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Breakfast corner

Breakfast Nook

Diamond-paned window and seat off the modern kitchen, overlooks the side garden and deck.

Spacious and bright breakfast room off the kitchen

A table top-like breakfast bar designed by Otten is inserted in the wall to divide and connect the spaces.

Breakfast bar and cellar

Alex enjoys a sun-filled breakfast at the built-in dining table and bench, one of many space-saving designs.

Breakfast and Kitchen

Tubular steel Paperclip stools from Kinetics, whose sculptural forms were inspired by their eponymous office accessory, stand next to the kitchen island.

There's a noticeable four-inch gap in between the last two tiers of cabinets where the couple mounted a sliding library ladder in order to easily access every cabinet.

The new kitchen borrowed space and light from the original courtyard. The spirit of the courtyard remains with the buffer between the kitchen and the exterior wall. The cabinets are from Ikea, the countertops are quartzite, and the grill top is from Bertazzoni.

Oak Woodland

“My favorite space in the house is the ground floor,” Policastro says. “Especially in summer when you open the windows, the garden enters into the room, and it becomes a singular space.”

For a family home in the Coghlan neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Policastro used textured, rendered, and exposed concrete; aluminum; and wood to forge a three-story structure.

In Toronto, Canada, architect Anthony Provenzano renovated a home for a client that was inspired by the acquisition of a piece by artist Rikrit Tiravanija. "It was a project that started when the clients acquired the other side of the semi-detached home they lived in," says Provenzano. "A decade passed after an initial ‘connection’ renovation and when the clients purchased an art piece by Rirkrit Tiravanija, we were contacted, as it precipitated a major architectural renovation at the rear of the house and a landscape intervention centered about the aforementioned art piece." The resulting renovation, shown above, was completed with an eye towards clarifying the structure's connection to the garden.

Provenzano says the mullion-less glass corners were sited to be as close to the outside perimeter as possible to provide an crystal-clear viewing experience.

A path created with Stepstone's narrow concrete pavers meanders through the garden past the master bedroom. Photo by Dustin Aksland.