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Nestled amongst the classic cornish cottages, Guthens modernity shows itself. Over time the larch cladding will silver to blend in with its surroundings.

Sometimes all it takes is a little luck. For a young married couple, it came in the form of this rare find: a 19th-century, three-story, single-family home in the heart of Paris. The building was a charmer with good bones, but was in need of some serious care. In a vibrant retrofit by architect Pierre-Louis Gerlier that includes structural reinforcements, the reimagined design is set off with a new floor plan. The lower level now serves as a space for the couple’s children, with the public areas—including an open-plan living/dining room and kitchen—on the floor above. Upstairs, the attic has been transformed into a very large primary bedroom with a green-and-white bathroom suite. The living room (pictured) showcases the firm’s bespoke carpentry work with a beautiful, mossy-green built-in bookcase that frames a new fireplace, and a staircase surrounded by arched doorways that hold hidden storage. “We created visual breakthroughs in order to connect the different spaces,” says Gerlier. “The rounded arches are there to help magnify these moments.”

Designed by Jagoda, the door swings open to fit in front of a bookshelf.

From the mezzanine of his 450-square-foot apartment at La Esquina, an eight-unit live/work building in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood, designer, artist, and Woodbury University professor Patrick Shields chats with fellow professor Hector Perez, who spearheaded the project.

Every room is flooded with natural light and decorated with objets and artwork that are meaningful to Josephine. In the hallway, she swapped a generic dome light fixture for a lemon-yellow pendant.

"I love objects,

In the New York loft that he shares with two friends, industrial designer Joshua Skirtich covered one wall of his 8-by-11 bedroom/ design studio with a pegboard for organizing his tools. A plywood desk runs the length of the room, accommodating Joshua’s 3D-printing equipment at one end and clothing drawers at the other.

Joshua rigged a hanging closet for $45, using a kayak holder and PVC pipe. The system went through a couple of iterations, and there is a "hole graveyard" on the ceiling, he says, along with a stray pulley left over from an earlier version. "I like seeing the progress," says Joshua, who streamlined his wardrobe so it would fit in his new closet.

A playful twist on the concept of a pitched roof, the Just K house designed by AMUNT in Tubingen, Germany, features a monochromatic, blue-gray facade with strikingly skewed geometric forms. An exterior staircase leads to a separate entrance at the rear of the building, allowing the structure to be used as two separate units.

Completed in 2008, the rectilinear home features a roofline with a dramatic parabolic curve that creates two bulbous volumes inside the home, one of which houses a curved skylit shower.

The space below the stairs in this revamped Brooklyn brownstone was turned into a cheerful play area for the clients' two boys. "We built an egg shaped 'nook' underneath the staircase, and filled it with soft ‘pebble’ pillows," adds architect Frederick Tang.

Londoners Nadine and Juls, who started revamping their first house just before the pandemic, share their tips on planning, budgeting, and DIY.

Inspired by the Sydney Opera House, architects Andrew Maynard and Mark Austin paid careful attention to the extension’s “fifth elevation"—the way it’s seen from the sky. Its tiny houses, clustered at the southern end of the property, are clad in white steel panels and western red cedar shingles, contrasting materials that emphasize their geometric forms.