The sauna is a decidedly Scandinavian touch.

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.

Glass folding doors from Panoramic Doors reach nine-and-a-half feet high to open the kitchen to the courtyard. “It's such a unique feature, especially in Brooklyn,” says Slocum. “You rarely ever see that type of thing.”

Hidden Storage The Murphy bed in the guest bedroom sits behind Montague’s desk, allowing the compact room to function comfortably for working and sleeping at different times. It’s made with customized millwork, Häfele bed hardware, and an Ikea mattress. When it’s open, it reveals hidden shelving. hafele.com ikea.com

Two-year-old Annika and five-year-old Soren make music on the "nap swing," a popular hangout spot for kids and adults alike.

If you're looking for the ultimate minimalist bed frame, a platform bed with edges that extend beyond the mattress allow it to double as a bedside table, eliminating the need for other furniture.

Green roofs are aesthetically pleasing and have multiple positive environmental benefits, even if they are small in terms of square footage. Here, a green roof blooms atop the detached garage of a home.

Alex designed the entire home based on a 24-inch grid. "I was in New York and Josh [Howell, the contractor] was up here in Maine, so I tried to make it very easy; you could always tell what size everything was going to be."

The three-bedroom home is connected to a dock house, garage, and vegetable garden by a network of wood walkways and decks.

An attentive sensitivity to site played into nearly every aspect of both the exterior andinterior spaces of the home. Architect Peter Rose collaborated with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, who worked to craft and maintain the wild, organic feel of the environs. Will Parry, a local builder, custom-fabricated all of the sustainably harvested Spanish cedar-and-glass windows and skylights throughout. Here, a vertical-swinging window at the end of the entry hallway opens directly to a lush expanse of vegetation.

Stainless steel with a mirror polish covers the “moving wall” in the dressing room, which opens to one of the bedrooms.

Ample glazing blurs the distinction between indoors and out.

Omer Arbel, the creative director at industrial design firm Bocci, was given three parameters when he began designing a home for his colleague Randy Bishop: Create a “profound” connection between the internal and external spaces; build only one level; and, most crucially, utilize a wealth of 100-year-old beams salvaged from a series of warehouses owned by Bishop’s ancestors.

White tiles envelop the en suite master bathroom.

The wooden box is as functional as it is finely crafted, with room for clothes up top. Each niche holds treasures from travels, family keepsakes, books, and more.

Architect Christi Azevedo, along with homeowners Lorena Siminovich and Esteban Kerner, transformed this 1,485-square-foot, multilevel, mid-century maze into a modern and efficient family home in just three months. “It was the craziest frickin’ thing,” laughs Azevedo. “It was like a Tetris game, putting it all together, trying to squeak out space wherever we could.” Purchased as if straight out of 1955, the home is now the ideal small space for Siminovich and Kerner to raise their young daughter, Matilda.

"We wanted to keep the exterior walls uncluttered, so you can focus on the views, the light, and the air," says Rosa Garneau, the owner of a 650-square-foot co-op in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. To achieve a clean look, everything gets tucked away, including the mattress and bedding. When looking for the best Murphy bed, look for one that can accommodate basic bedding without having to remove and store it daily.

The folding glass door extending the living space with a wood-lined deck is from Marvin.

From the deck you really get a sense of the two main volumes of the house. One faces inward and the other out, a fine representation of Boone's ideas about the division between work space and living space.

This giant bi-fold door opens up to a covered boardwalk-style walkway and the backyard.

Halfway through a pregnancy isn’t exactly the ideal time to buy a house. So after spending months scouting San Francisco’s Victorians and turnkey cookie-cutters—and almost defecting to the East Bay—Lorena Siminovich and Esteban Kerner decided to put the hunt on hold until after their baby was born. But then one afternoon Kerner, a design director with Old Navy, logged on to Craigslist on a whim. He saw a below-market listing for a single-family home in Noe Valley, their neighborhood of choice. With crumbly brick cladding, peeling rust-brown paint, and rotting garage doors, the house lacked curb appeal. But the Argentine couple was drawn to the interior. "It was amazing and strange at the same time," says Kerner of the 1,485-square-foot, multilevel, midcentury maze. "Mind-boggling," adds Siminovich. "It was just a knot of doors and a series of insane stairs to nowhere."

The table is situated in front of the house’s rear wall of skyscraper glass. Laminate kitchen cabinets by Ikea are framed in wraparound bluestone; the 48-inch commercial range is by FiveStar.

Visiting a Manhattan apartment designed by Tim Seggerman is like sitting inside one of Nakashima’s cabinets, a metaphor realized most fully in an ingenious "library"—really a glorified cubby with a banded maple ceiling, conjured from a free space adjacent to the loft bed.

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Wilkin and Pini hired Longma Joinery to build custom cedar windows and doors for their 270-square-foot addition.

New accordion doors create a fluid connection to the backyard.

The rear exterior was also transformed—it now has a designated outdoor kitchen, dining terrace, and lounge area. Folding doors connect the breakfast room to the new exterior spaces for easy flow between.

This wooden staircase doubles as kitchen shelving in the English designer's home. Tyler hired David Restorick, a furniture maker and friend, to build a staircase that doubles as display space for Tyler's vast collection of colorful cookware.

A wood-lined outdoor shower adds a modern touch to one of the decks.

At street level, the wooden garage door opens its toothed maw.

A polychrome facade made of salvaged, 100-year-old barnwood gives this small, lofted cottage space its unique character. Its copper roof is also reclaimed, a lucky Craigslist find from a local remodel. Though the structure has a footprint of just 11' x 14', it provides a useful space to entertain, catch up on work, or relax.

A hinged door can conceal the kitchen to create a more formal dining space.

Unpacking the deck and awning reveals a glass wall that opens the trailer to its environment, wherever that may be. The ATLAS can be hitched to a truck to travel easily from campsite to campsite.