Studios for Working and Playing

This 1,200-square-foot studio features a stained cedar exterior and an unusual roofline. "Bringing a hip roof into the massing brought down the scale of the overall structure while making the form more dynamic," architect Miriam Peterson says. "On the interior, the hip roof allowed us to create a tall space above the studio itself and make a more intimate space where the client has her desk and library."

Just a few blocks from the swooping Barclays Center arena in downtown Brooklyn sits an unexpectedly quiet haven, a petite 1,300-square-foot patch of green punctuated by a small outbuilding. This modest structure, a single room with just enough space for an army cot or chair, was designed and built by architect Nicholas Hunt, who runs the studio Hunt Architecture with his brother, Andrew, in addition to working for larger firms.

Architect William Carpenter, glimpsed in his second-floor design studio, built Lightroom 2.0 to sit unobtrusively among its 1920s neighbors in Decatur.

The couple lives and works in one of several apartments available to artists at Suomenlinna, a onetime military fotress built atop six separate islands off Helisinki. Photo by: Kati Rapia