September 2010

Porchdog (Tyler Residence)
Marlon Blackwell Architect
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, we check in at Marlon Blackwell’s Porchdog house in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Photo © Timothy Hursley

August 2010

La Brea Avenue Residence
Jayna Cooper
Tour the L.A. home that 27-year-old architect Jayna Cooper designed and built for herself.

Photo © Jayna Cooper

July 2010

Gull House
Lautner Associates
Lautner Associates designs a house to honor and worship the ocean.

Photo © Bowman Group

June 2010

Chicago Townhouse
Alexander Gorlin Architects
We look at a Chicago townhouse by Alexander Gorlin Architects that floats a master bedroom inside a main space.

Photo © Michael Moran

May 2010

Shavano Park House
McKinney York Architects
McKinney York faced many restrictions on the exterior of a San Antonio house. But the firm made those challenges work.

Photo © Thomas McConnell

April 2010

Walters’ Residence
Tonic Design
A design/build house by Tonic Design/Tonic Construction is expected to obtain LEED Silver with its technologically advanced systems, sensitive building placement, and other features.

Photo © Todd Lanning, Gravitation Studios

March 2010

Artreehouse
Della Valle Bernheimer
Brooklyn firm Della Valle Bernheimer creates a treehouse-like lake retreat in New Fairfield, Connecticut.

Photo © Richard Barnes

February 2010

Nikaia House
Christina Zerva Architects
This home by Greek architect Christina Zerva may be built atop a site inhabited since the tenth millennium B.C., and may look out at Mount Olympus, but it is anything but ancient in its design.

Photo © Mihajlo Savic

January 2010

House H.
Susanne Nobis
German architect Susanne Nobis designed this single-level house to interact with the environment.

Photo © Roland Halbe

December 2009

Vashon Island Residence
Domestic Architecture
Seattle-based Domestic Architecture creates a surprising mix of quaint and stark.

Photo © Jason Schmidt

November 2009

East Windsor Residence
Alterstudio Architects, LLP
Alterstudio Architects creates a house with 270-degree views of green hills and downtown Austin.

Photo © Paul Finkel – Piston Design

October 2009

Island 254 C
Peter Hamilton Architects
One building and one sleeping cabin were allowed on this acre-plus lot in Toronto’s Georgian Bay, but the family building a retreat there was a couple with six children and three grandkids. Architect Peter Hamilton made it work by designing separate-yet-connected volumes that give privacy and community, without violating code or local aesthetic.

Photo © Peter Hamilton

September 2009

Alpers - Jannetta Residence
Paul Lukez Architecture
Architect Paul Lukez completely renovates and expands a family’s 1960’s home by 1,400-square feet, integrating the Dover, Massachusetts, house with its hilly site.

Photo © Peter Vanderwarker

August 2009

House in Kohoku
Torafu Architects
Shaped like a cluster of barnacles, this house in Kohoku, a suburb of Yokohama, Japan, by Torafu Architects, doesn’t exactly blend in with its neighbors. What it does do is provide a forward-thinking empty nester couple with a unique home that has quadrants that are both separate from and connected to each other.

Photo © Daici Ano

July 2009

Bridge House
CCS Architecture
Talk about resting gently on the land. Australian architect Max Pritchard has designed a narrow, 1,200-square-foot box that is literally in the trees—spanning a creek and sitting on two steel trusses. The home was built with sustainability as a primary goal, including solar cells, passive heating and cooling, and recycled and recyclable materials.

Photo © Sam Noonan

June 2009

Seadrift Residence
CCS Architecture
A 1,900-square-foot house by CCS Architecture becomes a beach retreat for a three-generation San Francisco family. Casual, simple, elegant, and functional, the home’s open plan is tailored to family gatherings and outdoor living. The home opens to decks and courtyard spaces, while glass railings, skylights, and lots of windows take advantage of views and sun.

Photo © Matthew Millman

May 2009

Screen House
Randy Bens Architect
Architect Randy Bens transformed a small 1950’s bungalow in British Columbia by adding a story and a deck. The project knits together old elements and new with simple materials and gestures that update and modernize the home while staying sympathetic to the original structure’s context.

Photo © Roger Brook

April 2009

Montecito Residence
Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects
A house in a fire-prone California canyon, by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, is designed to harvest the sun and the wind—just the climatic conditions that make the site so dangerous.

Courtesy Tim Bies/Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects

March 2009

Fairfield House
Webber + Studio, Inc.
Webber + Studio builds an architect's home in central Austin, Texas with room to grow. Manipulating mass and voids as well as regional materials allowed for a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces: an interior terrace, backyard patio, parking garage with bridge-like rooms above, and a dog-trot breezeway.

February 2009

The Weeks House
McCarty Holsaple McCarty, Inc.
A beloved A-frame, Tennessee riverfront home built in 1950 gets a complete renovation and addition from designer Brian Pittman, Assoc. AIA. Bringing warmth and modern efficiency to the home without destroying the original architect's intent was the goal—with a design rendered entirely by hand.

January 2009

Skyline Residence
Belzberg Architects
It's hard to believe that the Skyline Residence, perched on a ridgeline in the Hollywood Hills, had a small budget for the neighborhood and an unusually challenging site. The house is a comfortable, sensitive home situated and organized to both protect residents from the elements and let them enjoy views and light.