Favorites

In the living room, Hansen’s convertible Night couch and coffee table join a Black Marble rug by Suki Cheema and Slovenian Bear from Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann series.

Sheridan Coakley, owner of the London-based furnishings purveyor SCP, uses his circa-1970s home as a testing ground for the furnishings he carries in his company’s inventory. In the foreground, a Balzac lounge chair by Matthew Hilton is draped with a Donna Wilson blanket.

Connected by the same room but 20 yards away from the main house, sits the pool or guest house, which has one bedroom and one bathroom. Liebermann built the small round desk shown here, which sits under original porthole skylights.

The $33.5M expansion not only provides 3.4 acres of additional space to the 9.1 acre garden to accommodate its rapid visitor growth, but also—and most importantly—enhance its ability to immerse visitors in traditional Japanese arts and culture. It also provides space for educational programs and events, and a training center to teach the tenets of Japanese gardening in English.

Fields of native grasses connect the main residence, situated at the top of the slope, to the new structures scattered below. A pergola extends from the post-and-beam structure that was maintained during the remodel of the midcentury home.

Ray sits at the central hearth on the north end of the comfortable sunken living area. From this perspective, you can see how the interior spaces flow into one another, passing one half-level up into the breakfast nook and kitchen and out from there onto the overgrown hillside. The various built-in furnishings have all been there since the house's construction.

Cabin at Longbranch | Olson Kundig

Designed by Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, the low structure has a simple rectangular shape and concrete walls that protect a central atrium, with huge sliding windows opening up the interior towards the bucolic meadow landscape.

The sleeping cabin perches on a rocky rise near the Floating House; Meredith imagines these two as a start of a string of buildings that will wrap around the island.

The interiors of many of Mickey Muennig’s houses emphasize natural building materials such as wood, concrete, and stone.

The home’s geometric silhouette echoes the classic typology of the region’s gable roof barns. “We took our inspiration from this vernacular architecture and re-interpreted it with a contemporary twist,” Dworkind says.

Today, as in the 1970s, the central courtyard is an oasis within the city. Along with a pool, the area is also home to a market-centric restaurant. For architect Javier Sanchez of JSa Arquitectura, the transformation from motel to (boutique) hotel began with "urban-archeological work," as his team researched the structure's past lives. Digging through decades' worth of renovations, and, virtually, through Google Images, they found inspiration in the relaxed poolside glamour of the interior courtyard in its heyday—then updated it by losing dated touches like the AstroTurf patio and by streamlining the swimming pool into a modern, glass-edged refuge.