When Pennsylvanian Barry Ginder was an architecture student at Temple University his art professor, Larry Spaid, influenced how he would eventually approach his own pieces. “He taught me a method of working the full surface repeatedly, and then refining the work until a moment of balance is achieved,” he says.

It was natural for Ginder to pursue both disciplines, which allow him to document the world around him. While rooted in his knowledge of structures, Ginder’s artwork strays from literal representation. Abstract versions of urban landscapes, which he describes as excerpts, take on geometric forms that seem to pulse with movement.

Not surprisingly, Ginder focuses on the experience of space—how people move through it, relate to it, and are connected by it. He strives to capture the energy of the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly his beloved Philadelphia. Color and layered surfaces add depth that echo the textures in the city.

Ginder puts acrylic on plexiglass, which he sands to transform the surface. Vibrant colors are paired with an array of lines, from sharp to gestural. These layers shift along with the viewer’s perspective, and add a depth that echoes the diversity in the city.

Sketchbooks are essential for Ginder as concepts take shape via his drawings. “Whether it’s a quote, song, or a building detail, I trace the idea and record it on paper,” he notes. “Over time, that process develops meaning and becomes a proposal.”

Today, Barry Ginder joins us for Friday Five!

1. Sean Scully

The intense depth of his paintings. The power of painting the same image repeatedly. The strength of both large and small works.

2. Finn Juhl — Chair 45

A revolutionary chair design, one of the first to detach the backrest and seat from the frame, creating a floating effect. An iconic organic form with meticulous joinery. A timeless design.

3. Gerhard Richter + Richard Serra 2016

At the Marian Goodman Gallery and the Gagosian Gallery in 2016, I saw a dual showing of painting and sculpture that, in my mind, had a strong resonance in the similarity of the work. Steel and stretched paint felt like parallel expressions of pure power and emotion.

4. My Son’s Hands

My son is my inspiration. Through his trials, he has risen to a level often only achieved by wise old souls. This shows up in simple, everyday ways, like the gathering of a daily harvest from his garden.

5. Sunlight on My Paintings

Light is a primary source of inspiration. I often find the best source material in cityscapes drenched in light. In my work on plexiglass, the continual layering of the surface captures subtleties of depth and transparency, resonating with surfaces saturated in light or shade. In the studio, the ultimate moment is when sunlight falls onto a completed painting, creating another composition.

Works by Barry Ginder:

B+G Residence in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
This is a house I designed with Suzanne Brandt as part of Brandt+Ginder Architecture. It sits on 2.5 acres and was shaped not by style, but by the experience of light, wind, exterior views, and interior relationships. It’s a modern home designed with simplicity and rigor, constructed with traditional material detail in a modern aesthetic. Handmade brick, mahogany siding, a metal roof, and oversized windows create a contemporary farmhouse. It’s a handmade object in the landscape with vista-like views, and interior framed views toward the extended landscape.

Private Residence
This project was a renovation of a historic stone building with a reddish-purple coloration. An addition was designed in copper, which over time developed a similar purplish tone, creating a modern interpretation of the original stone materiality.Copper was also carried into the kitchen, reinforcing the connection between the new intervention and the existing structure.

2026 View East no3
A zoomed-in detail from a continuing series of paintings based on a particular view of Philadelphia. Philadelphia is personal to me, as it’s where I went to school at Temple University. The view is from the 11th floor in West Philadelphia, looking east. Throughout the day, the scene changes, especially in the afternoon as the light shifts. This painting is one of many versions of that same view.

3 Squared Painting
A nine-squared composition based on the View East series. This work is part of a larger cityscape series, but more zoomed out—an actual city view rather than a graphic interpretation. It uses the same Philadelphia view that runs through the series.

Favorite Bench
A bench I designed with elegant details and minimal parts to create the maximum outcome. A simple leg structure is shaped and folded for support. Cushions allow for comfort and perching, but not lounging, a conversation bench. An extended wood seat becomes a place for objects. Two materials, walnut and textured cotton upholstery, are handcrafted into a modern bench.

Branded residences have become the luxury hotel industry’s favorite revenue strategy. Most of these projects share a familiar formula—take a glass tower in a growing luxury market, attach a name that travelers recognize, furnish it to a standard that photographs well, and charge a 30% premium for the badge. The result, in most cases, is real estate dressed in hospitality clothing—a product that borrows a brand’s reputation without absorbing its design philosophy.

Aman operates on a different frequency. When the brand sold a penthouse at its Aman Residences Tokyo—the unit reportedly closed at approximately 30 billion yen, around $225 million—the price reflected something more complex than square footage at the top of Japan’s tallest residential tower. The 16,000-square-foot residence achieved 44 million yen per tsubo, far surpassing previous records for high-end properties in Tokyo. That figure made it the most expensive apartment transaction in Japanese history, and it did so because Aman has spent decades building a design language so specific to place that its residences function as extensions of a spatial philosophy rather than merchandise.

Amangiri’s new Six-Bedroom Villa, designed by Marwan Al-Sayed of MASASTUDIO, extends that same conviction into the Utah desert. The first of 12 private residences planned for the resort’s Canyon Country site, the villa unfolds over approximately 12,000 square feet across nine acres. Conceived as a fully serviced private compound rather than a singular dwelling, the residence accommodates up to 18 guests across six suites, supported by dedicated staff quarters that allow hospitality to operate in congruence.

