the powder-coated steel fins hover in place. He used the same material for the guard rail on the second story.

Near the main house, James Turrell’s pyramidal Skyspace structure invites visitors into its dark recess for a chance to view the heavens through a perspective-altering cutout. Most of Murren’s museum-quality art collection is inside the house, including a Robert Rauschenberg piece, a set of Andy Warhol prints, and a hologram by Turrell.

So instead of the clapboard siding or shingles common in the region, the architects of this house in upstate New York devised a rain screen of Atlantic white cedar that floats four-and-a-half inches off the structure. The clever cover allows the house to breathe, drains away moisture, and conceals the “cheap and hideous foam” covering the house’s multilayered insulation sandwich.