Backyard

After expanding their farmhouse, rural Illinois Daniel Payette and Jessica Merchant called on Converge Architecture to help them design a space that’s “more than just a car-hole.”

In Keith’s eyes, the walls of louvers around the living room help marry the concrete plinth, wood kitchen block, and pool. “It was the most difficult thing formally to resolve, because you have all these pieces and have to figure out how to best connect them,” he says.

A skylight and double-height floor-to-ceiling windows ensure the interior vegetation gets enough sunlight.

This woodsy ’70s residence in Memphis has a massive sunroom, a backyard pool, and lots of indoor vegetation.

"Being in The Longhouse is mellow and calming whatever the weather," says the firm. "The experience of the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts."

The door to the right leads to the garden kitchen where the cooking school sessions are held. It’s housed in a central volume and surrounded by greenery and relaxed dining set-ups.

On the left, stairs over the sauna lead up to an elevated lookout on the right. Beneath it is the bathhouse.

The house is balanced atop a rocky slope. “Not one millimeter of rock was blasted away,” says Rickard, who deferred to the topography in his design.

Trails lead around a pond on the south side of the home.

When it rains, water spilling off the roofs creates reflecting pools.