A vintage stool, a design that once was a staple of Greek classrooms, is tucked under the office desk on a landing leading to a balcony. The visual theme of the vertical wooden slats repeats itself here, including on a closet door. “They have no handles,” Ritenour says of the closet doors. “The lines are the door handles; you have to know to grab them.”

With its vertical wood slats, the garden fence helps unify the main house and the smaller shed.

Angeliki’s toys share space in the living room with an ETR coffee table and Molded Plastic Rocker chair, both by Charles and Ray Eames and purchased from Vitra. Behind the couch, 300 vertical oak strips add a decorative element.

Plant Wall Design created a custom, self-sustaining vertical green wall for the show.

Iason Vassiliou, Maria Voutsina, and their daughter, Angeliki, relax in a landing-level office at their apartment in Athens, Greece.

The once-sloping space now has climbing vines, a slatted fence, and foxtail agaves.

A grille of walnut slats, designed by Syme and made by the local millworkers MCM, delineates the edge of a new stair with open treads made of hot-rolled steel. Tall Bulthaup cabinets mark the edge of the dining area; Evans, a mechanical engineer, had them custom-made to conceal heating ducts that vent almost invisibly through the top edge.

The firm also designed a slatted screen next to the staircase.

The caged staircase was designed by architect Patrick Ousey, with whom Flournoy collaborated in the home’s design. Although initially unconvinced by the staircase detail, “it is a great example of how collaboration brings in different perspectives,” says Flournoy.

O’Sullivan designed the ceiling “to have a knitted or woven quality like that of wool or silk.” It dives down over the kitchen and dining area, eventually reaching a point at the entry that is low enough to touch. Here, resident Jes Wood leans against the onyx kitchen island while her daughter Ruby hangs out. Replica Jean Prouvé chairs surround the dining table; a vase by Bruce and Estelle Martin for Kamaka Pottery sits on top. The Reel table under the television is by Atelier Oï for B&B Italia.

A wall of three-inch-wide cedar slats contrasts with the tile backsplash.

In Bracebridge, Ontario, this cedar cabin with slatted wood screens treads lightly on the land. Read more about the project here.

The cedar screen that extends out from the dining and living rooms traces the line of the actual setback and reads not as a wall of the house but as a delineator of exterior space. The same material is used on the railing on the roof deck and offers a bit of privacy without, according to Braver, “looking like a stockade.”

The area includes a Wally planter from Woolly Pocket near the custom steel-and-glass doors.

Architect Georg van Gass adds a delicately poised cantilevered exterior wall that appears to slice the deck in half. Photo by: Elsa Young

Sited on a lake near Bracebridge, Ontario, this small-footprint family cottage was designed by Toronto firm superkül to integrate with its natural surroundings and minimize its environmental impact. The clients, a married couple, had mixed feelings about going completely modern with their cabin's aesthetic, so the architects created a sculptural wood form to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary. Photo by Shai Gil.

A small country road borders the property to the west.

Referencing the motif in the kitchen, wood slats also appear on the rear facade of the home; the variegated cedar planks both modulate light and provide a bit of privacy (above).The garden floor, which accommodates an additional living area and office, also offers access to the backyard.

TOUCH Showroom

The slatted siding is not just an aesthetic choice, but also a practical one that provides privacy. The master bath features touch-latch cabinets and fixtures by California Faucets.

Inside, a large planting feature designed by Michael Hellgreen of Vertical Garden Design clads the kitchen block. "The idea behind the vertical garden was to bring a natural element to the space, since the overall look was very minimal," architect Duarte Caldas says.

B&B Italia Outdoor’s Canasta sofa, by Patricia Urquiola, shares a shady patch in the ground-floor Carnegie Hill garden with three ginkgo biloba trees, an existing fountain with an Italian marble spout designed by Thomas Woltz, and bluestone pavers. The terrace is filled with woodland greenery: Leucothoe, ostrich ferns, and lady ferns.

An outdoor shower in the lower courtyard includes most of the materials that define the project, including Cor-Ten steel posts, horizontal ipe slats and decking, a custom seat and towel shelf set into a natural boulder, and concrete pavers. The yard includes many elements built for play, like a water feature embedded in a concrete wall that is fed by runoff rainwater collected from the breezeway roof.

The perennial plants on the green wall were plotted out as a piece of verdant abstract art. Edibles, like strawberry, thyme, and rosemary, are planted within children’s reach.

A sofa from Sutherland’s Poolside collection is covered in fabric from Perennials; the illuminated side tables are by Porcuatro for Tango Lighting. The screens are constructed from FSC-certified teak.

The master bedroom is shaded by exterior slats in cumaru, a sustainable tropical wood. Alazraki designed the custom bed frame.

A cedar-slat rain screen hangs on the facade of Denis Carpenter’s concrete house in Jersey City, softening its appearance and adding a modest dash of color. Carpenter keeps the awning-style windows open in the spring and summer, creating a draft that compensates for the lack of an air-conditioning system.

@urbansoule: The living wall is growing!

A variety of drought-tolerant plants cascade down a 10-foot-wide vertical garden wall near the entrance to the property.

The seventh-floor terrace, or “sky meadow,” is at the very top of the town house.

Vertical slabs under consideration for a project by Nakashima, among the horizontal wood-piles of the Pole Barn. Photo courtesy of Mira Nakashima, George Nakashima Woodworker, S.A. Read the interview.

Overall, the plant wall covers over 1,200 square feet of surface area.

Woltz describes the garden as a vertical progression up the six-story home: “You’re threading in and out of the building, so it’s a delightfully blurred experience, from garden to architecture and back.”

The home’s interior plan is organized around a water feature that's open to the sky and tiled with a bold blue-and-white chevron pattern.

Horizontal slabs of bluestone and vertical hardwood slats on the exterior of the house.

Russell-Clarke tends a small garden.