Designed by Kristian Vedel in 1959, this Large Wooden BIRD from Vedel’s BIRD series was one of the most successful Danish products from the 1950s. Each bird is handmade by a wood-turner in Denmark, and the spherical head can be tilted and turned to create different expressions. It's shown here in smoked oak wood.

A companion to the large BIRD, this Small Wooden BIRD from Kristian Vedel is also available in natural oak wood.

Jeffrey Kipnis and Stephen Turk's Figure Ground Game exhibition was featured at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles in early 2014.

Villa Van Vijven cuts a truly remarkable figure, a striking orange figure on the otherwise flat green landscape.

Inspired by the 1959 newspaper photos of a mother duck crossing the street with her ducklings, this wood duck is handcrafted from teak and features smooth, rounded forms and an elongated beak. A playful celebration of a heartwarming story, the duck can be used as a standalone accent or grouped with a duckling or two.

This Japanese-inspired wooden robot by David Weeks for Areaware is sure to endure beyond the latest, greatest technologies. The unpainted beech wood blocks of the Cubebot Toy Robot are bound by thick elastic bands.

Fir plywood from Freres Lumber joins IKEA cabinets. The figure painting is by Dylan Dean.

The animal figurines in the collection are both decorative and functional. Deam drew associations with each animal to design their uses—for example, the Whale Coaster Figural is a tribute to the creature's watery habitat.

Another spacing test, trying to figure out the best spacing between the ropes. Photo by Clifford Ho.

KAWS Companion Figure.

Sir Thomas More cuts a somber figure, though there was little utopian about his beheading by Henry VIII.

“Having nice design is great, but how can you support the ways you want to live?” says Adair. She and Kopp did the same discovery process as their clients to help push them into purpose. “It was so helpful in figuring out how to shape the moments we wanted.”

The more planning you do and the fewer changes you make, the higher chance you have of staying within your budget. Take the time to figure out what the scope of the project is and get a sense of how much work is needed so that you can make educated decisions when presented with options.

Craig Brooks takes a look at the permit set of plans to figure out what the afternoon of filming looks like on the site.

Top 10 Black Gable Homes of 2020: A dramatic take on an archetypal shape, these pitch-roofed residences cut a striking figure.

Circles are found throughout the decor and figure prominently in the second bedroom.

The circle, a classic artistic and symbolic figure, can be spotted throughout the property.

L’ altra Figura (The Other Figure), 1984. Photograph by Paul Maenz, Courtesy Archivio Giulio Paolini Turin

“We drew a lot of inspiration from the house itself, but we tried to push it a bit further. We wanted to figure out a way to open the back elevation completely,” says Leidner.

Baker's winsome collection of dolls includes the behatted figure known in Czech folklore as the Hesterman, who drags naughty children to a watery demise.

In addition to a desk, there’s a tucked-in bed for reading or relaxing. “The idea behind the office was figuring out three tiers,” explains Rachel, “rest, casual, and full-on work mode.”

“We had a child and made a commitment to take care of my mother. We had to figure out a solution for housing us all with the right privacy and comfort,” says Ilga Paskovskis, owner of the Granny Pad.

Conklin updated a dresser with house numbers for knobs. Her two-year-old helps put his clothes away by figuring out which number they go behind.

The original front porch swing inspired the couple to add one at the back. “We wanted to figure out how to recreate that hangout space in the back, where the kitchen and dining room were,” says Dean.

"When we were going through the spreadsheet and trying to figure out what to remove from the budget, not one person ever said to cut the circular skylight," laughs Alison. "This thing was absolutely staying."

Even with the reused truck bodies creating large windows in the facade, the house still cuts a trim figure on the street. The rooftop garden is hidden from the sidewalk.

The house is quite large, and one of McCabe’s challenges involved “figuring out how to get this much house on the site without it feeling overwhelming, and still having it live small for the family day-to-day,” he says.

Me, trying to figure out whether we should walk, bike, drive, or take the train to our next destination.

"I'm not trying to do anything new in my work," Spellman states. "I'm simply trying to do it in my own way, and I'm still figuring out what exactly 'my own way' is."

“Having made the decision to have exposed Douglas fir ceiling joists, resolving the geometry of the structure over the main, non-orthogonal living area presented an interesting headache that took a while to figure out, particularly given the need also to accommodate two circular roof lights,” notes Pile.

Wenes and Lens conceptualized a gradation of white to gray hues for the walls of the 1,500-square-foot gallery into the 4,000-square-foot home, culminating in a deep gray for the master bedroom. The room is reserved for meaningful pieces from the couple’s collection, such as a figure they found at a market in Beijing and lamps by artists Wenes represents.

One of the most important areas of the house for Berk was the kitchen, as Elrod was struggling to figure out how to be a family without his wife. The kitchen is designed for Elrod to cook for his sons without really having to think about it. "So he could just be the dad and live in that moment."

The first Plant Prefab–built modular lightHouse ADU was completed earlier this spring in Sebastopol, California. This 423-square-foot lightHouse was completed for around $285,000. That figure breaks down to approximate costs of $210,000 for design, engineering and production; $60,000 for infrastructure and site work; and $15,000 for shipping and installation.

She showed me these very early handmade models, "made by me without any care, just to figure out better what I had drawn in my sketches."

The house cuts a striking figure.

The bay window as seen from the exterior. "We think that this gesture of the canting window, breaks with the figure of the house, in the manner that a small child does when peeking from behind the legs of a parent," write the architects. "We have worked in close attentiveness to the needs of our clients and sought to offer them a humble, liveable, and affordable adaptation of Emery’s original architecture."