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

The Tinbeerwah house and studio keep a low profile among the site’s eucalyptus trees.

The bathroom’s width and reinforced handrails accommodate Wansbrough’s needs.

A couple enlist Butler Armsden Architects and Leverone Design to reimagine their home as a multigenerational meeting point. In 1963, landscape designer Lawrence Halprin devised a master plan for a community that would live in harmony with the natural environment. The resulting Sea Ranch, which stretches 10 miles along the Pacific coastline in Sonoma County, California, is characterized by timber-frame, wood-clad structures that are in dialogue with the local climate and terrain. Sited on a bluff within this pioneering community is the vacation home of a lawyer couple. After purchasing the residence in 2007, they lived in the home as it was for four years, even keeping the previous owners’ furniture. Envisioning a retreat that would accommodate their extended family and guests, they then recruited Butler Armsden Architects and Leverone Design to help guide the project.

Sleeping nooks that look like the grooves in a block of cheese.

Sketch of Soma Water

This home's prefabricated components were all made in Marmol Radziner’s home-building factory near Los Angeles, and trucked over to the one-and-a-half-acre site.

After: Pink-toned terrazzo tile counters and a backsplash and olive green-painted cabinetry enlivens the kitchen, where the designers created open shelving using leftover plywood from the mezzanine ceiling panels.

A pair of environmentally attuned architects combined adjoining properties in a Los Angeles canyon to house their modernist menagerie. With exposed industrial materials for finishes, the interior includes hand-troweled, waxed concrete floors, Douglas fir beams, and sealed-plywood ceilings. The open kitchen’s island, topped with soapstone, doubles as a bookcase for the living room.

The firm added a 60-square-meter annex to the existing 88-square-meter stone building to fashion a residence that’s now about 148 square meters (or around 1,500 square feet).

A passage between the walls for hide and seek.

"4x4," S2 Architecture This modernist cube by S2 Architecture features transparent Plexiglas windows that emit a warm glow from the interior.

A wider look at the building's siting.

Jeff Waldman and Molly Fiffer built this 200-square-foot cabin on the site of their 10-acre property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Their previous cabin, which they also built by hand, was destroyed in a forest fire in 2020.

At night the PECO Building’s giant LED screen displays scrolling text messages around the building’s crown.

The open dining space accommodates groups such as Fashandi’s book club with ease.

Kudoo is built on a two-cent plot—a unit of land measurement, commonly used in parts of South India, equivalent to 1/100th of an acre. Half of the site is occupied by the built form, with a landscaped border surrounding it. A major challenge was the location of the home, 100 metres from the main road. This meant that everything had to be carried to site by hand and added to the construction cost.

The renovation, which focused on the living-dining-kitchen area, strikes a balance between intimate and inviting, hence the project's name, the Open/Private apartment.

Van Everbroeck’s home office occupies the end of one arm of the building.

Texas. The Cricket Trailer, made in Houston, can sleep up to two adults and two children. With integrated fresh water and greywater tanks along with a water heater, campers can live off-the-grid in the easily towable unit.

Serve festive cocktails... COLOUR GLASSFrom the design duo Scholten & Baijings for Hay comes the Colour Glass collection. Using a unique language of color, form and line, the Colour Glass system employs a distinctive visual cue for each type of glass: gold lines to signify sparkling wine, a swath of pink to reference red wine, gold dots and color gradients for water. Combined with other pieces from the Colour Glass collection, a rich interplay of color and line is formed.

Future site view. Overgrown 21+ acre forested site.

The house was deliberately sited to preserve the two-acre property’s existing trees, three of which can be seen protruding through the surface of a rear deck.

This stairway gets a very on-trend arch treatment.

The house’s street-level entrance shows an openness to its surroundings, and a glass door allows curious passersby a glimpse of the interior.

COLOUR GLASS From the design duo Scholten & Baijings for Hay comes the Colour Glass collection. Using a unique language of color, form and line, the Colour Glass system employs a distinctive visual cue for each type of glass: gold lines to signify sparkling wine, a swath of pink to reference red wine, gold dots and color gradients for water. Combined with other pieces from the Colour Glass collection, a rich interplay of color and line is formed.

Edge Studio used an aluminum-and-glass curtain-wall system for the building’s façade. Enormous floor-to-ceiling windows frame impressive views of Pittsburgh’s skyscrapers to the south.

In need of more room for their growing brood, Eric and Emma Gimon, with Luc, Paul, baby Louise, and their dog, Nefi, asked for a private space to accompany the house designed for Eric’s great-aunt.

When closed, the discreet cabinets fit flush against the wall.

The Floating Farmhouse’s semitransparent addition has a roofline that matches the pitch of the original 1820s farmhouse. A porch, tucked under the side eaves, is cantilevered over a stream that runs through the property. Ikea loungers are illuminated from the interior by commercial gymnasium lights repurposed as pendant lamps.

The master suite was fashioned from the house’s original garage in a 1970s renovation.

The apartment's entryway features a hidden storage wall and media console.

The new volume houses the dining area, which includes stairs to the bedrooms. The table is from Blake Avenue and the walnut chairs are from Room & Board. “You don’t want bright colors to take away from that relationship between the interior and the exterior,” Walker says.