Emilio Fuscaldo sits in the garden outside the brick house that he designed for himself and his partner, Anna Krien, on a small subdivided lot in Coburg, a suburb north of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Nic Granleese.

At over 500 square feet, the house’s green roof may be its most powerful—and most expensive—environmental statement. It cost $8,000 to waterproof, and $7,000 to landscape. Water from the roof feeds the toilet and the garden’s watering system, and the garden itself insulates the house and keeps gas bills low in winter. Photo by Nic Granleese.

Timber battens were used on north-facing windows to prevent excessive heat in the summer. The exterior is clad in Scyon’s Linea weatherboard and covered in Dylux’s Western Myall paint. Beneath the upper floor, a little nook makes for the perfect covered carport and storage spot for surfboards.

The large, naturally lit kitchen is the heart of the house. Messmate-clad cupboards and huge expanses of glass dominate the space where Angelucci uses the sink, Gorman works at the kitchen island, and Pepa and Hazel look on. Play in the courtyard between the kitchen and garage is easily supervised and enclosed from the alley behind the house.

In the main bathroom, Art Deco crown molding reminds residents of the house’s past. New fixtures include white laminate cabinets and sinks and faucets by Roger Seller.

Fuscaldo and Krien found an old workbench and used the wood to create the counter around the kitchen sink. Photo by Nic Granleese.

In the serene upstairs bathroom, Kennon paired Chinese Bluestone floors from Defazio with white ceramic wall tiles from local supplier Classic Ceramics. The tub is by Bette with a Roger Seller faucet, while the bathroom sink is by Argent with a Grohe faucet.

Wright Feldhusen Architects designed this house for a client that loves to swim. A lap pool connects the home to the ocean that lies beyond the property in Maroubra, Australia, a suburb of Sydney.

“It was very important to get the integration between the garden and the house right,” Maynard says. The architects worked with Bush Projects to strike that balance, laying down concrete pavers and planting native flora that add to the home’s relaxed feel. Permanent steel awnings protect windows from glare, while retractable fabric ones by Shadefactor offer residents optional shelter when they sit outside.

Teeland Architects designed this modern home on Australia’s Sunshine Coast in order to maximize views of the Pacific Ocean to the east as well as the surrounding forest to the north.

“The steep site lends itself to the ‘upside down’ configuration,” Harkness explains. “It certainly wouldn’t work as well if you could only access the house via the lower level, as this is through the bedroom zone, so we included two entrances. The upper one involves walking across a little bridge.”

Located on a steep site with limited suitable building ground, the firm decided to cantilever the home over the hillside, which has the effect of helping the structure blend in with the landscape.

Large gum trees offer a natural barrier for the house. Harkness designed the house's footprint in order to minimize the effect on tree roots. “The retained trees offer a sense of layering and age that new vegetation won’t be able to for a long time,” Harkness says.

An office nook and library can participate in the open plan or disappear behind pocket doors.

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.

Alex Gil and Claudia DeSimio created a duplex in an apartment building where they’d been renting for years in Brooklyn, New York, and set to work gutting the interior and adding a new rooftop addition clad in panels of Cor-Ten steel.

Stainless steel was selected for the kitchen countertops, and the pair relied on a local industrial sheet metal fabricator to help them prepare the material for residential application. The mix of warm and cool adds depth and dimension to the space.

In the living room, spare Scandinavian design takes center stage. Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chairs surround an Essay dining table by Cecilie Manz for Fritz Hansen; a mostly wood palette is enhanced by slate-gray brick around the fireplace. The paper lanterns throughout the home are a mixture of classics by Isamu Noguchi alongside those picked up in Japan and France.

A small country road borders the property to the west.

The cement exterior walls were painted in a dark color to blend in with the forest. Aluminum window frames add some texture to the facade.

The home’s program is divided into three zones—the uppermost living area, the lower-level master bedroom, and lower-level guest bedrooms. Double layer glazing and operable insect screens make it easy for the homeowners to spend more time outdoors on their private patios.

Windows and terraces were designed to frame specific vistas ranging from rural pastures to vineyards, olive groves, and the Hanging Rock outcrop. “The views are very controlled,“ Titania says.

Light from a new skylight pours into the home's entryway and living room. Steel columns and beams were added for structural reinforcement, and the couple left all beams, old and new, exposed.

"I always wanted to have my very own yellow brick road," says Viviana de Loera, whose favorite part of the home is the playful staircase. The original stairs and handrail were preserved in the renovation.

In the living room, and throughout the home, recessed "book nooks" are used to provide space-saving storage. The only seating in the room is a sleek black faux leather and steel daybed, fabricated by Montreal-based Surface Jalouse. Walls were removed to cohesively unite the living space and kitchen.

Jessica Helgerson Interior Design updated a split-level ranch house in Portland by introducing a clean white palette and vintage furnishings.

Rustic meets modern in this bedroom, where white track lighting beautifully illuminates a black wall and serves as accent lighting for vintage wall art.

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

The new, enlarged master bedroom is positioned where the old dining room once was. The clients wished to add an ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet. Throughout the design process, there was push and pull with reconciling the programmatic goals with a finite space. “Getting everything the clients needed into a pretty small was achieved through massaging small dimensions from one end of the house to the other,” says Jost.

Light streams into the bedroom through walls of floor-to-ceiling glass. The windows are triple-glazed, creating a tight, eco-friendly seal.

In this sleek kitchen renovation in San Francisco, the kitchen backsplash is an easy-to-clean glass backsplash that mimics the glossy finish of the surrounding white cabinets. Painters accomplished the high-gloss finish on the cabinets of a kitchen in San Francisco by applying a coat of paint, polishing it with very high-grit sandpaper, repeating the process for each layer, then topping it with three coats of clear varnish. "It’s like an auto body," says builder Jeff King. "It’s incredibly beautiful." The island provides shelving space and storage as well as a second sink, an is topped with pietra grigio marble.

The challenge of renovating an iconic midcentury house is surely a daunting one for any architect, but apply this formula to a Richard Neutra house, and the responsibility rises exponentially. This was the situation for Los Angeles–based architect Peter Grueneisen, founder and principal of Los Angeles–based Nonzero Architecture, who inherited the task of taking on significant updates to an already-altered Neutra—the 1949 Freedman House in Pacific Palisades, California.

Saved from demolition, stripped of awkward alterations, and faithfully restored, these rehabbed homes prove how timeless midcentury design can be.

The original home was preserved and renovated. In the front bedroom, a small window was replaced with a large painted-steel window seat, a favorite of the residents' grandchildren.

At the opposite end of the studio, Framework Architecture created a partially enclosed sleeping nook that is spacious enough to fit a full-size bed.

The large patio leads to a newly landscaped back garden. An expansive glass wall promotes seamless indoor-outdoor living. Inexpensive brick pavers were chosen for the rear patio; they offer textural contrast with the steel of the door, brick of the rear facade, and pale gray wood of the interior floors.