An Introduction to Modern Textiles: Kit out your furniture in luxurious silk or no-frills leather,; textiles can add just as much dimension to room as art, and can be equally collectible.

Designed for an artist and entrepreneur client, this guest house features lots of light, access to the outdoors, and an industrial vibe.

Lial A. Jones, director of the Crocker Art Museum.

The building’s specific orientation on the site, neither parallel nor orthogonal to the street, allows galleries to receive a maximum amount of natural light.

Skylights allow for the natural variability of light to occur and reproduce the lighting embraced by Long Island artists, showing the versatility of each piece of art depending on weather conditions.

In creating this place for visitors to rest and take in the lush landscape, Herzog & de Meuron's lead architect Ascan Mergenthaler says the built-in benches put the concrete walls on a more “human scale” without interrupting the streamlined façade.

"We really love to cook and much of our home life revolves around our kitchen. When we have friends over it’s great to buzz around here; it’s almost like a cooking show. We’re a very equal couple. We wanted the kitchen island to be a single form that we could both use. We can both cook and we can both wash the dishes. The whole thing is really easy to clean as it’s just one main surface that you can wipe down. So the preparation surfaces, the hob [cooktop], and the sink are accessible from both sides. It’s a simple, fun, form-follows-function principle: Store, wash, prepare, cook, eat."

Texas. The Cricket Trailer, made in Houston, can sleep up to two adults and two children. With integrated fresh water and greywater tanks along with a water heater, campers can live off-the-grid in the easily towable unit.

Most of the galleries at the new North Carolina Museum of Art are naturally daylit.

Doug Reed, landscape architect on the project, incorporated indigenous plants into the surrounding site; the large expanse of meadows will flourish in the coming years.

Classic butterfly chairs from Universal Patio Furniture are stationed by the pool. The mural is by street artist Morley, a close friend.

Produced by Emeco and designed by Konstantin Grgic of Munich-based KGID specifically for the museum, the Parrish Chair will be launched at Salone del Mobile in April of 2013.

Get a dose of art and the great outdoors by visiting the Audain Art Museum. The principals will confirm that this trip is worth driving outside of Vancouver to visit the museum in Whistler. Designed by Patkau Architects, the museum was placed behind the background of Canada’s expansive wilderness.

A wide corridor, essentially the spine of the building, is flanked by galleries, the café and gift shop, administrative offices and a 200-seat multi-purpose room.

The new East Building seen from Fine Arts Drive (North façade). Image courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum and Architectural Wall Systems. Photo by: Jacob Sharp.

Reclaimed pine and plywood make up the interior ceiling which is pitched at an angle and fitted with pipes to allow drainage.

From windows on either side of the administrative offices, visitors can view the inner-workings of the museum. As more of the permanent collection comes out of storage due to the increase in space, the offices will be a staging ground for curatorial and museum staff.

The café and gift shop are installations in and of themselves, capitalizing on the salvaged wood materials to create a more intimate environment within the museum.

Jef Raskin, designer of Bloxes and inventor of the Macintosh computer, circa 1970. “Architecture and the arts in 1970s L.A. contributed to the sense that anythingis possible here—that rules can be broken.” —Kimberli Meyer, director, Mak Center Photo by: David Wing

Living Moss wall in powder room created by Minarc.

Portrait courtesy IDEO.

The galleries feature sliding sun screens made from Richlite, a sustainable material that is made locally from recycled paper, organic fiber, and phenolic resin.

Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover, designed by Josh Baker for TASCHEN. The book, which covers the work of another art director who began his career at Columbia Records in 1940, is limited to 1,500 copies.

Recalling the arched construction of Roman architects, Kahn's tubular museum design utilizes a row of cycloid barrel vaults, lined with reflective skylights that funnel natural light into the lengthy galleries.

The structure features a large atrium and windows that overlook the landscape.

Also a designer of museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Barnes took on a smaller-scale commission in 1990 that was close to his heart—building a new home for Westchester's Katonah Museum of Art, where he was a trustee.

Scaife galleries at Carnegie Museum of Art "In one of this country’s great art museums, the Scaife galleries were an addition in 1979 designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes," Moss says. "The front entry plaza includes a classic Richard Serra steel sculpture." Photo by Tom Little.

With more than 400 objects, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's contemporary design collection is among the largest of its kind in North America. Photo by Eric Lubrick.

Iran Museum of Modern Art, Shiraz, Iran (1969–1970) The concept for this never-completed museum, which got as far as the model phase, consisted of a stepped series of rooms rising out of the rocky plateau above the Iranian city.

The 9,000-square-foot main gallery showcases contemporary design objects since 1980. Photo by Eric Lubrick.

SCAD Museum of Art (Sottile & Sottile: 2014) Inspired by the masonry ruins of an antebellum freight warehouse, the architectural and design team synthesized the 19th-century structure with their vision for a contemporary museum, creating a sleek hybrid in downtown Savannah. It’s “an academic building that combines a museum of contemporary art with university studios and classrooms, an incredible asset to students of art and design,” according to architect Christian Sottile.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City Steven Holl Architects, 2007

Installation view of Daniel Arsham's The Future was Then. For his SCAD exhibition, Daniel Arsham took a long, narrow corridor of the museum and transformed it into a dizzying installation. His Wall Excavation, made of styrofoam and joint compound, is an example, he says, of making "architecture do things it's not supposed to do."

Misa Lund of wHY Architecture talked about the importance of enabling design in cultural settings and showed slides of the firm’s planned pedestrian bridge for the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Targeted for completion in Spring of 2015, it will offer visitors alternate access to the museum’s main entrance, while preserving the integrity of the building’s Neoclassical-style façade.

Chair One by Konstantin Grcic. Photo by Eric Lubrick.