From Sweden’s studio esinam, the Landmarks Architectural Print Series is a thoughtful collection of portraits of famous international cities. The Brooklyn Landmarks Architectural Print includes architectural drawings of three iconic places in the city including buttresses from the Brooklyn Bridge, the tower of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, alongside examples of classic brownstone townhomes.

Tom Givone's current weekend abode, nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, is—so far—his capstone project, a synthesis of personal taste, material experimentation, and historically sensitive restoration: a living laboratory for how to bring the vernacular past into the present.

Overhead cabinets now can be easily swung open for ease of access. The kitchens are priced at IKEA’s usual retails. A 10 by 10 foot kitchen fitted with Sektion cabinets will range from around $1,300 to $2,200, excluding appliances.

Black and white kitchen tiles add visual interest to this stunning modern kitchen by IKEA.

Gunta Stolzl, Rhythm wall hanging, 1973.

A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.

In studio esinam’s Landmark series, the architects celebrate three landmarks from famous cities all over the world. The Brooklyn Landmarks Architectural Print includes architectural drawings of three iconic places in the city including buttresses from the Brooklyn Bridge, the tower of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, alongside examples of classic brownstone townhomes. Each print in the series is artfully printed on brilliant white, environmentally friendly acid free paper, and is available in an unframed version or with a thin maple frame—in a natural wood finish or modern black or white.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”

Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.

Acoustics were the most challenging aspect of the project. "We met with many recording studios and found that there really is no one way to design recording spaces," Jackson says. "Everything from the proportion and form of the space to the materials and details all effect acoustic performance. We designed the recording spaces based on the ratio of the golden section 1:1.61 and angled walls to eliminate reflections. All of the windows needed to be two layers of glass with different thickness and a minimum two-inch airspace for soundproofing."

Wood salvaged from the original house covers the staircase. "It took a bit of effort to surgically deconstruct the house to save as much material as we could and clean it up for reuse," Jackson says. "I think it’s inspiring for the guests to the Collaboratory to know that the fireplace is in the exact same location, and consists of the original brick, as the original house, so that they can experience a space that’s still evocative of the home in which Memphis Slim lived." ViktorHall Construction carried out the deconstruction.

The family spends summers and school vacations at the bach. New Zealand's relatively mild winters mean they use the house year-round.

Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman linger in the breezeway designed to draw eyes, and footsteps, from the driveway through the house to the gently sloping backyard and swimming pool beyond.

Kayak in hand, Tom and Will make a break for the beach.

Architect Jason Jackson recast the Memphis, Tennessee, home of blues musician John Len Chatman into a music collaboratory—a place equipped for career counseling, recording, workshops, and community events.

Before the Memphis Music Magnet Program's adaptive reuse project, John Len Chatman's house was decaying on its lot. Charlie Santo, head of the Memphis Music Magnet, has been working to revive the Soulsville neighborhood in which the house is situated by forging a creative hub tied to its cultural legacy. "In this city, the music community has always been as important as the music business, and music has often existed at the nexus of creativity, diversity, and place-making," Santo says. "Soulsville USA embodies that heritage and our work there seeks to build on existing arts assets in a neighborhood that is truly reflective of Memphis.”

The Memphis design retrospective exhibition at Corso Magenta.

Molded plastic shell chairs and a tulip table outfit one of the gathering spaces.

The Memphis Slim Collaboratory is divided into two floors. In renovating the space, Jackson kept the original footprint of part of the house and created a modern addition.

The new design is clad in cedar and corrugated metal. The front porch is a key space as it "engages the street and creates a public space that everyone can take ownership of," Jackson says. "Simultaneously we opened up the front elevation to create views into the recording spaces from the exterior, welcoming in the community."

"To reflect the character of the house, we rebuilt the two story portion to the exact dimensions of the original home as well as the interior stair and fireplace," Jackson says. "The single story recording studio portion that extends to the back is a completely new addition, so we wanted a material that was vernacular to the neighborhood but would represent the new nature of the facility; therefore, the corrugated metal."

The Globe pendants hanging in the stairwell are from West Elm.

A view across the display island to a breezeway betweent the house and the garage that Pacek and Roynon created as part of their home addition. They use the space for entertaining and food service when the weather cooperates.

A Lakeside Prefab in New Jersey A New Zealand expat and her son use their prefabricated lakeside New Jersey retreat as an outdoorsy counterpoint to city life. Photo by: Mark Mahaney Curious on what was popular last week? Click here!

IKEA chairs join a table from CB2; a Kawneer triple-sliding door opens to the family’s new ipe deck.

The Irwin pool house designed by Landis Gores in 1957 boasts a central room with high ceilings and an unobstructed view of the landscape. In 2005, the Town of New Canaan purchased the property and added exhibition spaces, as well as rooms for lectures and events. The small pavilion also houses an oversized, monumental brick fireplace design that divides the main space from the kitchen area.

This three-color screen print by Scott Campbell is one of the offerings at Poster Cabaret, an online print shop of the Austin, Texas gallery Sebastian Foster. Buy it here.

The exterior mixes pale gray wood on the vertical volume, and fiber cement and black brick on the horiztonal volume. The three trees in the front yard were maintained during the renovation process.

Using natural materials is one way of bringing nature indoors. Oiled white ash floors and ceilings, along with Italian poplar and Lawson cypress joinery, are found throughout architect Andrew Simpson’s 538-square-foot home outside Wellington, New Zealand.

In the kitchen, the cabinetry is walnut veneer with a weathered finish applied by cabinetmaker David Rogers. “The process involved sanding and rubbing in stain as well as adding a clear finish,” project architect Eero Puurunen says.

Induction cooktops, growing steadily in popularity due to their energy efficiency and speed, are part of the offering as well as as a selection of exhaust hoods.

A 17-foot-tall freestanding play structure that designer Sharon Davis designed for her family in upstate New York can only be entered by climbing taut netting and entering through a trap door. Descending requires sliding down two structural-columns-turned-fire-poles.

Much of the cooking and cleaning takes place at the rear counter, which is outfitted with an Evoke faucet by Kohler.

The wood-frame residence and studio are clad in vertical cedar siding—back then, a daring competitor to clapboard—instead of concrete to save costs. The effect is equally seamless, however: “If you drive by it fast enough,” Charles Gwathmey once said, “you still might mistake it for a concrete house.” Photo by Norman McGrath.

Nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, this 200-year-old home inspired one former copywriter to delve into architecture as a living. Inside, renovator and owner Tom Givone mixes vintage and industrial decor. Photo by Mark Mahaney.

Located in New Zealand, this compact prefab vacation home in the seaside community of Onemana Beach was a collaboration with architecture students from Auckland’s Unitec Institute of Technology.