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."

Though the fire pit was “kind of an after-thought,” says Hannah, the family uses it year-round. “In the spring and fall, it warms you up on cool nights, and in the summer, it just adds ambience.”

The family sits around, and under in the case of four-year-old Kaz’ma, the sunken table for a snack. Makiko made the covers of the mats her mother sent from Japan by hand. The black lamp is from Ikea.

Roberto Burneo designed this home for his eldest niece, her husband, and their three young children in a suburb outside Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The house is set on a flat expanse of land with fruit trees, and Burneo's design "guides the social areas inward in order to link them to the gardens.”

In their concrete-walled courtyard, Yuka and Aaron watch as twins Emerson and Jasper, daughters Maude and Mirene, and Alfie the dog play. The house is painted in Black Bean Soup by Benjamin Moore, a color in keeping with the period of the original architecture. The garden was designed by Lauren Hall-Behrens of Lilyvilla Gardens.

Burneo took advantage of the perpendicular orientation of the volumes to create outdoor spaces that look out to the gardens.

Sawn wood planks add texture to the interior walls.

Burneo oriented the house in a pair of perpendicular volumes. The ground floor houses the public areas, including a study, while the top volume, housing the bedrooms and a family room, is oriented north-south, allowing for warm sunlight and a visual orientation toward the gardens.

The custom kitchen counters are concrete, and the yellow dining chairs add a welcome splash of color.

Burneo added exposed brick to his palette of interior materials.

The family room is situated at the apex of the house, with picturesque views that extend up the meticulously landscaped north slope. The concrete floor sits just low enough that the main elements of the scene—the succulent garden and large limestone ledges—are at eye level. A bank of NanaWall folding windows breaks up the fourth wall.

“There is a lot of glass so you can enjoy the view and the outdoor lifestyle even inside,” Henrik explains. “You live in the middle of the weather somehow. It’s a really harsh environment, as you have these southwesterly winds blowing through the house. But it is really beautiful as well.”

Get the whole family involved in the kitchen, whether it be teaching young ones a tried-and-true recipe or exploring a new dish together.

The family are avid fans of watersports of all stripes: “Windsurfing and the stand-up paddling board—the beach is right outside,” says Henrik. “It’s a fun house.”

This room can be a family room, office, or guest suite. The flooring is the same throughout: Riva Floors, Engineered Wood Select Grade, in Crystal Thunder, and the couch is from Restoration Hardware. Unseen is the foosball and ping pong tables.

Miha hangs out with Kea, the dog, on the wooden deck that extends the living space outdoors.

Landscape designer Jay Griffith recreated the area between the house and the studio.

James works on his balsa-wood blimp in the family workspace, illuminated by a Kelvin LED Table Lamp from Flos.

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

BSC designed suspended powder-coated and walnut open shelves to demarcate the kitchen from the rest of the living space. The detailing on the cast-iron columns inspired the perforated pattern of the semi-transparent screens.

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.

The family’s two cats, Baron and Jula.

The Baumann family residence in Gowanus, Brooklyn, is all geometry up front, with a rectilinear grid of steel and cypress comprising the structure’s double facade.

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.

Parents Mitra and Sasan Nakhshab join sons Nima and Soheil (with daughter, Sofia) and Soheil’s girlfriend, Susana Mora (with son, Shayan), on the main floor.

This detail shot shows how Burneo anchored the laminated slats for the exterior wood screen to a concrete slab.

Have your children help you go through their book collections and pick out what books they haven't read yet. If you are able to safely leave your home, you can coordinate curbside dropoff book exchanges with friends.

The door to Eoghan Mahony’s office is set on a caster and has a hinge that runs the entire ten-foot height.

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

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.