Portland permits each household up to three hens (no roosters), and in February 2009, Snyder had the plans in the works in Google SketchUp. Around the same time, the duo also got their chicks, housing them under lamps in the basement until the coop was completed. "We didn't know what they were going to be like," Snyder says. "But we didn't just get them for the eggs; they're really fun as pets, too."

The coop grew out of the garden. "We were so excited to have a yard," Snyder recalls. Martin started growing a vegetable bed and soon a friend and owner of Naomi's Organic Farm Supply suggested hens. "She got us excited about having chickens as an extension of our garden," Snyder says.

Snyder and Martin's move brought about an entirely different lifestyle--one that involved a house, a yard, and for Snyder, the chance to launch his own firm, Mitchell Snyder Architecture, after first acquainting himself to Portland, Oregon, as a designer at Scott Edwards Architecture. His first project on his own: a chicken coop for the couple's new feathery friends.

Ingrid shows off one of the chickens the family raises in their large and very productive coop.

Snyder finished the sleek-looking box with reclaimed cedar siding and ventilated it with two upper windows. On top, he added a green roof: "The living roof helps keep the coop cool, but mostly it was a chance to experiment and design something fun."

The struggle of accessing the inside, however, is offset by Snyder's smart design of an exterior hinged window for easy egg access.

Cassell wasn't kidding when he said they did serious research. "This was probably the most architectural brain power ever devoted to the problem" of housing chickens, he said. They analyzed a variety of factors, including how many square feet each chicken required, how do you collect eggs, and how you keep chickens safe from predators. Undoubtedly, the last factor was one they had not considered on previous projects.

Native Oregon sedums grow on the coop's green roof. Elsewhere in the garden, Martin harvests lettuce, radishes, snap peas, onions, carrots, potatoes, and a cornucopia of other vegetables.

The relatively spacious interior of the 60-square-foot coop came after the ARO architects delved in the literature, so to speak, and took time to examine the problem. "We made a project that works well for the birds, that's our obligation," says Cassell.

The concept was to create a series of folded shingles, textured pieces of aluminum that would complement the more rustic aesthetic.

Cassell, who ended up working on a chicken coop, synagogue, and football stadium addition all at the same time, conducted serious research and did a series of thought exercises to figure out how to approach the assignment. After examining a handful of approaches—"What if Breuer created a poured-concrete coop? What happens if we create computer scripting to generate ideas?"—Cassell and designer Ethan Feuer settled on a rustic, curved shelter of bent aluminum shingles—an edgy, 60-square-foot avian Airstream.

Architecture Research Office (ARO) built this sleek, aluminum-clad chicken coop for a Hamptons backyard, both for the challenge and for "the sheer ridiculousness" of the project.

Radiant heating, one of the structure's amenties, is a coop must-have, according to Cassell.

This photo is one of the images of "happy clients" Cassell says ARO has occasionally put on display in their office. The firm has received numerous calls for work, and requests for more coops, since this project went public. "It's sort of shocking how many calls we received," he says. "We did a big project about climate change for MoMA, and this chicken coop has earned us just as many calls."

Inside, the coop is lined with oriented strand board (OSB) and fitted with cans of food and water. Though Snyder designed a large door so he and Martin can access the inside of the coop to clean it, he forgot that to get to the door, they'd have to crawl through the chickens' run. "That's the one think I would have changed," he says. "We're both pretty short but we still have to crouch down to get through."

The 16-acre property includes room for the family’s horses and a portable chicken coop.

Suzanne and Brooks Kelley at the back of their 1,100-square-foot guest cottage.

In 1962, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Arthur Witthoefft won the AIA's highest honor for a home he built in the lush woods of Westchester County. Having fended off a developer's wrecking ball, Todd Goddard and Andrew Mandolene went above and beyond to make this manse mint again.

In the DoghousePaul and Shoko's dog, Mei, has lucked into a small prefab home of her own. Making use of a water jet cutter at his office, and using Adobe Illustrator as his design tool, Paul fashioned a series of panels that slot together without any nails or screws.

Just because your kitchen is on the smaller side doesn’t mean you can’t make it as efficient and effective as possible.

Their creative confections may ruin our diets, but we’re happy to be their taste testers anytime.

The Kelleys furnished the cottage with help from Suzanne’s daughter Betsy Burbank of Betsy Burbank Interiors. Classic modernist icons, such as a Saarinen Womb chair for Knoll, a Herman Miller Eames lounge chair, and an Eileen Grey E1027 side table look at home alongside present-day pieces such as an Encore sofa (which handily folds down into a sleeping surface) from Room & Board and a Doka rug designed and produced by Stephanie Odegard. The Wohlert pendant lights from Louis Poulsen were designed by Vilhelm Wohlert in 1959, but grouped as such, they appear distinctly contemporary.

“The client wanted an interior space where you could read the materiality of the building elements like understanding the ingredients in a recipe,” principal architect Elizabeth Webster explains. The extension features distinctly textured materials: an exposed timber ceiling, painted brick walls, and polished concrete floors. Warm lighting by Brinklicht unifies the space.

A double bowl sink is also quite self-explanatory, created either out of one large sink with a divider or from two distinct bowls framed into a single sink.

This dreamy, glass bedroom by the lake was created as an early prototype for the prefabricated greenhouse/she kits known as the Kekkilä Green Sheds.

Helsinki architect Ville Hara and designer Linda Bergroth collaborated on a prefab shed-meets-sleeping cabin, which can be assembled with little else than a screwdriver. Bergroth, inspired by nomadic yurt dwellers, wanted an indoor/outdoor experience for her property in Finland.

Van Beek’s extra space is home to her office. She works on a Tense table by Piergiorgio and Michele Cazzaniga and Flow chairs by Jean Marie Massaud, both for MDF Italia.

The architect placed the windows at Sabrina’s eye level so that she’d be able to see her son, Rocco, playing in the yard outside. "You can feel the seasons changing here," says Chiavelli. "I grew up three miles from here, outside in nature. This is a house for experiencing life."

If you're looking for the ultimate minimalist bed frame, a platform bed with edges that extend beyond the mattress allow it to double as a bedside table, eliminating the need for other furniture.

In the bedroom, an open closet with built-in shelving leads to the master bathroom. Thinking of all the loft's components as part of a whole was critical to the renovation. "The space is clean and simple, but that is only possible because of the attention paid to eliminating visual clutter that often comes from typical detailing," Breitner says. "The HVAC, floor outlets, door detailing, wall reveal base, recessed glazing channel, and radiator covers could look like clutter. We integrated it into the architecture." Photo by Frank Oudeman.

Like the pavilion holding the public spaces, the structure containing the bedrooms is clad in glass on the interior sides facing the courtyard, allowing a constant connection to the outside. Rodriguez (with dog Lupe) designed the steel stairs leading from the mezzanine-level home office to the master bedroom below. The stairs were fabricated by Austin-based Steel House MFG.

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.

Ryan Anderson of RAD Furniture designed the stools as well as the table and benches on the pool deck.

Another view of the deck.

Their daughters, Annapurna, left, and Siddartha, play with their dog, Anouck, beneath the kangaroo paws in the entry garden courtyard.

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