A group of Woolly Pocket planters can be put up in an afternoon. Each planter's hook requires one screw to hang.

Julia: How to Make a Concrete Camera Are you looking for a creative project for the weekend? Well look no further! Why not make a pinhole camera out of concrete? I came across this DIY tutorial and was surprised that this unlikely material was being used to make a camera. How wonderful!

A diagram of the chair's structure.

To maximize the limited square footage, there are few swinging doors in the house; instead, each bedroom has a pocket door that slides into the wall.

Most tiles come in boxes or sheets enough to cover one square foot. Simply measure the length and width of area in feet and multiply to calculate the number of tiles to buy.

While technology keeps evolving, little has changed in the way the ELO is made since it was introduced in 1956. To ensure continuity of craftsmanship, new workers are paired with experienced mentors who pass down tips and techniques. The average maker has been working with the product for 10 years.

Use these drawings to create the dotted lines on the side of the chair.

Unobtrusive and easily mounted, the Leaning Wall Pocket, a simple but sturdy storage pouch, is made in Belgium from plywood and comes in 12 different colors of felt.

Modern Cuff, 1948. Brass, copper. By Art Smith.

Seattle-based studio Ample's Hip Pocket table is a side table with a bonus: an elegantly integrated sling that gobbles up your magazines, tablet, e-reader, or whatever else is cluttering up your living room.

Wine Pocket: Money Tree, $18 (Item no longer available)

A Woolly Pocket wall installed by a professional designer groups together a variety of plantings.

An old camera lens is upcycled into a fashionable cuff.

The new Living Wall Planter 2 can be watered once in as long as two weeks' time, during which it "self waters" via a vessel in the back.

Once hung, the planter can "self water" by pulling from the reservoir at bottom, and aerates the plants through the holes in the BPA-free plastic shell.

A thoughtful gift for someone who packs their lunch for work or school, the Marlowe Lunch Bag from Peg and Awl has a charming, retro look. The bag also includes a small pocket for sharing a note, which makes a great place to include a holiday message.

Beth Davis' Transia system is a transportable divider that can be carried between workspaces by a simple shoulder sling.

Manual Coffee Maker The first entry in his new Manual houseware lines, the MCM exemplifies Berman’s approach, slowly crafting products at the intersection of design and food.

the reflectivity of the brass kitchen island makes it seem to dematerialize.

The Food Zone Fine-tuning your cooking and dining areas pays off in more ways than just saving resources. As in other functional zones, their success starts with awareness: Where exactly does your food come from? Where exactly does your trash go after you haul it to the curb? Playing an active role in your family’s food cycle can be eye-opening, and it often helps spark an interest in improving other house zones.

Jimena makes use of a giant chalkboard just outside.

A sculptural skylight bathes the master bathroom in natural light. A single level of tile floor allows easy access to the full height glass shower at the room's end.

Side view of butler's pantry shows pocket door and view into kitchen proper

White prefabricated cabinets and countertops make for a streamlined kitchen.

How House, the site of the May 17, 2014 reception and talk, and included on the May 18 tour. Photo by Tim Street-Porter.

Belongings can be stashed in leather pockets on the walls.

The Color Pop Mini Notebooks from Korean stationery company Paperways are slim, small notebooks that are ideal for taking in a purse or messenger bag. Each set of three notebooks is available in a soft yet vibrant color—pink, yellow, and blue—and contains 48 pages. The pink books include graph paper, the blue books include ruled paper, and the yellow books include a distinct hexagonal graph paper.

Utility Mirror Pocket by Visibility for Good Thing, $24 Available in three shapes, these handheld, stainless-steel mirrors are polished to a reflective finish then given a colorful, industrial rubber tool grip.

The bed in Sara’s room has been in the family since the early 1900s.

The bedroom and bathroom make up the private zones on the top floor.

All it takes is gentle downward pressure to lower the desk to the floor, bringing the kid-size mattress into position for bedtime.

Find out how Passive House standards are being integrated into affordable housing projects in the United States.

Deciding to buy a home comes with its own unique set of pressures. Oftentimes, it’s seen as a seal of adulthood, an acceptance of permanence, and perhaps most importantly, it also means that you’re about to spend a large sum of money; it makes sense that no one wants to go about it in a casual way.

How did you come to work with Make It Right? About six years ago I was at a firm in Kansas City called BNIM and we were doing disaster recovery projects. I was working in a little rural Kansas town called Greensburg after a Tornado leveled the town. Make It Right asked BNIM to design one of its early first-round houses for New Orleans so I traveled down there a few times. It became apparent that Make It Right could use a bit of landscape architecture and planning insight as they looked to build a sustainable community in the Lower Ninth Ward. I took a year's sabbatical and left the prairie and moved down to the swamps and had an amazing time with Make It Right. That turned into five-plus years of work with the organization. How did Make It Right come to work in Kansas City? As the Make it Right model began to evolve there was an interest to propagate the expertise and resources developed in New Orleans to other communities. There might not be a natural disaster involved—so many urban cores are faced with economic disasters. We started to look to other communities and develop Make It Right's strategic plan. The stars aligned in Kansas City with a political structure wanting to create this area called the "Green Impact Zone" and looking to focus investment in urban revitalization under the umbrella of sustainable redevelopment.

Can you tell us about the area around the project? How did it fall into decline? What's the make-up of the community now? Our project sits on a street called Troost Avenue. Starting in the late '50s and early '60s with the removal of the street car, suburban sprawl, and other elements, Troost became the de facto racial dividing line in the city—the other side of the tracks literally. The avenue runs over 90 blocks and has a straight shot in Kansas City and whether it was reality or perception, it's been a significant problem to overcome in Kansas City's current history. Quite a few groups have been lobbying hard for ways to change that perception and ways to figure out how investment can occur in that area. A house once block east of Troost is valued at half the price as what that same house one block west of Troost would be valued. Many cities have Troost avenues. Many cities have a racial dividing line—just 95 blocks of them being a straight line is not always the case.