Modern

De Beauvoir House By Cousins & Cousins

Plaster walls mixed with gray marble powder dominate the interior of the bottom floor, complementing its spruce wood carpentry.

Always put contingencies aside. During any renovation, it is critical to set aside money for the "what if" or emergency scenarios. For example, there might be plumbing that you didn’t anticipate needing to replace. Conventional wisdom suggests adding 15 to 20 percent to your contractor’s renovation cost to safely consider these contingencies.

In the living space, which looks past a fireplace and out to a pool, sits under original beamed ceilings in a characteristic A-frame shape.

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

The literal and figurative centerpiece of the house is the atrium, through which light filters into the rest of the house year-round.

Clear glass panes set strategically into the otherwise translucent curtain wall expose the mezzanine to fresh air and rear views.

Sited on a 12-acre lot, the structure peaks at 25 feet at its tallest points, providing spatial balance to its compact, 530-square-foot footprint. Large windows, a skylight, and a discrete chimney were all factors that contributed to its faceted form, which project architect Jack Ryan describes as a “carved gemstone.”

For the floor and built-ins, the architects opted for Douglas fir. The recessed wood-burning stove is a Morsø 5660.

Throughout the home, windows by Pella and sliding doors optimize passive cooling and solar gain. The cottage exterior is clad entirely in shakes of Alaskan yellow, a type of cedar with neutral hues; the surrounding fence is made from western red cedar.

An artist by trade, and gardener by passion, Allison Paschke commissioned Providence-based architecture firm 3SIXØ to build a modest cottage that would allow her to reconnect with nature. She landscaped the home’s lush gardens herself.

Open enclosures and connections to adjacent living spaces keep the home inviting and airy rather than densely packed—a key feature for an owner of two dogs: Ben, a whippet, and Flynn, an Irish gypsy dog.

Sliced in half long ago, the 17th-century Halbhaus (or “Half House”) in Switzerland was recently reworked by designer Jonathan Tuckey as a family getaway.

As the home is approached from the street, the white aluminum facade projects out from the earth in an abstract composition of forms and volumes. There are no doors or windows at the entrance from the road, a calculated decision by the design team to avoid a structure that would read as manmade against the natural landscape. “We wanted it to feel ‘non-architectural’ in a way so that the natural view of the lake was not walled off by a privatized notion of someone’s home,” says Miller.

The delicate wooden dowels, used both on the exterior facade and the mezzanine level balustrade, are nods to the bamboo fences traditionally found in tea gardens.

The couple brought most of the house’s furnishings from their previous home, including the living room’s hand-knotted South Persian Gabbeh that belonged to Philip Heid, Ted’s father. Philip put in the pond, beyond, when he bought the property.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

A light grey-brown brick facade provides a contemporary aesthetic in Montreal’s Rosemont-Petite-Patrie neighborhood. Developer Maitre Carre and the firm Architecture Open Form worked together to introduce a contemporary style to the area. The project includes three two-story town houses and three above with a mezzanine and rooftop patio.

In keeping with the Goodmans' desire for just enough subdivision for rooms to sleep and work in, Cohen inserted a two-story volume into one of the barn frame's side aisles. An additional small mezzanine over the kitchen serves as a play area for the grandchildren.