Stairs

Jennifer and Kenard Bunkley braved resident wildlife and the soaring cost of plywood as they demolished and rbuilt their vacation home in upstate New York.

The steps are made of parallel-strand lumber that was left over after framing the house. “We hadn’t decided on the stair material, so we put these up to have something as placeholders,” says Jørgensen. “Buttons saw them and said, ‘We’re keeping these, right?’ ”

The firm’s founder and principal architect Sumiou Mizumoto stripped away the house’s side extension.

After: The soaring new living and dining space benefits from an abundance of natural light from every side, and they spent a lot of time trying to find the best lighting for the kitchen. The final choice: long, narrow copper pendants from Denmark suspended by ultra thin wires to not disrupt the visual flow of the room.

The bookcase in the great room holds about 3,500 books. Several hundred more can be found in the living room, and on the floor-to-ceiling shelves in Zeke and Teasel's offices.

Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP used 87 translucent bricks to reframe a family’s connection to nature and the city.

"The primary suite is magical, complete with a dressing room, a bath with an antique copper bathtub, and a stone fireplace, all perched above a year-round stream meandering through the rocks underneath it,

"Inspired by the drawings of M.C.Escher, one can move above, below and through the house in an infinite circle of steps. "

The stairs serve as accents throughout the project. Inside they appear as both a positive and a negative of one the solid block shape that makes up the house.

"The ever changing color of the sea and sky can be experienced from everywhere in the house. From the inside, the view of the small uninhabited Piperi Island is perfectly framed from all three beds, the bathtub, the dining table, and the sofa."

Similarly, from the grounds below, the home peeks out below in contrast with the sky.

A suspended steel stair adds a sculptural element to the home.

In his renovation of Kate Brien Kitz and David Kitz’s Los Angeles home, architect Andrew Hall reinterpreted the original gable roof and siding. Landscape designers Mary Lange and Molly Funk transformed the yard with drought-tolerant plants. The walkway decking is from Kebony kebony, the Seaspray paint from Benjamin Moore, and the front door hardware from Emtek.

A view of the stairwell mid-construction.

LaFayette Studio, which helped with the interiors, selected a Holly Hunt fabric for built-in sofas in the new living room, which also features a rug from Rush House, a sconce by Brendan Ravenhill Studio, and a Swift ceiling light from Cedar & Moss.