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All Photos/Editor’s Picks/exterior/building type : house/building type : mid century

Exterior House Mid Century Design Photos and Ideas

For a family of four, Ueda Design Studio restores the luminous-yet-drafty midcentury home of Alden Mason with warm materials and sensible restraint.
The unusual floor plan includes a long gallery that wraps a grassy courtyard. The family commissioned an aluminum sculpture by Los Angeles–based artist Evan Holloway for the space.
The same large format porcelain was used for the exterior patio, which is flush with the thresholds on the sliding glass doors. Blaine added a small bumpout at the end to accommodate a larger primary suite shower.
Blaine Architects capped the front addition to this Eichler home with a shed roof that mimics the slope of traditional Eichlers, but slants in the opposite direction to make it distinct. The wood screen is made from Accoya.
The team painted the exterior brick after patching it in places, like the section left by the removal of the door. “We could find the exact texture of brick, that classic Roman running bond, but we could not find it in the right color,” says architect Kailin Gregga. Painting the entire exterior unifies the façade. Rich Brilliant Willing “Hoist” sconces in Black was also added.
Tantalus Studio coaxes a Palm Springs home into the 21st century with fresh finishes and a sublime palette plucked from the desert landscape.
To the front, the gardens are laid around a central lawn with a circling driveway which provides parking. There is also a garage for family cars.
Wexler and Harrison's original plan was to create affordable vacation homes for a growing middle class. When this home first went on the market with the others in 1962, it was competitively priced between $13,000 and $17,000. Today, the kitchen has been restored following guidelines from its original configuration, and the landscaping was updated in 2001 with Wexler's oversight.
Setback from the street, this extremely private one level property has sliders with outdoor access, solar panels, and mountain views from every room.
Perched below the Griffith Observatory and overlooking Hollywood is a lush lot crowned with four towering olive trees and a 1965 home designed by modernist architect Craig Ellwood. When a young couple purchased the home in 2018, it needed substantial work. For a historic restoration, they called on Woods + Dangaran, a local firm fluent in modernist history. The team completed a meticulous restoration of the home while keeping original components like the linear shape, open plan, and expansive windows. One of the most striking features is the original koi pond (a feature deemed so essential that its preservation was a condition of escrow) that is now crossed via a bridge that leads to a new lap pool—perhaps the biggest intervention on the property.
Klopf Architecture's modest 72-square-foot addition at the front of the home blends in with the original structure while giving the owners a greater sense of openness in the master and hall bathrooms. Inside, the re-imagined great room now features dining space.
Deciding to buy a home comes with its own unique set of pressures. Oftentimes, it’s seen as a seal of adulthood, an acceptance of permanence, and perhaps most importantly, it also means that you’re about to spend a large sum of money; it makes sense that no one wants to go about it in a casual way.
As you approach the Hilltop House from the covered breezeway that adjoins the garage, it is possible to see through the carefully placed windows to the greenery on the home’s other side.
We’ve gathered 20 of our favorite homes that maintain their midcentury flavor without sacrificing 21st-century modernizations and updates.
Built in 1962, the four-bedroom, two-bath home has already been spruced up with modern features that respect the home’s original midcentury modern character. Highlights include updated bathrooms with Carrara marble and walnut cabinetry, a private backyard, and a renovated kitchen with a pretty impressive "edible garden" off the side.
Designed by architect Claude Oakland, this 1969 home is one of just a handful of the Gallery Eichlers—which are also known as the "Super-Eichlers." It's located in Walnut Creek’s Northgate enclave, which is the last tract of Eichler homes to be built in the East Bay. These models are coveted for their generous and well-designed floor plans—and 252 Clyde Drive is no different.
Jessica Helgerson Interior Design, with project manager and lead designer Emily Kudsen Leland at the helm, remade a Portland abode with a crisp paint palette: Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron for the cladding and Venetian Gold for the front door. The home was originally designed by Saul Zaik in Southwest Portland, complete with a wood-clad exterior, in 1956. As part of the renovation, landscape design was completed by Lilyvilla Gardens.
Villain Arjen Rudd’s modern, canyon-top lair was an integral part of the Lethal Weapon 2 screenplay from the very beginning. Its role only grew larger as the more downbeat first draft of Shane Black’s script (Gibson’s Riggs was originally fated to die at the end) was revised by Black’s successor, Jeffrey Boam. The challenge was finding an existing Los Angeles–area structure that matched the one imagined on the page. John Lautner, the American mid-century modern master who apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s, designed Garcia House in 1962 for jazz arranger Russell Garcia. It still sits high atop the Hollywood Hills at 7436 Mulholland Drive. With its unique almond eye shape topped by a curved, parabolic roof and supported by steel stilts sixty feet above the canyon below, the house is also known as the Rainbow House, after the colorful stained-glass panels that dot its facade.
