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In an attempt to beat the winter blues and improve his work/life balance, Australian architect Andrew Maynard combines his home with his office in a sun-drenched Victorian terrace with bright bursts of yellow. In 2016, architect Andrew Maynard of Austin Maynard Architects (AMA) decided to transform the way he and his team live and work. At the end of winter, Maynard visited a doctor about his increasing levels of stress and anxiety. The doctor’s suggestion was that he get more vitamin D to improve his mental health. Maynard decided to radically renovate his dark, Victorian-style terrace house in Melbourne, and flood it with therapeutic sunshine.

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Locally sourced Italian slate covers the ground floor rooms; the coat rack near the entrance is from Zanotta.

Pentimento’s true versatility is revealed with each new tenant who inhabits the structure. As Nicolas demonstrates, the polished concrete floors make for an ideal biking surface. When playtime is over, he hangs his bike on the wall by the front door, suspending it from the handlebars to keep the floor tidy.

Rich and his girlfriend Arielle sit on an IKEA sofa; the windows are from Charleston Glass.

“For the structure, Mapos devised a hybrid system of concrete, steel, and Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs),” co-principal Caleb Mulvena says. “Each was strategically utilized to create a lightweight, rigid, and highly energy-efficient shell.” Fiber cement-board cladding and a steel standing-seam roof act as the structure’s envelope.

Architectural designer Sebastian Mariscal and project manager Jeff Svitak created a house in Venice, California, for Michael and Tamami Sylvester. Known as Dwell Home Venice for its role as an exemplification of modern architecture, the house is an homage to indoor-outdoor living. Photo by Coral von Zumwalt.

"I wanted to preserve the canopy, the sales space, the garage door, everything," Judin tells FvF. "It wasn’t until later that I realized there was also still space for a garden."

Native New Yorkers, the Merola family have long held a tradition of spending summers in Rhode Island. When they learned the costs of renovating their existing cottage would significantly outweigh the benefits, they instead opted to build new. The result—a distinctively modernist box structure clad in milled slats of charred, brushed, and oiled cypress manufactured by Delta Millworks—sits nestled within the marshy landscape of Quonochontaug Pond.

Fields of native grasses connect the main residence, situated at the top of the slope, to the new structures scattered below. A pergola extends from the post-and-beam structure that was maintained during the remodel of the midcentury home.

Linden specified a black stain from Cabot for the house’s exterior. The shade draws on Scandinavian and Japanese building traditions and helps the structure blend into the landscape. Native grasses populate the courtyard.