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Two hours north of New York City, an unusual barn emerges from a hill just off a country road. Its black siding and bright-red window frames hint at the imaginative playground inside. This space, with its rope-railed catwalk and indoor tent, is just one element of the multifaceted getaway architecture and design firm BarlisWedlick Architects designed for fund manager Ian Hague.

Agricultural buildings inspire a remote getaway in eastern Canada.

"It only cost about $48,000 to build, which was incredibly cheap," says Turner of the Stealth Barn. "We got the Timber Frame Company to supply the shell, then we clad it and fitted out the interior and windows ourselves. The idea was to take the archetypal black tar-painted agricultural building and make an almost childlike icon of that."

Modern Barns is a 4,300-square-foot dwelling consisting of a series of timber volumes with pitched roofs.

After: The barn’s original framing was kept for its agricultural character. Faulkner Architects applied an exterior envelope of salvaged redwood and added a Cor-Ten steel roof that will patina over time.

One of the building challenges was transportation through the steep and windy roads to the isolated site, which is 0.5km away from Cornwall, one of Connecticut's smallest towns.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.