Modern Design

"Our many ideas were floating around the mountain, and we needed someone to bring them down and turn them into reality,

On the entrance deck, a hand-crafted wooden couple welcomes visitors. The U-shaped deck surrounds the entire lower level.

Lizz's parents—architect Louis Wasserman and landscape architect Caren Connolly—designed the house to take advantage of its hillside setting.

Villa Bio is situated a little over an hour outside of Barcelona in Llers, a green, hilly, sun-bathed sprawl near Figueres (hometown of everyone’s favorite mustachioed surrealist, Salvador Dali). The hydroponic rooftop garden grows out of volcanic stones. The home is conceived as a giant C-shaped spiral.

Greg Knapp and Robyn Traynor worked with architect Peter Braithwaite to design a nature retreat for their family on a slice of Canadian wilderness. It has two shed-roofed structures joined by a boardwalk elevated above a preexisting walking path on the couple’s land.

Adair has long wished for Togo chairs, but as much as she loves the design, she tries not to be too precious about it. “We let the kids use them how they want, and they’re perfect fort furniture,” she says. “They’re really durable. It’s a design that makes architect parents happy.”

"It was really a breezy project,

"The desert will test newcomers and not all of them will remain,

The shelving in the laundry echoes the living room and kitchen, and being open, doesn’t block light from the window.

Murphy took a completely different approach to the color and material palette in the second house. “We wanted to show that with very small changes, you can have a totally different space, and there's a lot of potential in these little houses,” says Murphy. Custom shelving, made of stained oak and metal, anchors one end of the living room, with an armchair from Southwood Home.

Béliveau incorporated a desk and display space along the living room wall, as well as a pocket door to the primary bedroom.

Yoga isn't an Olympic sport (yet), but this serene backyard studio in Buenos Aires has us feeling inspired to get our sweat on nonetheless.

The owners toured this home, which surrounds a mature tipu tipu tree, while visiting relatives for the day. The brick is original to the 1947 construction.