Loft

Tasked with transforming a 93-square-foot brick boiler room into a guesthouse, architect and metalworker Christi Azevedo flexed her creative muscle. The architect spent a year and a half designing and fabricating nearly everything in the structure save for the original brick walls. "I treated the interior like a custom piece of furniture," she says.

Two bedrooms flank a petite loft space, bringing the apartment's total sleeping spaces to three.

The three levels of the house transition from public to private: The ground floor is composed of the kitchen and living-dining area; the bathroom and closet occupy the mezzanine, accessed by a ship’s ladder; and the sleeping loft hovers a couple steps above. The seminal 1970s tome A Pattern Language, written by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, inspired the layout. “I’m a huge proponent of the [book],” says Azevedo. “I like the ideas of a bed as an alcove, natural light on two sides of a room, varying ceiling heights, and different levels of privacy.”

With a built-in sofa and sleeping loft, ATLAS can accommodate three adult travelers.

Designer Paola Navone transformed a 200-year-old factory in Umbria into an inviting home for Andrea Falkner-Campi and her husband. Once a tobacco-drying plant, and before that a silkworm farm, the home sits 90 miles north of Rome.

A simple metal railing and Red Acacia flooring create a minimalist aesthetic for the loft area.

The home's numerous arches lend poetry, geometry, and a dynamic quality to the home as their soft curves frame various perspectives and provide a feeling of airiness.

The TV room is located above the eat-in kitchen, which connects to a large outdoor patio on the southwest side.

“Wonbo had to be able to stand in the sleeping area,” architect Kyu Sung Woo says of his son. “By combining two dimensions—the height of the bed and that of the closet (the top of which forms the bedroom floor)—we made that possible.”