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The eponymous founder and principal of Michael K. Chen Architecture resuscitated a four-story, 3,600-square-foot home in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood that was built in 1895 and had been abandoned for 20 years. Its newest owners—a tech investor and an art teacher at a public school—were inspired by the playful color palette that was still apparent underneath the building’s decay. "We had epic color palette meetings, looking at deck after deck for paint colors that spoke to us or provoked a particular sensation,” says Chen. “You don’t look at the color, you inhabit it.”

Ben Allen renovated this old Victorian in London using a rainbow of colored concrete. One of the new bathrooms is cast in mossy green with an arch motif that appears throughout the home.

Kenter Powder Room

The use of green mosaic tiles in the bathroom is a "polite homage" to the balcony's original green mosaic floor tiles.

In the newly expanded bathroom, large panel tiles, custom cabinetry and a polished cement sink by Mallorcan company Huguet – a favorite of Aretio’s – exude a joyful contemporary Mediterranean feel.

There’s more concealed storage in the bathroom, this time clad in wooden tile so it blends in with the wall treatment. The flooring is terrazzo tile.

For a bathroom in the new addition, the architects utilized the former addition's rocky foundation, complemented by zellige tile.

The grey tones on the wall are separated by a dark red smalto stripe. The faucet is from Officina Nicolazzi and the lights are Tooy.

Vince and Adrienne Murphy’s rural retreat is clad in gray shingles and gray-stained pine. “They wanted the cottage to meld into the woods and be visually quiet,” says architect Kelly Doran, who worked with Portico Timber Frames to build the 2,500-square-foot home.

Rear Elevation

Organic style backyard designed by Yardzen

Family room fireplace