INSPIRATIONS

The 1900 Foster House is located along South Harvard Avenue in Chicago's West Pullman neighborhood. The roomy home was built as a summer residence for attorney and land association president, Stephen A. Foster.

The Kajstaden Tall Timber Building has nine floors with an elevated ground floor and a double-height top floor. C.F. Møller Architects designed the building in collaboration with Martinsons, Bjerking and Consto AB, for client Slättö Förvaltning.

Oriented to face the west, the interconnected modules fan out to provide three slightly different views of the adjacent gully between two rises in the landscape.

Vibrant red siding references the original buildings on the site.

To make the two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath dwelling look and feel as large as possible, Sundius and Ichiki maintained sightlines from one end to the other. "We didn’t want to disrupt the flow of the stepped ceiling as it runs the length of the building,

Building the addition upward instead of outward allowed for more space and better views without excavating across the hilltop.

Located 2,600 feet above sea level in Upper Austria, the Mountain House sits at the intersection of the low lands and the Alps.

The main volume of the extension is constructed from offset Douglas fir battens painted blue and gray. This reflects the vertical lines and gray color of the ribbed render used in the extension to the side of the house.

Fallingwater is located in the southwest mountains of Pennsylvania, known as the Laurel Highlands. Its color palette is derived from the surrounding nature: ochre, inspired by the rhododendrons, and Wright’s signature Cherokee red. He initially wanted the parapets to be donned in gold leaf, but the owners rejected the idea.

This Bay Area family decided to splurge on top-of-the-line cabinetry by the Italian company, Cucine Lube because the kitchen would be the focal point of the open living space and where they predicted that they’d spend much of their time. The glossy panels are crafted from acrylic and glass dust to form a light and sturdy material that is "as luminous as glass." In addition, the panels are easy to maintain; resistant to water, heat, stains, and chemicals; and designed to be in contact with food—making it money well spent.

The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire—which features works by the likes of Monet, Picasso, and O’Keefe—just added Frank Lloyd Wright’s Toufic H. Kalil House to its collection. The home is one of seven Usonian Automatic homes in existence, and now it will be preserved ad infinitum thanks to an anonymous donor.

This house has an exterior of black panels and clear-grain cedar tongue-and-groove siding, and a rooftop deck that lets its owners enjoy the outdoors.

Eng-Goetz hand-painted a magical mural of sword ferns around the kitchen to give the room a "forest view." The tiles are from Tempest Tileworks; the wall sconce and sink pendant lighting are from a collaboration between JHID and GKA Lighting. Adding another metallic accent, a brass faucet from Waterworks rises from a rich western walnut countertop. The room is painted with Benjamin Moore’s Storm Cloud Gray.

RES4’s modular approach provides a Brooklyn family with a beautiful weatherproof retreat on Long Island. Designed as a hybrid between a double-wide and a courtyard house, the 1,650-square-foot North Fork Bay House was prefabricated off-site as two modules. In addition to time and cost savings, prefabrication helped address the restricted building site, which has a very long and narrow footprint limited by FEMA setback regulations and zoning laws.