One corner of the ground floor is reserved for a “hot house,” which is glazed from floor to ceiling with windows and doors. The space is light-filled and airy, with a tall ceiling and woven rugs.

Cozy on up to the bespoke bar and enjoy a hand-crafted cocktail with views of Antwerp.

The bar at August is a luxe, comfortable setting in which to relax after work or to enjoy a drink with friends on the weekend.

By resisting the urge to fill every inch of the tiny house, the team retains a spacious feel.

In London’s Greenwich Peninsula—a part of London's undergoing cultural facelift—boutique real estate brand Aucoot and the team from UK magazine Cereal styled this 1,793-square-foot, three-bedroom penthouse apartment, transforming it into a simple, yet stunning home.

To most eyes, Ezequiel Farca’s 1970s-style concrete home in Mexico City looked like a teardown. Even the lot itself—shallow and crammed against a steep hillside—wasn’t particularly alluring. But Farca saw through all the restraints to create a spa-like refuge in one of the world’s most energetic cities. "It’s is such a hectic place. You’re bombarded by so much information the moment you step into the streets," says Farca, who first gained prominence as a furniture and interior designer. "So we envisioned this house as a retreat, a kind of a temple." The rooftop courtyard is lined with a verdant mix of indigenous plants, including banana trees, palm trees, lion’s claw, Mexican breadfruit, and native vines. The chaise longues were designed for Farca’s EF Collection.

In the outdoor dining room, wire chairs by Harry Bertoia for Knoll surround a mango wood table made by a local carpenter, Diego Madrazo.

Cedar rainscreen in a range of widths and color stains makes up the facade. The low-slung exterior was designed to respond to the surrounding topography. "The design of the house provides a subtle, and at times, dramatic response to the open Midwestern terrain and offers a contemporary interpretation of 'prairie style' architecture," El Dorado Inc principal Josh Shelton says.

To say more precisely, something was disturbing it. Before the final version of Grey House there was a pretty banal skeleton with small symmetrical window frames.

Known for furniture and interior design, Ezequiel Farca transformed a 1970s-style concrete home in Mexico City into a tranquil sanctuary. The temple-like retreat blends into the hilly Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood with its pale gray-green hue and strategic plantings, which soften the boundaries between house, garden, and street. The Recinto lava stone patio accessed through the living room holds teak outdoor furniture designed by Farca himself.

"The longer I work as an architect, the more I want to deepen my skills as a gardener," says Yuri Zagorin Alazraki, founder of the Mexico City firm ZD+A. In building his own house in Mexico City’s Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, his commitment has produced results that appear miraculous. In fact, they grow out of a carefully choreographed series of bravura design moves.

Scattershot openings in the single-story home omit a soft glow at dusk.

An Almond bathtub by Porcelanosa is accented by a tub filler from Hansgrohe.

Detail of new window inside old steel window frame.

The kitchen remodel included creating more space and installing a single-plane island that served as the perfect spot for the family’s children to do everything from eating to studying schoolwork. Photo by Mariko Reed.

A single crepe myrtle, which sports red blossoms in summer, defines the courtyard.

In an effort to create an abundance of light and air flow throughout the space, the home follows an L-shaped floor plan that wraps around outdoor areas. “We designed several open spaces, each with a different feel: the garden and pool, the terrace, and the back patio,” says Cesarman. “The idea was to reduce the area to the most basic and essential [elements].”

VIEW OF THE COURTYARD AS SEEN FROM LIVING AND DINING ROOM

A single Pigeon Pendant.

Single Shot (Seattle, Washington) Single Shot, designed by Greg Quist, possesses a polished sensibility usually reserved for restaurants. Ample lighting and a marble-topped bar create a cleanly environment at this intimate, 40-seat taproom in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Rock stands in the doorway to the boys’ bathroom, which is lined with semi-gloss Modern Dimensions tiles from Daltile. “We wanted it to be playful,” Hufft says, “so we chose each color and laid out the tile distribution in Photoshop.”

Inside the house, the speed of the planet’s rotation is indicated by the rate of the light beam’s movement over the floor and walls. When the Burkes first moved in, the speed of shifting light made them dizzy.

Solid European oak flooring by DuChateau runs throughout the home. The sculpture is by Jorge Yázpik.

The ceiling lights are Wever and Ducré.

Farca furnished the living room with a Serge Mouille three-arm floor lamp, custom sofas from EF Collection, and Surface tables by Vincent Van Duysen for B&B Italia.

A couple—he an entrepreneur working in logistics, she a stay-at-home mother—bought an 8,500-square-foot house here and approached JSa, a Mexico City-based architectural firm, with the idea of remodeling it. The house was poorly sited on its lot in a manner that drew very little natural light. The architects sized it up and quickly realized that the best solution would be to tear it down and start from scratch.

Oak veneer lines the stairwell in between the master bedroom and the children’s wing.

Although the two apartments were stacked vertically, their individual systems and layout were quite different. The limited horizontal overlap meant that the owners and design team had to give careful thought to the connective elements, and how the family would ultimately circulate through the home. One of the key pieces to the puzzle was finding a place for the interior stairs. Says Bangia Agostinho principal Anshu Bangia, “There was a challenge to find an appropriate location to cut a new stair opening between the apartments, and then have the new stair coordinate with the existing one to form a logical sequence of circulation between the three levels.”

The master bedroom, painted in Whisper by Comex, sports a bed that Farca custom-designed as part of his EF Collection.

Judith and Maple at work in the living space, which has a deck off the side and a view of the neighbors' house.

In the sitting area, two leather Paulistano chairs by Paulo Mendes da Rocha top a rug by Yerra; the wall paint is Comex.