sims inspo

Many visitors to Louis Armstrong’s Queens, New York City, home consider the kitchen to be a highlight. With its turquoise cabinets and futuristic built-ins, it is a striking example of 1960s design.

The size of the house and the layout encourage spending time together, another welcome change from the couple’s life in Paris. “In our former house, we were all in our private spaces,” says Patrice. “Here we spend time in the central areas. It’s basically one floor, and you can call out to each other easily.”

The project took a little over two years -- 26 months, to be exact -- from initial design survey to move-in. About 14 months of that were spent in design, while construction took the remaining 12 months.

After spending several years in Tokyo, a family revamps an American Foursquare with a fresh floor plan, a glassy extension, and an appreciation of Japanese design.

A one-story villa in Lafayette Park.

The living room opens to a terrace made of four slabs of black concrete separated by rows of woolly thyme. A fire pit designed by Jørgensen’s firm and Adirondack chairs from Erin Martin Design provide an ideal setting for taking in the scenery, especially at night. “Strangely, the view here really didn’t change a lot,” says Buttons. “The fire came up behind us, jumped around, and spared a lot of the surroundings. I can’t imagine finding another place like it.”

The dark steel gives way to a pale interior with reclaimed maple floors and marine-grade Russian birch walls and ceilings.

The home embraces indoor-outdoor living with a large sliding door that serves as its only window. A living room couch by Hubba Hubba (made of mattresses and upholstered fabric) wraps around a TOV Furniture coffee table, anchored by a custom Moroccan rug found on Etsy. The ashtray is by Fundamental Berlin and the mushroom lamp is by Rodolfo Bonetto for Iguzzini.

The kitchen's new location makes it so Marcela can open the doors to the terrace and entertain inside and out.

Nigel Chouri and Crick King bought a tattered ’50s beach house for $911K and introduced water-resistant features, a Spanish-style plaza, and a dreamy garden ADU.

The cabin hovers over the site on stilts, giving it a floating effect.

Arriving at the cabin is now a joyous ritual. “Every time we push the gates back and see the view it’s this sense of ‘we’ve arrived’,” Matt says.

“Where we let loose was on the window,” Matt says. “It’s an aluminium window frame, which is bushfire compliant and easy to install, but the way that we detailed it was about hiding the frame so that the eye is drawn into the space.”

With no TV in the house, the Hay modular sofa facing the view invites quiet contemplation.