Winter Retreat: Inside 5 Cozy Cottages

The residents, who live in Calgary, frequently entertain, and with 16 beds, bunks, and twin-bed-wide window seats, there is no shortage of places to sleep.

The facade is punctured by a variety of differently sized windows: Those flush to the wall indicate the house’s public rooms, while the those for the private spaces are set back.

The first thing visitors see as they enter the house is Bornstein’s impressive collection of architecture and design books. The sofa and chair were designed by Bornstein for Swedese.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.

Working with project architect Kyle Bradley, Gray and Organschi started with the simplest of designs—a shed-type structure with a steeply canted single-pitch roof—and, as Organschi puts it, “started blowing it open and filling it with large areas of glass.”

When Oslo-based architect Marianne Borge was approached in 2004 by a client who wanted an actual cabin rather than a second home, she was instantly inspired by the challenge of working on a smaller scale. The home, called Woody35, has a distinct shape that makes it stand out from its surroundings despite the modest size of the building.

The living room's double height makes the space seem larger that its actual size. Stairs leading up to the sleeping loft are placed next to the open fireplace. The plastered wall and the soapstone tiles on the floor add some roughness to the wooden interior.

The house, which is gently pushed into the hillside, has a large basement holding a garage, ski room, storage areas, and utility spaces as well as the entrance hall.

The red sofa in the living room is a 1960s piece originally owned by Strolz’s parents.