Living Rooms/ Lounges/ Spaces

A staircase leads to a small mezzanine where Minh has his office. Because the roof above it slopes downward, the space has a cave-like quality that the couple immediately appreciated in Hao’s plans. “It’s very special to have this archetypal element of sanctuary and refuge in our home,” says Emylia.

Large cutouts take the place of glass windows and entire walls, inviting sunlight, breezes, and even rain to enter. The roots of a princess vine drop from the roof garden to the ground floor.

Verena and Steve commune with nature in the new pavilion, where a wall made of wood salvaged from the old roof slides open, exposing the room to the outdoors.

A large, curved window in the living room looks out onto the garden and echoes the archways in the central hall.

Custom built wooden shelving lining one of the hallways provides ample storage.

Clerestory windows and sliding glass doors span across the main living room.

The architects added a cork wall behind the bed for a layer of warmth within the space.

Daniela and Francisco are a psychologist and engineer by day (respectively), but they’d almost always rather be outdoors. They’re avid hikers and passionate about sustainability, so when they had the chance to build an off-the-grid vacation home on a rustic lakeside patch of land in Southern Chile, they jumped on it.

Rubén Picado likes to spend his free time tending to the plants on the terrace.

"When not being used as my studio, the living room is transformed into a meeting space with modular furniture designed to adapt to any occasion. The sofas can face each other or form an L-shape, depending on the vibe you want to create,

The salmon-tinted kitchen, starring a cinematic window, was transplanted from the family's old Ankara residence.

Bleached walnut replaced cold concrete floors in this family-friendly renovation of a dated loft in West Chelsea’s late 19th-century Spears Building. To make the loft feel more welcoming, architects Ravi Raj and Evan Watts toned down the heavy industrial elements of the 2,700-square-foot loft with a warmer and lighter palette and added custom built-ins for a streamlined look. At the same time, the loft still preserves much of its historic appeal—from the exposed brick seen throughout the home to the oversized openings left intact.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves and storage bookend a cabinet that conceals the television.

Raj and Watts extended the fireplace column to the ceiling to highlight the room’s expansive scale, and had it coated in concrete plaster. It was important to retain the wood-burning fireplace—a rarity in the city—but “we wanted to re-clad it in a material that also spoke to the industrial past of the building,” says Raj.

The old wooden ceiling beams in the dining room were purchased from a local Amish farmer and painted white. Warm timbers tie the home together.

Cedar windows and details add to the natural warmth and texture of the interiors.

Mystery novels line the shelves that conceal the hidden door, hinting that there's more than meets the eye.

The sculptural chimney breast and 60-inch void skylight accentuate the height of the room.