These ceramic planters hang from the ceiling, so there's no need to take up precious counter space. Click here for more information on these upside down planters.

A graduate of the Delft University of Technology, Elise Luttik focused on designs to be produced with a 3-D printer. For Salone, the Amsterdam-based designer worked with a traditional material. The Upside down table is made from ash wood and can be used as either a storage basket, stool, or side table—clever indeed.

Clown-lovers will enjoy this head-turning outdoor pot by Dear God It's Me Isaac Studio.

Also from Boskke, the Sky Planter contains a self-watering mechanism to keep the plant healthy, while suspended from the ceiling. This is an ideal option for small spaces, as it declutters tabletops or floors from planters. According to Fehrenbacher, “This hanging 'Sky Pot' takes the idea of a traditional plant pot and literally turns it upside down, making a great, fun, statement piece for a home.”

One of the more impressive outdoor exhibits was this upside-down helicopter.

exterior of the centre georges pompidou paris

A detail shot of the stair, which spirals up and down throughout the house.

Waechter Architecture reimagined a traditional gabled home in southeast Portland without significantly altering the original building. A simple coat of red paint abstracts the century-old structure, creating a residential work of art.

The clients and design team chose to forego an open floor plan in favor of defined, separated spaces. In this scheme, the vertically oriented spaces act as a cinematic "hard-cut" to their horizontal counterparts. The custom hot rolled steel kitchen, one of these vertical transition spaces, receives light from above through a Velux skylight. A GE Profile Induction cooktop and oven and Miele refrigerator complete the space.

House O, designed by Jun Igarashi, forgoes hallways and interior doors in favor of casually interconnected rooms.

Marcus Lee and Rachel Hart’s wonderful wooden home sits at the end of a quiet London lane and politely turns its back on the workshops next door.

Corporate high-flyers and admitted neat freaks Bruce Thatcher and Kirsty Leighton couldn’t handle the chaos anymore. Read more about this Victorian terrace in London here.

“In this house, the roof is the only facade—the rest is dissolved beneath it.” —Architect Aljoša Dekleva

At the entry looking upward towards a Velux skylight, a vertical "sleeve" is made of stacked end grain plywood. The theme of vertical and horizontal architectural elements providing different environmental perspectives carries through to the rest of the home. Horizontal forms look out to the lake, while the vertical columns look up the sky.

Seen in the architectural context of its London neighborhood, the house is all the more extraordinary: compact, materially innovative, and easy on the eyes.

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.

Photo by Patrick Barta

"The colonnade arches are turned upside down as they are better for sitting in and for playing (bombies into the pool and chasing through the garden)," say the architects.

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

At their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architects Cory Buckner and Nick Roberts used permeable pavers to help the soil retain moisture.

Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Many tiny home dwellers develop eco-friendly habits when they downsize—like adopting a capsule wardrobe, carpooling more, and harvesting rainwater.

The clients insisted that none of the trees on the property be disturbed, so Kevin Alter and his team at Alterstudio Architecture built a deck and an overhang around two of them.

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.

Another view of the deck.

Architect Gregory Phillips connected the original house to a new modern extension that doesn’t interfere with the surrounding houses. “I try to be true to the location,”he explains, “so it doesn’t seem like some spaceship has landed.”

“The house is a piece of origami made out of triangular shapes, which we then draped over the landscape,” says Arbel.

Alterstudio Architecture of Austin designed this house in the Texas capital for a young family of four.

Located in Aarhus, Denmark, Villa R is a minimalist, serene structure clad in zinc panels. "The objective was to create a house that brings the forest inside through large glass panels—and create an ever-changing seasonal backdrop for the interior living spaces," stated the architecture firm, C.F. Møller, of the 3,200-square-foot abode.

Karen White, David MacNaughtan, and their sons, Griffin and Finlay, hang out on the front deckof their narrow home in Toronto’s leafy Roncesvalles neighborhood. A narrow modernist composition of glass panes and purple brick, the house slips like a bookmark between two older buildings, a bright three-story abode on a lot narrower than most suburban driveways. Photo by Dean Kaufman. Read more about the small house here.

Large clerestory windows face the street at the Higashibatas’ house in Tokyo, optimizing both privacy and natural light within.

Mike Kurokawa and Paul Fishman set out for the beach from their house in the Puna region of Hawaii. A bridge leads from street level to the upper floor of the house, which is situated in a natural depression, or kipuka.

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.

The Desert House located in Desert Hot Springs is a steel structure designed with large expansive windows, and concrete flooring.

In consultation with the clients, Alterstudio opted to clad the house in local cypress rather than imported, FSC-certified ipe.

House NA from 2011 has glass walls and a steel structural frame containing a matrix of tiny rectangular rooms and outdoor terraces, each on a separate floor level linked by stairs, ladders, or movable steps. Hemmed in by neighboring homes on three sides and a narrow street in front, the house belongs to a couple clearly at ease with Tokyo’s urban condition.