Light-Filled Renovations

Like their request, the design the couple chose, the more dramatic of those proposed by Samaha and Hart, called for a complete renovation of the home, save the two front rooms and front facade. "The house has a split personality," Samaha says. "We kept the front the same, but tried to make it look even better than before, then opened up the rest of the house and brought in a lot of light." Photo by Sharon Risedorph

New residential buildings are few and far between in England, so architects like Phillips have increasingly been charged with creating groundbreaking modern environments within the shells of historic houses. “People just find it easier to work within existing houses to transform them to be sleek, stylish and functional,” says Phillips. “Extensions have almost become a requirement for any homeowner who wants to be a part of modern living within the U.K.”

A third floor addition and whole-house renovation modernized a funky cottage on an unusual, triple-wide lot in San Francisco.

This airy addition on the back of a historic house in Boise is a model of sensitive renovation, seamlessly melding new and old. Photo by Lincoln Barbour.

Dunbar and Astrakhan's low-cost, high-impact tour de force is a storefront facade constructed from salvaged double-insulated window glass panels arranged in a shingle pattern.

Seemingly a single, seamless unit, the stair is composed of two elements—treads and mezzanine—and held in place by two distinct strategies: The stairs are welded to, and cantilever out from, a series of steel tubes concealed in the walls; the mezzanine is attached on one side to a steel beam, and hung at two other points from rods attached to the roof structure.

Tom Givone's current weekend abode, nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, is—so far—his capstone project, a synthesis of personal taste, material experimentation, and historically sensitive restoration: a living laboratory for how to bring the vernacular past into the present.