Inspiration

Floor plan of 4 Sutton Square by AKB Architecture Works

The kitchen and bathrooms were full gut renovations; updating the penthouse required hiding the HVAC, electrical systems, and plumbing behind existing woodwork and re-creating damaged paneling, plus installing new doors and windows, in the historic style.

The living room’s fireplace mantel is from Jamb.

Originally built in the 1880s, the row house of architect Adrienne Brown and her husband, Jonathan Marcus, is among 14 in the ultra-elite New York City enclave formed in 1920 around a shared private garden facing the East River.

Sheathed in black asphalt shingles, the Sea Ranch home created by architect David Ross and artist Mark Dutcher exemplifies values espoused by the 60-year-old community: modesty, aesthetics, simplicity, and respect for the natural environment.

A standard-issue tub is wrapped in wood to blend in with the rest of the architecture.

The home was built from reclaimed teak.

The home took six years to complete, but the accompanying indigo studio came together in around a year.

Mesdag doesn't see the trees as an obstruction of the view, but a feature.

Floor Plan of Panorama House by Andrew Goodwin Designs

The sofa and side table are from West Elm. The pillow is adorned with a stylized sun that Girard created for the New York restaurant La Fonda del Sol.

The brick walls extend indoors, where Girard used a hearth to organize the living area, presaging his and Eero Saarinen’s revolutionary concept for the conversation pit at the Miller House.

When Rob and Mary Lubera started pulling threads to uncover the origins of their new home—the lone midcentury house amid rows of Tudor Revivals in suburban Detroit—not even architecture scholars could have anticipated what they would find. Theirs is the last surviving residence by Alexander Girard (1907–1993), a modernist visionary who made his name in textiles but tried his hand at virtually everything, architecture included. The shoji-like laminate screens, seen in the entryway, are characteristic of his Japanese-influenced work.

Vines spill over primary-colored, glazed-brick walls, which recall Girard’s eye-popping graphics.

A Michigan couple find out they own the last of a little-known, thought-to-be-extinct breed—a midcentury modern house by Alexander Girard.

The Luberas didn’t use a general contractor or architect, but they did enlist the counsel of legendary Detroit designer Ruth Adler Schnee, who in 1964 helped Girard plan the color scheme for a streetscape in Columbus, Indiana. Window alignments create long views through the house and atrium.