Nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, this 200-year-old home inspired one former copywriter to delve into architecture as a living. Inside, renovator and owner Tom Givone mixes vintage and industrial decor. Photo by Mark Mahaney.

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

Tom Givone's current weekend abode, nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, is—so far—his capstone project, a synthesis of personal taste, material experimentation, and historically sensitive restoration: a living laboratory for how to bring the vernacular past into the present.

Like a Murphy bed, the dining table tucks into the wall when not in use.

Adrian Jones and Allison Silverman sit at their reclaimed wood dining table. Eco-mindedness is a matter-of-fact part of everyday life for the couple and the designer, Garrick Jones. “Sustainability comes from flexibility and planning for the long term,” Garrick says. “This is not a glammed-up loft.”

Wrapped in Anne Sacks tile, the master bathroom is outfitted with fixtures by Kohler.

Envisioned as "an apartment within an apartment," the master suite is secluded from the rest of the home, accessible via the steel-and-glass catwalk. The owner's sanctuary features a built-in bed and credenza by City.

Eric Schneider and Michael Chen take in the space-efficient renovation.

A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”

Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman linger in the breezeway designed to draw eyes, and footsteps, from the driveway through the house to the gently sloping backyard and swimming pool beyond.

"I think an architect’s job is to celebrate what people really care about and simplify and streamline the rest.” —Page Goolrick

Alan Orenbuch and Bryan O’Rourke bought a house and shed, both designed by John M. Johansen, north of New York City in 2009. The shed became a refuge for their many houseguests after an extensive renovation that trimmed the structure to 385 square feet.

The 1967 beach house—which underwent a meticulous renovation by Bates Masi, the original architect’s firm—is listed as an exclusive holiday rental along the coast of Long Island in New York.

A 17-foot-tall freestanding play structure that designer Sharon Davis designed for her family in upstate New York can only be entered by climbing taut netting and entering through a trap door. Descending requires sliding down two structural-columns-turned-fire-poles.

In the kitchen, the cabinetry is walnut veneer with a weathered finish applied by cabinetmaker David Rogers. “The process involved sanding and rubbing in stain as well as adding a clear finish,” project architect Eero Puurunen says.

The home’s interior design, featured in Vogue and widely celebrated, was an unusual foray into residential surrealism by Le Corbusier and his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret.

The wood-frame residence and studio are clad in vertical cedar siding—back then, a daring competitor to clapboard—instead of concrete to save costs. The effect is equally seamless, however: “If you drive by it fast enough,” Charles Gwathmey once said, “you still might mistake it for a concrete house.” Photo by Norman McGrath.

The exterior mixes pale gray wood on the vertical volume, and fiber cement and black brick on the horiztonal volume. The three trees in the front yard were maintained during the renovation process.

Using natural materials is one way of bringing nature indoors. Oiled white ash floors and ceilings, along with Italian poplar and Lawson cypress joinery, are found throughout architect Andrew Simpson’s 538-square-foot home outside Wellington, New Zealand.

The great room in the 2,800-square-foot house that architect Drew Lang designed for his family in the Hudson Woods development north of New York City features generous amounts of white oak, which he says is his favorite material.

The Langs use an outbuilding as a rec room of sorts. "We call that the Grace Studio," Lang says. "It's designed so a car can pull in there, but we use it as more of a rec room and work space."

A yellow Pedestal filing cabinet by USM is tucked under a built-in desk in the guest bedroom. The leather-back chair was designed by Michael Robbins, a furniture designer based in New York's Hudson Valley.

The master bathroom features a cedar screen and quartzite tiles by Walker Zanger.

White oak makes a return appearance on the ceiling in the master bedroom.

The home is embedded in a hillside with five feet of soil above it. In addition to blending the structure into the landscape, the surrounding earth provides natural insulation.

Davis worked with contractor Ted Timmer to construct the playhouse on her family’s 30-acre property.

Other furnishings include a TMM floor lamp by Miguel Milá and a four-door credenza by Florence Knoll for Knoll.

Sliding doors partition a cozy screening room, where the resident can enjoy films and television in the comfort of custom designed furniture.

SPAN Architecture recast this two-level space in New York City—previously a photography studio—as a loft-like residence that is rich in materials. A blackened steel staircase, executed by general contractor Richard Kaleta, leads to the private quarters on the duplex's second floor. The walkway is composed of custom etched glass, stretched across an open atrium to below.

The backyard sports a sequence of raised flower and vegetable beds and two green roofs—one atop the workshop and other atop the back entrance.

An onyx "hearth" and a French limestone banquet form the perimeter of the warm living room. The carpet is from Tai Ping.

The polycarbonate interior is bounded by an exterior band of reclaimed white-cedar siding, open to the sky.

John Milich fabricated the slide in the freestanding treehouse.

The bed, usually scattered with Legos and toy cars, “is a big playground for the kids,” says Krastev.

Located at the rear corner of the installation, down a progressively narrowing hallway, and reached by a steep staircase, Eric Juron’s attic-like space is the most remote of the bedrooms. A window over his desk looks down through the gap between the Major and the Minor.