Located in Long Beach's Los Cerritos/Virginia Country Club neighborhood, the duplex occupies a 7,306-square-foot lot.
Framed by floor-to-ceiling glass, the bright blue front door adds a pop of color to the facade.
Philip Johnson's Glass House is in fact one building out of 14 that sit on the 49-acre property, each with their own approach to structure, geometry, siting, and proportion.
246 East 58th Street was designed by Paul Rudolph in 1989 and is the only residence designed by Rudolph that is currently open to the public.
Designed by Arthur Witthoefft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in 1961, this five-bedroom, five-bathroom midcentury house is set in the woods of Armonk, New York. The 5,000-square-foot home features full-height walls of glass, a wraparound floating terrace, and a quiet deck that overlooks the site's sylvan surroundings.
For an escape from bustling San Francisco, architect Craig Steely and his wife Cathy have created a modernist getaway on a lava field next to a black sand beach on Hawaii’s Big Island. Fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the ocean, the steel-framed home is one of several homes that Steely built on the recently active lava field.
The contemporary home is a beautiful take on desert modernism.
The fence in front of the house creates an L-shaped courtyard. The entrance is tucked behind the private gate.
The 5,000-square-foot midcentury home sits on 2.24 acres of woodland in Armonk, New York.
16 Kirby Lane North is rooted in midcentury-modern tradition, despite having undergone some recent additions.
The Cree House feels larger than its modest footprint thanks to expansive walls of glass and the enormous front deck and rear patio, which link the home to the outdoors.
The distinctive facade references a traditional thatched English cottage.
One of the most significant of Mies' works, the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, was built between 1945 and 1951 for Dr. Edith Farnsworth as a weekend retreat. The home embraces his concept of a strong connection between structure and nature, and may be the fullest expression of his modernist ideals.
The only grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright's early American System-Built Homes—built by Arthur Richards and designed with standardized components for mass appeal to moderate-income families—is situated in the Burnham Park neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four model 7A duplexes, one model B1 bungalow (shown here), and model C3 bungalow were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
The rear view of the home.
At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.
Steep street. Original garage door and wooden louvers. New third floor glass louvers.
The Samuel-Novarro home's distinctive facade.
In the entrance, a team with the general contracting firm Martha uncovered an abstract mural that Engels painted himself and then plastered over. He also made the geometric door handle. Simon speculates that Engels sourced the marble, found all over the house, from Expo ’58, after the pavilions had been dismantled.
Villa Engels, the home of the esteemed Belgian modernist Lucien Engels (1928–2016), was falling apart when its second owners bought it in 2013. Yet due to its heritage status, any changes they planned would have to be approved by the provincial preservation office. Engels completed the elongated, cantilevered residence in 1958, the same year he finalized the master plan for Expo ’58, the Brussels World’s Fair that famously featured the Atomium.
Set behind a gate and up a private half-acre drive, the home enjoys expansive westward views to the ocean.
The Palm Springs Modern Committee relocated and reconstructed a full-scale replica of architect Paul Rudolph's 1952 Walker Guest House. It's currently on loan from the Sarasota Architectural Foundation.
"The main forms were wrapped in stainless steel to reflect the landscape and create a colorful, shimmering, envelope," explain the architects on their website.
The home is surrounded by extensive gardens and mature trees.
Speaking to his original design, architect Saul Zaik says, “We were really just building boxes with a bunch of windows but experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces.” The house has seven different openings to the exterior, allowing different courtyard or patio settings for a range of outdoor activities, including seating for a gathering on the street-facing side. The Milfords hired Lilyvilla Gardens for the landscaping around the house, including variegated bluestone steps with thyme joints.
The home at dusk.
Set on a 7.7-acre lot, the 3,400-square-foot residence is both spacious and compact with a natural flagstone facade and black-stained cedar framing.
Marcel Breuer Hooper House II Exterior Courtyard House View
In 1962, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Arthur Witthoefft won the AIA's highest honor for a home he built in the lush woods of Westchester County. Having fended off a developer's wrecking ball, Todd Goddard and Andrew Mandolene went above and beyond to make this manse mint again.
White brick exterior of Goddard and Mandolene’s home post renovation.
Schneidman House and owner, Kristin MacDowell (MHA 301). In 1946, a group of returning servicemen began talks of creating a housing cooperative to build a utopian community on a dusty hillside above Los Angeles. Soon, more than 400 families were on board, and the Mutual Housing Association was born.
Segerholt Residence Exterior Driveway
During the 2004 renovation the Wilsons replaced the plywood siding with cedar, and used reclaimed brick to maintain the home’s classic appearance.
With post-and-beam construction, a thin roof profile, and an open floor plan that facilitates an interplay between the interior and exterior, the Dwell Prefab Palm Springs by Turkel Design bears all the signatures of the architecture firm. The show home is its first in California, which allowed Turkel and his team to put extra emphasis on indoor/outdoor living.
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