Farmhouse

"Like the old farmhouses and barns of the Champlain Valley, the Foote Farm House has a clearly ordered wood frame on a sturdy foundation, an exterior skin made of local materials, an economy of form with tried-and-true proportions, a central fire place, and a common-sense relationship to the sun and the weather." - Architect John McLeod

"It only cost about $48,000 to build, which was incredibly cheap," says Turner of the Stealth Barn. "We got the Timber Frame Company to supply the shell, then we clad it and fitted out the interior and windows ourselves. The idea was to take the archetypal black tar-painted agricultural building and make an almost childlike icon of that."

"Architecture exists through states of contrast; the building as a bridge between a wooded forest and a field, a strong roof line against a backdrop of trees or mountains. In these states of contrast we truly start to see where we live." -Architect Steve Kredell

BLAIR NICHE PROJECT At just $167 per square foot, this high-design, low-cost barn in rural Wisconsin is an American idyll.

On an 18th-century farmstead in rural Sweden, two Copenhagen designers handcraft a summerhouse that seamlessly melds the modern and the traditional.

The new custom kitchen is situated in the original structure. The window is a new commercial unit with an operable frameless center pane and was set so that the countertop could tuck right underneath it to create a 1/4-inch shadow line.

A glass-lined shower with a Hudson Reed showerhead adds a modern touch to the second-floor bathroom. A pane of privacy glass lets natural light enter the room.

The second-floor office is housed inside a rounded rectangle of concrete that the architect inserted on top of the old farmhouse.