Seeking more space and a connection with the city, an artist and a designer turn an old Toronto storefront in Dundas West into a home and studio. Photo by Naomi Finlay.

The living room is five steps down from the kitchen and office space and features textured black slate tile from Olympia Tile, Voyage Immobile sofas with Farniente collection upholstery (a wedding present from Flanders’s mother) by Roche Bobois, and a rug from Turkmenistan the couple picked up in Jerusalem. The sliding glass doors are by Loewen and the glazing above is by Inline Fiberglass. Sawatzky relied on Wayne Arsenault for the custom millwork and carpentry.

Light illuminates the back of the home at night. The Vicenza flamed basalt exterior and floor-to-ceiling windows are a bold counterpoint to the house's more traditional neighbors.

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.

Verda Alexander and her son, Apolo, collaborate on a project in their first-floor studio.

Inspiration crowds Alexander’s studio desk.

Two art studios adjoin a central volume at this work/live residence built from terracreto (sustainable concrete), glass, and painted steel just outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Residents Austin and Lida Lowrey, retired design and museum professionals, collaborated with their two daughters—Sheridan, an artist, and Elizabeth, an architect—to design the structure as a place for creative contemplation.

The home, clad in natural Australian timber, enjoys a sense of lightness thanks to slender columns that let it float over the dunes. The driveway and entry, at the rear of the building, have an understated design to build to the interior's magnificent ocean views. Firm director Phil Snowdon explains, “By creating an architectural form that draws your eye and leads you up the steep driveway, we could engage new visitors in a welcoming process that first reveals the object and then slowly reveals the main event, being the view."

Float On Clerestory windows from YKK Commercial give the illusion that the roof hovers above the house—a key factor in keeping the light, modern touch that the homeowners desired. Epstein did not design the clerestories in a single, straight line; the glass drops down where possible to allow the maximum amount of light. It took a bit of convincing to sway his clients. “He said, ‘Listen to me, stay with my concept, and you won’t be sorry,’” Tetreault recalls. “So I stuck with it, and I’m not sorry.”

The transformed facade features dark gray stained-masonry.

With little to no permitting required because of its small size, Sett Studio units can be used for an extra bedroom, a yoga studio, a hydroponics growing area or an office space, like this 96-square-foot one shown here.

Floor-to-ceiling windows allow for an intimate connection with outdoor spaces.

The Outfit Home storefront in Hollywood.

A covered walkway provides a sheltered passage between the main house and studio. The fire pit is used during social gatherings.

The bedroom is located on a mezzanine just below the roof of a church. The minimal decor and simple arrangement of the room reflect the client’s modest tastes. The small pewter spotlights and pendant by Holloways of London connect to an exposed galvanized conduit that is set against the brick above the bed.

“The walnut unit between the kitchen and dining room ties into the fumed oak floor,” Dubbeldam says. “The rest of the materials in the house—glass, marble, stone—were selected to offset the wood.”

In a workshop on how changing demographics are providing incentives to more inclusive design in multi-unit housing, Quadrangle Architects' managing principal Susan Ruptash compared the universal design in the built environment to environmental sustainability: “What’s it going to take to get this mainstream? When [clients] start wanting it, it will happen.” Quadrangle’s own studio in Toronto is a former corporate data center that has been transformed into an accessible, collaborative work space.

The basement screening room.

The first-floor auditorium/recording studio is located in a curvaceous wood pod that hovers above the bar in the basement. Concrete structural buttresses support the wall and act as stylized booth dividers. - New Haven, Connecticut Dwell Magazine : September / October 2017

The auditorium is so acoustically isolated that the cocktail lounge is able to stay open during shows. - New Haven, Connecticut Dwell Magazine : September / October 2017

The radio station feels almost like a contemporary cabin.

A spacious screening room is one of the home's new features.

Projection room

The Cabaret Theater, used for music and theater, displays the thickness of the exterior walls with buttressing structural supports extending to the roof.

The screening room.

The Music Pavilion is filled with a soft, uniform white light diffused by the canvas roof overhead. Deep red hues echo the warmth of the desert.

A long stretch of connected fishing sheds run the length of Grandi, and this is really the heart of the design district. Designers of every kind have taken spaces here for their studios, including product designer Sigga Heimis and fashion designer STEiNUNN. Photo by: Tiffany Orvet

The media room.

Designer Christiane Hogner, Bruxelles

Kyle Durrie (Brooklyn, New York) Another of her favorite spaces belonged to Kyle, who converted an old linen truck into a traveling letterpress studio. “She drove around the country for a year in the Type Truck, teaching people how to make prints,” says Hollander. “Every inch of that truck had a purpose and was so well designed, from her bunk to the drawers of type.”

“Sustainability is very important to us,” lead architect Heather Dubbeldam says. “It is easy to design with passive systems, to use passive sustainable principles to influence the design and layout of the house.” Her team reduced the need for air conditioning and artificial lighting through carefully positioned doors and windows that draw in natural light and breeze. New insulation, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and low-energy lighting also minimize the homeowners’ dependence on utilities.

On Vashon Island, about 20 miles southwest of Seattle, architect Seth Grizzle designed a 440-square-foot multiuse structure for his clients Bill and Ruth True.

The Trues host parties in the glass-walled structure, located steps from their vacation home, or they escape to it to catch some rays and read a book. Bill reclines on cushions hidden under the reclaimed-fir floorboards that are propped up with Sugatsune hinges.