The architect placed the windows at Sabrina’s eye level so that she’d be able to see her son, Rocco, playing in the yard outside. "You can feel the seasons changing here," says Chiavelli. "I grew up three miles from here, outside in nature. This is a house for experiencing life."

The family sits around, and under in the case of four-year-old Kaz’ma, the sunken table for a snack. Makiko made the covers of the mats her mother sent from Japan by hand. The black lamp is from Ikea.

The drawing room, the couple’s principal entertaining space, contains many highlights of the exhibition, including two Tonico lounge chairs by Sergio Rodrigues; a jacaranda bench by Alberto Reis; a leather-and-rosewood sling chair fabricated by Liceu de Artes e Oficios de São Paulo; and drawings by the contemporary Brazilian artist Paulo Climachauska. "Furniture is more beautiful with a patina—and this comes from years of careful and loving use." —Kathryn Smith

For the outdoor dining room, interior designer Damon Liss selected a Soho pendant lamp by Joan Gaspar, Trennza chairs from Janus et Cie, and the Portica outdoor table from Room & Board. The sliding glass doors are by Arcadia.

In the kitchen, the continuous kitchen worktop and table are made of marble from Caledonia Marble. The pink Tamatik dining chairs are by Connie Chisholm and are from the Canadian design shop Made. The Blinding Love pendant lights are by Periphere, which has shops in Montreal and Toronto. The iron rails were inspired both by screens the couple had seen on their travels in the Middle East and by the ornate wrought ironwork favored by their Portuguese neighbors. Barzel Ironworks fabricated the banister to Sawatzky’s design by slicing up iron pipe, welding it, and painting it.

An Alvar Aalto table is surrounded by a quartet of the designer’s Chair 65.

In 2006, Claus—director of Claus en Kaan Architecten, one of the Netherlands’ top architectural practices—finally got inside Perret’s apartment. He was duly impressed. “It’s the sheer abundance with which limited materials are used here that first struck me,” he says. “The wall-to-wall French oak paneling, combined with materials that were ahead of their time—columns made not from marble but from stone-blasted concrete, the extraordinary round plaster ceiling inset, and the fiber-wood paneling—and his attention to the tiniest of details.” He tracked down the organization that owns the apartment, the Association Auguste Perret, to see if he and his wife could rent the unit as a pied-à-terre. To his surprise, they said yes. In the dining room, a marble-topped table by Eero Saarinen is ringed with Eames wire chairs. Through oak accordion doors, the atrium beckons with red Utrecht armchairs by Gerrit Rietveld and a yellow Diana table by Konstantin Grcic.

Udechuku and Smith consider the rare rosewood-and-black glass dining set by Joaquim Tenreiro the highlight of their Brazilian Modern exhibition. "It's a true masterpiece, and the only piece I have felt really nervous about using," admits Udechuku.

Shophouses are a staple of Southeast Asian urban architecture. A team of designers including Yong Ter, Teng Wui, Andrew Lee, and Edwin Foo renovated this shophouse into a contemporary sanctuary over the course of two years. They left the roof completely open from the beginning of the original airshaft to the back of the house. The heart is a cooking/dining area with a 13-foot-long Indonesian table made from a single piece of teak.

For Gabriel Ramirez and his partner Sarah Mason Williams, following the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. The architects love Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, and they made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house “was very crisp and clean,” he says. “This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi.”

For the dining room, Freeman and Feldmann swapped their tiny table for developer John Walker's larger one since he was moving into a smaller space. They topped it with a $12 pendant lamp from Ikea and finished the "room" with a counsel from West Elm.

The dining table doubles as a homework spot.

Kaz-ma holds up the charred post while the rest of the family attends to affairs at the sunken table.

The 1956 LeBaron-Moruzzi Residence by Sam Pascal features all-white interiors with vibrant yellow accents, as seen with the chimney at right.

