Favorites

The Ancient Stone Mosaics collection recalls classic designs from centuries past.

On the main floor, the kitchen islandis like Zulaikha’s own version of a Donald Judd sculpture: minimal, freestanding, and geometric.

Lautner designed the home around multiple native trees, allowing the space to feel firmly grounded in nature. The organic features contrast with carefully integrated uses of stone, glass, and copper.

Even in cold weather, they open the sliding doors to let the fresh air in.

At street level, the wooden garage door opens its toothed maw.

The ultimate luxury: a hot bath in the clawfoot tub, with the fiberglass door open wide to the woods.

The door was an extremely interesting element, from the long vertical slats to the metal door handle that felt just right for the silent procession into the heart of the building.

Inside a Rolling Hut by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects, a metal fireplace keeps the compact interior of the chalet cozy.

The coffee table is from Baxter & Liebchen and the custom felt rug is by Karkula; built-in daybeds by woodworker Rick Bradbury feature cushions by Chelsea Workroom upholstered in vintage Maharam fabric and leather.

Metals broker S. J. Sherbanuk (left) and designer James Campbell (right) created a new home in Collingwood, Ontario, with old scrap. "Repurpose, refurbish, recycle" was the guiding principle for the project. The modern, metal fireplace becomes a sculptural feature of an outdoor deck.

Blogger and stylist Annaleena Leino Karlsson has designed her 1950s farmhouse to have a mostly white interior. Her workspace is next to a rustic brick and stucco fireplace, which is adorned with cacti and decorative objects.

For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”

Will Gamble Architects revives a crumbling, 17th-century structure with a svelte addition of steel, brick, and glass.

The architect's selected starkly different dark and light hues to echo their contrast of new and old.

The front door opens in to a sunlit living area with a Spanish-style kiva fireplace in one corner. A wall of windows wrap around another corner.

The voluminous roof pitch above the dining table defines a "room within a room" in the open-plan space. The pendant lamp above the table is an original glass Holophane lampshade found in Hastings Antique Shop, a salvage antiques shop in Hastings. The wiring has been updated to meet current safety standards, and the yellow cable is from Industville.

To build the outdoor hearth, the couple started with a cinder-block base and then poured concrete into a form for a solid top, after which the brick was added.

The Frankos also tackled three bathroom renovations. The main bathroom was previously dark, cramped, and dingy, but it did feature a clawfoot tub (albeit lopsided and painted a startling red). After taking it down to the studs and fixing some plumbing issues, they added a window to bring in natural light, introduced wood trim, refinished the tub, and laid new floor tiles.