exterior

This corner house on Harrison Street in Princeton, New Jersey, seemed to sprout a green shell overnight. Residents David and Rachel Mostafavi didn’t mind that their unconventional suburban renovation took neighbors by surprise. The new exterior suits the couple and their children, Violet and Ellis, just fine.

dSPACE Studio designed 2,200-square-foot weekend house in Beverly Shores, just steps from Lake Michigan. Located within the Indiana Dunes State Park, the house is perched atop a large dune on site.

The family home that residents Tyler Lepore, Lisa Giroday, builders Hanson Land & Sea, and September Architecture devised in the Sunshine Coast region of British Columbia, Canada, is wrapped with cedar and brick, tying to its wooded surround, which is only a four-minute walk to the ocean. "The house feels like it's part of the setting,

Like phase one, phase two will have a wood-clad foyer and dining area that will act as an extension.

DJ Adam Cooper, educator Brianna Swan, and their dog, Chu Chu, live in the 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on the ground level of a renovated back house in L.A.’s El Sereno neighborhood.

The expansion includes a larger kitchen, a new master bedroom and family room, and two new decks. The cedar shingles on the exterior nod to the original structure.

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Tiles surrounding the pool are from Eco Outdoor.

The journey through the dark tunnel to the new, light-filled addition is both a texturally interesting and atmospheric experience, where the contrast between old and new, dark and light, can be felt.

A new addition to Sea Ranch’s enclave of utopian homes, this structure (and the separate guesthouse seen here) clad in rough concrete and Cor-ten steel seamlessly blends in with its half-a-century-old California neighbors. Designed by the dean of the Woodbury School of Architecture and the head of the University of Oregon’s architecture department, its spaces flow into one another underneath an angled plywood ceiling and illuminate built-in furniture crafted from vertical-grain Douglas fir.

Large, dramatic openings bring transparency and contrast to the 10-inch-thick concrete facade, framing perspectival views of the landscape.

Sævik compares her house to a contemplative hideout. “It’s very quiet,” she says. “You can concentrate and let thoughts fly.” Her favorite summer pastimes include reading, painting, drawing, yoga, and “just sitting and feeling the forest,” she says.

A modern, barn-style house in Byron Bay, Australia.

"When we started out, Casey wasn’t married and wasn’t dating anyone," says architect Arthur Furman. "So the original project brief was less about bedrooms and bathrooms, and more about the character of the home. Specifically, the shape. Casey had an image in his mind of a house he had photographed early in his career in a wooded area of Maine. The house was a basic shape—as one would draw as a child—just a box with a gabled roof." The home's simple gabled shape is emphasized by the use of burnished stucco on all sides.

A collage of brightly colored, geometric volumes comprise the Ettore Sottsass–designed residence of Lesley Bailey and Adrian Olabuenaga, proprietors of jewelry and accessories company ACME Studio. Completed in 1997, this home is one of few private commissions designed by the Italian architect, who passed away in 2007.