Farmhouse

Even the family’s old magazines are turned inward on the shelf to preserve the house’s monochrome palette. Playful details, like this little monkey, add visual surprise.

A door leads out from the romantic courtyard, lush with plants. “Although we live in a big city, it doesn’t feel like it,” Kolasiński says. “The neighborhood and the nature are very relaxing and quiet.”

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

All of the beds in the house are playful custom one-off designs by Crasset, including the marionette-themed master bed, which a local carpenter fabricated from oak felled in the surrounding forest. The stone fireplace is original.

Seen from a distance, the farmhouse has a time-honored quality, though it’s still clearly a product of the 21st century.

PROD Architecture + Design created a farmhouse in Penafiel, Portugal to fuse the aesthetic of traditional homes in the region with contemporary, floor-to-ceiling windows that respond to the environment. Made up of four distinct structures, the home takes on the shape of an existing gabled-roof structure on the site. To complement the stone building, the home incorporates a series of muted materials including granite for the base, zinc for the roof, and Scandinavian pinewood for cladding.

The main entrance is on the house’s south side. It leads to a central hall from which all sections of the home are accessible.

The architect chose granite for the house’s base, zinc for its roof, and Scandinavian pinewood for cladding—all materials that complement the nearby gray stone building.

In the existing house, the wood beams were hidden under sheetrock and wallpaper. "I exposed them all, but I didn't let that dictate where the new walls would go," Givone says. "I let the beams fall where they may."

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 client requested a porch, so Givone built one with columns made of anodized aluminum, the same material used in the siding of the addition, and stainless steel cables. "Even though it's a traditional, covered porch, it has very modern materials," he says.

Balanced above the central core, the office offers an ideal perch for work with a west-facing skylight that provides natural illumination for the shared desk space.

Nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, this 200-year-old home inspired one former copywriter to delve into architecture as a living. Inside, renovator and owner Tom Givone mixes vintage and industrial decor. Photo by Mark Mahaney.

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

Though the house is sleekly modern—some visitors unaccustomed to contemporary architecture have said it looks like a spaceship—there are winks to old-time Americana throughout the property.

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

A picnic table in a matching hue to the Stealth Barn rests between the two structures.

Monory’s friends, the Leclercs, join her for an alfresco meal on the patio. They’re seated at a custom-made table on Fermob’s Luxembourg chairs.

"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