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“The structures create spaces that bridge the outside and inside, so it’s one continuous space,” Thomas says. Terraces act as a path that border the getaway and connect it to the garden lounge and studio. He added the round deck when his architecture partner told him he felt like the scheme needed a circle.

The board-formed concrete retaining wall holds firewood and is also a bench. Beyond, the garden lounge backs up against the studio and a retaining wall. “It’s a study in how little you can do to define a space,” Thomas says.

The kitchen runs under the black block that descends from the ceiling. The countertop is concrete and the cabinet fronts are hardware store shelves mounted on an Ikea base. Dried beach kale branches hang in the corner. The dining table is a piece of plywood painted black atop a base from Hay. Thomas made the bench using wood left over from the forms used to cast the concrete wall boards.

“A conglomeration of boxes around a bit of a pitched roof” is how Mark describes his transformation of the 1920s Los Angeles bungalow. Inverting the traditional layout, he set the private rooms in the front and a large, open living area in the rear.

Floor plan of Rombo III by Taller Aragonés

The master bedroom includes a table by Poliform.

Miguel and Ana sit down to a meal with their son, Rafael, and his wife, Fernanda. Rafael is a designer at his father’s firm and Fernanda oversees communications. The house is part of a compound that includes an office for the design studio and two other residences that Miguel rents out for public events or to people who want to stay “a day, a month, or a year.”

Architect Miguel Ángel Aragonés’s Mexico City home covers nearly 11,000 square feet. Rombo III spans three stories and is named after its sharp geometry. The home has a predominately white color palette—it's swathed in stucco, sand, and cement, with Spanish travertine floors. However, it takes on the hues of its surroundings—be it the gray or blue of the sky, or a hint of green from the lush foliage surrounding the house. With a meditation pond inside, the space is a serene getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Sand and cement walls frame a meditative pond. “I always work with water. It’s my favorite material,” says Miguel. “It’s fresh, it reflects, it’s like creating a complementary architecture to the building.”

Frolic establishes co-ops with homeowners who are interested in reinvesting in their communities by redeveloping their land into higher density housing arrangements.

The design for the home was inspired by the Eames House in Los Angeles, which favored prefabricated construction over proprietary building methods, and used off-the-shelf materials instead of bespoke finishes.

Hem House by Future Firm, a Chicago studio, is a 1,300-square-foot stand-alone in the East Garfield Park neighborhood that sold in summer 2021 at its listing price of $399,000. The design for the home was inspired by the Eames House in Los Angeles, which favored prefabricated construction over proprietary building methods, and used off-the-shelf materials instead of bespoke finishes. More cost savings came by using land that the Cook County Land Bank Authority purchased in 2015.

In winter, when heavy snows blanket the home's angular form, strategically positioned glazing preserves views of the outside while remaining an inconspicuous presence in the landscape.

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The couple found terra cotta breeze block that they stained black and installed so that the pattern was randomized. The builder was a bit scandalized that they wanted to cover the view from the living room, but Tom says, "The view is here all the time and it's nice to go from room to room and discover it, then rediscover it."

The architects did not want "the operating theater" of can lights, so Ernesto designed a custom fixture consisting of a simple steel plate that disguises "cheap can lights," seen here in the upper hallway. "It looks like a $1,500 fixture, but it's like $300," he says.