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"The house is so small that the renovation required a lot of attention to get the scale of the details right, light the crown molding,

New streamlined cabinets are painted in Benjamin Moore, ‘Sea Haze,’ with a super functional Caesarstone counter in ‘Organic White.’ For the backsplash, honed Calacatta Bettogli Classic marble was used to spotlight its dramatic veining. “Kirsti loves stone, so that was where we got to play,” says Mattingly.

Two built-in desks are a spot for kids to do homework.

Inside, Kyu Sung’s wife, Jung-Ja Kim, a concert pianist and professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, stands at the Corian-topped kitchen island.

Michele Karpé and her husband, John Andrews, spent years dreaming about building a retreat on their remote Santa Ynez property.

The kitchen organically paves the way to the pantry area through the cabinets.

In the bathroom, the vanity and sink are by Duravit.

According to Samuel, “The family room was stripped down to its barest form in order to take it back to its midcentury roots, while simultaneously propelling it forward to the current century.” The Rivera Sofa, from the Southern California-based Croft House, was chosen for its good looks from front and back, while the coffee table is Samuel's own design, fabricated by 4th Period Woodshop.

The bright living room features a fireplace, open shelving, and artwork showcasing emergent female voices, which was of particular interest to one of the owners.

A floor lamp nearly eight feet tall anchors the seating area in the living area. Ceilings that are 12 feet tall at the highest point help the room feel expansive. “We needed to find a way to define different areas in a relatively tight space,” Lachapelle says. It’s the clients’ first experience with an open floor plan. “We raised our kids in an old Victorian, and the farmhouse we live in now is chopped up into tiny rooms save for the studio we just added,” the husband says.

Custom cabinetry neatly fills the angled walls and frames the River Full Bed from Oeuf.

Cheng kept the dining room chandelier and the original fireplace, and gutted most everything else, careful to keep changes in the spirit of the home’s quiet character. "It's an unassuming structure with jaw-dropping, 180-degree views once you walk in the door," says the designer.

Now, the family can hang out at the breakfast bar, on Domino Bar Stools from Industry West or at the nearby dining room table, while the cook works. The gold pendant lights are Nuura’s Anoli 1 pendant, sourced from the Finnish Design Shop.

After buying an Echo Park bungalow, the homeowners, who originally intended to renovate the small home, realized the potential of building an entirely new dwelling in place of the existing garage. It offered better views of the neighborhood and the opportunity to design exactly what they wanted.

Villa Engels, the home of the esteemed Belgian modernist Lucien Engels (1928–2016), was falling apart when its second owners bought it in 2013. Yet due to its heritage status, any changes they planned would have to be approved by the provincial preservation office. Engels completed the elongated, cantilevered residence in 1958, the same year he finalized the master plan for Expo ’58, the Brussels World’s Fair that famously featured the Atomium.