Favorites

Vestaboard has a grid of 132 characters, or “bits,” containing rotating flaps that display user-generated content. The board can be controlled through the Vestaboard app to show anything from stock updates to football scores.

In the living room, CH22 Wishbone chairs by Hans Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn and a vintage steamer lounge flank a custom marble coffee table. The Horse Fair, by Dutch painter Willem Carel Nakken, rests on the fireplace, and antique grain shovels lean nearby.

Before: When Tiffany Jen closed on her 2049-square-foot house in the Catskills in 2019, “the whole house was in really rough shape, but it had potential,” says Tiffany. “The first thing I noticed when I approached the house was how the paint on the exterior was down to its raw wood, and some of the wood around the deck was moldy.”

As with the kitchen island bench and the cabinetry for the media unit, the bathroom vanity was custom designed by Studio Jackson Scott and built on-site using Australian Blackbutt.

The clients for an existing home in Seattle approached Best Practice Architecture with a need to make space for an aging family member, but the home on-site was already filled to the brim. The firm's answer was to expand the existing detached garage into a gracious and airy living suite. The architects worked with the natural, six-foot slope of the site and built the Granny Pad into the hill to gain the needed interior height. The volume on the right is the original garage footprint, which now houses a kitchen and sitting room. The added volume on the left hosts the bedroom, as well as a bathroom beneath the loft space.

Nestled within a forest clearing near the Argentinian city of Córdoba, this 2,153-square-foot house named "La Negrita" is designed to exist in harmony with nature. Designed by Córdoba–based Morini Arquitectos, the house first reveals itself as a black corrugated wall in the middle of the woodlands. "The house is totally introverted [and] mysterious towards the street and extroverted towards the interior," says Morini.

Completed in May 2018, the Crossfield Street House is the residence of architect Jonathan Pile, his wife Katherine, and their five-year-old son.

Set on a four-acre, moderately sloped, rocky site by the lake, the Kawagama Boathouse minimizes its site impact with small-diameter pier foundations and a natural material palette that blends the building into the surrounding forest.

Unsurprisingly, the home comes complete with a restaurant-grade kitchen. In addition to a full range of appliances, the space features wooden doors from a Spanish monastery and an expansive picture window along one wall.

Built on a tight budget of $120,000, a retirement home in the mountains delivers unexpected contemporary design to a rural township.

The black roof and siding is all galvanized sheet metal painted black.

Five tiny glass cabins on Sweden’s Henriksholm Island allow travelers to unplug from the noise of their technology-driven lifestyles. The “72 Hour Cabins” are Norwegian spruce structures that offer peace and quiet with minimally furnished yet cozy interiors.

Watch the Northern Lights from the comfort of your warm bed at Panorama Glass Lodge Iceland. Designed by the Estonian company ÖÖD Homes, the two 200-square-foot prefab cabins are thoughtfully made for small-space living. Each has a bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen.

A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.

The Majamaja Cabin by Littow Architectes was constructed on-site from prefab wood panels and without the use of heavy machinery. The self-contained unit makes for a perfect eco-retreat, especially when positioned at water’s edge in Finland.

The rear of the garage and studio is fitted with a slatted screen, which creates unique shadows on the stairwell and inside the unit. The outdoor room also benefits from views of the lake and is anchored by a two-sided, white brick fireplace.

Designed by Marco Casagrande, this floating sauna was a gift for the Rosendal community, a village at the end of the majestic Hardangerfjord in Norway.