"It only cost about $48,000 to build, which was incredibly cheap," says Turner of the Stealth Barn. "We got the Timber Frame Company to supply the shell, then we clad it and fitted out the interior and windows ourselves. The idea was to take the archetypal black tar-painted agricultural building and make an almost childlike icon of that."

The second-floor office is housed inside a rounded rectangle of concrete that the architect inserted on top of the old farmhouse.

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.

With a few small changes and regular maintenance, existing buildings are some of the most sustainable around.

In this kitchen, an exposed brick wall stands out against the milky smoothness of the marble tile floors.

For a bit of elevation in the overwhelmingly horizontal compound, step onto the deck of the Stealth Barn. A strip of mowed grass delineates a path between the two structures; otherwise the grasses grow wild.

At a fraction of the size of Ochre Barn, Stealth Barn is just one clear shot down the hall from the kitchen to the bedroom. OSB is an even stronger part of the interior here evoking bales of hay.

The architect chose granite for the house’s base, zinc for its roof, and Scandinavian pinewood for cladding—all materials that complement the nearby gray stone building.

A Renovated Farmhouse in Denmark: This beautiful renovation has a classic Scandinavian feel and soft, but simple color scheme. From The Style Files.

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.

The Floating Farmhouse’s semitransparent addition has a roofline that matches the pitch of the original 1820s farmhouse. A porch, tucked under the side eaves, is cantilevered over a stream that runs through the property. Ikea loungers are illuminated from the interior by commercial gymnasium lights repurposed as pendant lamps.

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.

The north wall of the IST home functions as a cut-away, offering a peek inside an efficient yet cozy dwelling. Architect Peter Jurkovič built the home for a woman who had sold her flat in the big city of Bratislava and wanted something that reminded her of the village life of her childhood.

The house’s new lime plaster walls, seen here in the courtyard, contrast with the old brick wall that divides the house from Kolasiński’s adjoining carpentry shop. Though the house itself is small, the outdoor spaces and furniture studio bring its total square footage to nearly 11,000 square feet.

For the bedroom, the designer selected a bed by Muji and floor lamps by Lightyears.

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

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.

“A critical aspect of the project was the incorporation of natural light and ventilation within a broad footprint,” Simpson says. Conventionally private areas, like bedrooms and bathrooms, are therefore reinterpreted with more openness in mind. For instance, this bathroom’s skylights mirror those found throughout the rest of the property. The bathtub, basins, and showerhead were all purchased at the Australian retailer Reece.

The renovation revealed a 30-foot-deep well beneath the bedroom, which the team half-jokingly considered turning into a fish tank. Instead, they opted for a simple bedroom with plenty of built-in storage.

Designer Jeff Sand’s Universal Chairs combine his love for classic French café chairs with an appreciation for “the beautiful metal casings on an old Moto Guzzi.” Sand Studios also designed the dining table and pendant lamp.

Among the first Passive Houses in France, this bamboo-clad farmhouse by the Parisian firm Karawitz Architecture only uses a tenth of the energy a conventionally constructed home does. Photo by Nicholas Calcott.

The modern staircase was built with the same salvaged wall planks that are used as flooring throughout.

Shibata made the 10-person dining table using $130 sawhorse legs from Maruki Wood Products Company topped with a sheet of birch plywood. A hole in the sliding wall fits over the table, enabling it to be used in both the library and the meeting room. malki.jp A movable wall clad in wainscoting on one side slides along tracks in the dining-room ceiling, dividing the room into a meeting space and a library. The Shiro Simple Modern Pendant lights can be easily removed and reattached after moving the wall. vanilladesign.jp

Donut sits on a custom bed made by craftsman Pete Deeble. “Above the bed I hung a vintage Evelyn Ackerman textile discovered on eBay,” says Frank.

The floor plan shows three of the house’s four levels; the basement level contains a wine cellar and laundry room.

This barn-like residence enjoys sweeping views from all sides to the picturesque Northern California landscape that surrounds it: Mayacamas Mountains, roaming sheep, and Monterey pines. An L-shaped ipe deck connected the main residence to an art studio and forms a cozy courtyard, complete with pool.

Before the Moumings built their house, they camped out on their six acres while preparing the land for farming, planting grass and clover in place of soybean stubble. As the house arose from its foundation, soil-fixing plants grew from seed. Now the couple can focus on growing food.

Seen from a distance, the farmhouse has a time-honored quality, though it’s still clearly a product of the 21st century.