Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

The clients and design team chose to forego an open floor plan in favor of defined, separated spaces. In this scheme, the vertically oriented spaces act as a cinematic "hard-cut" to their horizontal counterparts. The custom hot rolled steel kitchen, one of these vertical transition spaces, receives light from above through a Velux skylight. A GE Profile Induction cooktop and oven and Miele refrigerator complete the space.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

“In this house, the roof is the only facade—the rest is dissolved beneath it.” —Architect Aljoša Dekleva

At the entry looking upward towards a Velux skylight, a vertical "sleeve" is made of stacked end grain plywood. The theme of vertical and horizontal architectural elements providing different environmental perspectives carries through to the rest of the home. Horizontal forms look out to the lake, while the vertical columns look up the sky.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

Lightroom 1.0, a photography studio, is a freestanding structure on the property. “Together, they represent an autobiography of my career,” Carpenter says.

Photo by Patrick Barta

The minimal design of the Mandakovic House by WMR Arquitectos in Navidad, Los Arcos, Chile, allows its scenic location take center stage. Photo by Sergio Pirrone.

Architect Marco Casagrande designed the Chen House to make use of the nearby Datun River’s breeze. Raising the house on stilts reduces the building’s impact on the earth while preserving the home from flood waters that run underneath post-storm. Sanjhih, Taipei, Taiwan. Photo by Lukas Casagrande.

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

The clients insisted that none of the trees on the property be disturbed, so Kevin Alter and his team at Alterstudio Architecture built a deck and an overhang around two of them.

Emilio Fuscaldo sits in the garden outside the brick house that he designed for himself and his partner, Anna Krien, on a small subdivided lot in Coburg, a suburb north of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Nic Granleese.

Another view of the deck.

Architect Gregory Phillips connected the original house to a new modern extension that doesn’t interfere with the surrounding houses. “I try to be true to the location,”he explains, “so it doesn’t seem like some spaceship has landed.”

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

Alterstudio Architecture of Austin designed this house in the Texas capital for a young family of four.

Appearing almost as a glowing container stack, the corrugated aluminum addition relates to the low-lying structure’s commercial past. Not that owners Dave and Jeannette Jordano were saddled with rehab and remediation. The previous occupant, architecture firm Morgante Wilson, outgrew the 50-foot-by-50-foot footprint but left the space in fine condition.

Located in Aarhus, Denmark, Villa R is a minimalist, serene structure clad in zinc panels. "The objective was to create a house that brings the forest inside through large glass panels—and create an ever-changing seasonal backdrop for the interior living spaces," stated the architecture firm, C.F. Møller, of the 3,200-square-foot abode.

Karen White, David MacNaughtan, and their sons, Griffin and Finlay, hang out on the front deckof their narrow home in Toronto’s leafy Roncesvalles neighborhood. A narrow modernist composition of glass panes and purple brick, the house slips like a bookmark between two older buildings, a bright three-story abode on a lot narrower than most suburban driveways. Photo by Dean Kaufman. Read more about the small house here.

Large clerestory windows face the street at the Higashibatas’ house in Tokyo, optimizing both privacy and natural light within.

Mike Kurokawa and Paul Fishman set out for the beach from their house in the Puna region of Hawaii. A bridge leads from street level to the upper floor of the house, which is situated in a natural depression, or kipuka.

At over 500 square feet, the house’s green roof may be its most powerful—and most expensive—environmental statement. It cost $8,000 to waterproof, and $7,000 to landscape. Water from the roof feeds the toilet and the garden’s watering system, and the garden itself insulates the house and keeps gas bills low in winter. Photo by Nic Granleese.

The Desert House located in Desert Hot Springs is a steel structure designed with large expansive windows, and concrete flooring.

In consultation with the clients, Alterstudio opted to clad the house in local cypress rather than imported, FSC-certified ipe.

House NA from 2011 has glass walls and a steel structural frame containing a matrix of tiny rectangular rooms and outdoor terraces, each on a separate floor level linked by stairs, ladders, or movable steps. Hemmed in by neighboring homes on three sides and a narrow street in front, the house belongs to a couple clearly at ease with Tokyo’s urban condition.

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.

A small, single-story addition to the row house adds a playroom without eating up too much outdoor space. A green roof also helps makes up for lost garden beds, while creating attractive, leafy views from the second and third floors. In summer, when the sliding doors are left wide open, indoor and outdoor spaces blend together.

Fashion designer Josie and her husband Ken Natori are big fans of traditional Japanese architecture, so when Brooklyn-based practice Tsao & McKown Architects designed their home in Pound Ridge, New York, they used a heavy, exposed-timber structure, and included Japanese-style gardens and landscaping.

A backyard garden with an outdoor grilling station.

The owners of this 2,300-square-foot converted loft in SoHo have a penchant for color and collections. To make way for these elements, BC-OA kept new materials simple and desaturated with super white walls; oil-finished, white oak flooring; and white lacquered cabinetry. In the dining area, a custom designed, built-in, tufted banquette adds soft juxtaposition against the live edge dining table. The velvet upholstery is meant to provide contrast against the exposed, white-washed original brick in both texture and era. Overhead a brass chandelier with exposed Edison bulbs references the former Swan Incandescent Electric Light Co. which occupied the loft after construction was completed in 1897.