With the help of architect Bart Lens, Veerle Wenes and Bob Christiaens merged a 19th-century building with a 1970s one to create a combined home and art gallery in Antwerp. In the dining room downstairs, Wenes entertains family, friends, and gallery visitors. The yellow chair is by Jens Fager.

While Brooklyn brownstones conjure up memories of their turn-of-the-century roots, they also remain the modern-day face of New York’s coolest boroughs. With brownstone living, however, comes responsibility—many of these classic beauties are in need of renovation and restoration. Here are 10 standout, renovated brownstones that retain their original charm with added contemporary cool.

The family's activity centers around the open-plan dining room, which does triple-duty as a living room and kitchen. Susanna prefers a motley set of dining chairs over a coordinated set; that way guests can pick their favorite when they sit.

The dining table, a custom design by Formwork, and red Non chairs by Komplot complement the addition’s cypress cladding.

Architect Christi Azevedo, along with homeowners Lorena Siminovich and Esteban Kerner, transformed this 1,485-square-foot, multilevel, mid-century maze into a modern and efficient family home in just three months. “It was the craziest frickin’ thing,” laughs Azevedo. “It was like a Tetris game, putting it all together, trying to squeak out space wherever we could.” Purchased as if straight out of 1955, the home is now the ideal small space for Siminovich and Kerner to raise their young daughter, Matilda.

Kitchen & Dining Room “This room really became the heart of the space,” Dawn Casale says. “If people are sitting at the dining table or in the living area, you’re able to have a really free-flowing conversation and there’s a nice dynamic happening on the entire floor.”

Light floods the living and dining rooms, meaning Schneider rarely needs to turn on a lamp during the day.

An LC4 lounge by Le Corbusier for Cassina keeps company with a trio of large planters and a surfboard in the space between the kitchen and the dining room.

Buser made the dining table which is surrounded by Chair 611s by Alvar Aalto for Artek.

Bill Thompson’s Hollywood home exudes modern cool with a custom walnut dining table and chairs from Modernica.

For the the living room, the architects designed a cluster of picture windows that frame unique views—a jacaranda tree or a patch of sky—and block out neighbors from a nearby apartment building.

Full Bloom The white Vico Magistretti dining table is a focal point when you enter the house--"and a great spot to create assemblages of some of my favorite objects," says Neely, who changes the display every few weeks. Set atop a reversible Finn Juhl tray are ceramics from Heath and a Carl Auböck fruit knife with a cane-wrapped handle. Notes Neely:"I always keep a handful of tillandsia around--air plants soften and warm up the space."

The custom kitchen cabinets sit on legs for easy sweeping underneath. They’re topped with white Corian counters and paired with sleek Brodware fixtures.

Her memory remained sharp, says DeMarie. “She always asked what was going on with these tiny moments in the house.”

Designer Christiane Hogner, Bruxelles

Salvage Garden Driftwood that Tershy, Zavaleta, and the kids spent years collecting from local beaches makes up the pickets of the backyard fence, a pillar outside the front door, and the railing on the upstairs hallway. But it’s a Pacific madrone that puts a rustic exclamation point on the interior. The tree fell on a friend’s land, and the couple, after hauling the best boughs into town, turned it into the centerpiece of the double-height dining room.

Piet Hein Eek's wooden chairs add a touch of color to the monochromatic Amsterdram apartment of Hunter Hindman and Shelby Carr.

In the dining room, which opens to the backyard terrace, original tilework on the floors and walls complement decidedly modern counterparts—an original 1938 Butterfly chair by Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan, and Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, and a 1983 TMC floor lamp by Spanish designer Miguel Milá.

The dining room features 1970s leather-and-brass dining chairs and a table concocted from a brass-and-silver base and a custom lacquered top. The cheerful blue paint enlivening the doorway is from Emery & Cie.

The dining room.

Smithfield pendant lights by Jasper Morrison for Flos illuminate the dining table. Natural wood floors and neutral hues create a spare, yet warm, aesthetic.