Al-Sayed was one of three architects—alongside Rick Joy and Wendell Burnette—who conceived the original Amangiri resort in 2009, and his return to this landscape carries a continuity that most branded residence projects cannot claim. The original resort was designed as a contemporary interpretation of the region’s Indigenous architectural traditions, sited against a low entrada sandstone formation. That same logic persists here: low-lying volumes emerge from the terrain with a kind of geological inevitability, less placed than revealed.

Oculus skylights positioned throughout the residence draw the desert sky inward, replicating the narrow apertures through which canyon light travels. Glass planes frame the surrounding rock formations and capture the shifting light across the day, but the oculi give the interior an intimacy that floor-to-ceiling glazing alone cannot. Materials—stone, concrete, and wood—are rendered in a tonal palette that mirrors the desert itself, allowing light to do the expressive work rather than surface treatment.

Nine acres of Southern Utah wilderness give the villa sufficient land to dissolve the boundary between built and natural. A 118-foot swimming pool stretches along the horizon line, while a series of outdoor dining courts, fire features, and shaded lounges extend daily life into the open air. Walled gardens and sheltered terraces create a calibrated sequence of exposure and refuge, allowing the building’s open-plan volumes to feel continuous with the landscape beyond.

Inside, the program reflects a hybrid between private residence and resort infrastructure. In addition to the six guest suites, the villa includes expansive living and dining areas, a private spa, fitness room, and multiple wellness-focused spaces that echo Amangiri’s broader ethos of retreat and restoration. A full-service kitchen supports private chefs, while discreet back-of-house circulation ensures that service remains present but unseen—a choreography that distinguishes hospitality at Aman from conventional luxury living.

What emerges is a system that collapses architecture, service, and landscape into a singular experience. Where many branded residences rely on recognition, Aman relies on recognition of place. The Six-Bedroom Villa calibrates itself to the land, allowing scale, light, and material to register the vastness of Canyon Country without spectacle.

View more information on this and other properties by the lifestyle brand, visit aman.com.

Photography courtesy of Aman.

An agricultural business has different requirements than a typical corporation centered in an urban setting. This can present a unique set of challenges to designers when they envision an alignment of operations and staff in headquarters that support a range of functions.

When Impepinable Studio was tapped to design a hub for seed processing company Agrosemillas, the team embraced certain constraints and looked to the landscape and elements of manufacturing for inspiration. “The site sits in an industrial environment, so rather than introducing a foreign language, we wanted to work with what was already there—materials, scale, and atmosphere,” says Gabriela Barrera, co-founder of Impepinable Studio.

Located in El Peral, Spain, the complex includes more than 48,000-square feet of new production and storage facilities, built with the help of local craftsmen who were responsible for metalwork, carpentry, and plumbing, which shaped the zones that were made to withstand the dust-heavy surroundings.

Four reused shipping containers rest on a concrete plinth shared with the adjacent warehouses. Skylights bring soft glow into the interior, while the north-facing orientation of the open planes ensures a steady flow of illumination. The green and yellow brand colors of Agrosemillas pop against the gray facade punctuated by circular portals. These windows are protected by manually-operated shutters that act almost like basic levers, which create an open or closed feel as required.

Three bands organize the plan in a grid style. The first is dedicated to open workspaces, another to service areas, and the third section holds meeting rooms and laboratory facilities. Entrances are separated according to logistical flows to maximize efficiency. Oak cladding and furniture offer a warm complement to steel frames. Roof surfaces incorporate strips for experimental crops, which physically link research, fabrication, and architecture within a single framework.

This busy center houses its own infrastructure that transcends typology. “It was less about designing an office and more about rethinking what a workplace in this context could be. That mindset gave us the freedom to explore a playful approach,” Barrera notes. “The project is spatially rich while remaining extremely simple and ordered.”

To see this and other works by the firm, visit impepinable.studio.

Photography courtesy of DEL RIO BANI.

When KWK Promes was invited to submit a concept for a house in Vilnius, Lithuania, the parameters might have sounded like an architect’s dream: Here was a private client selecting a firm via competition to envision a home on a generous suburban footprint.

“This is an area characterized by loose, traditional development, with houses and summer cottages nestled among trees and expansive recreational grounds,” the firm explains. “On the plot included in the competition, as well as in its surroundings, there were once wooden houses from the interwar period, which have not survived to the present day.”

Based in Katowice, Poland, and led by Robert Konieczny, KWK Promes is an innovative firm known internationally for its bold residential and cultural projects. So it comes as no surprise that it was chosen to design the house in Vilnius.

Its idea was simple: By raising part of the house one level up, the patio space is doubled, ushering daylight deep into the spaces within. The living area, with its communal spaces, would be on the ground level and the bedrooms above. A simple, yet effective, plan.

Then, in 2017, the site was halved just before the architects could begin the build: The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union came to power and reduced the allowable building footprint by 50 percent. Instead of bailing — and following the client’s instinct to start looking for a new site — KWK Promes convinced the owner to stay and reduce the home’s surface area by 40 percent. “As a result, a triangular floor plan emerged.”

While most architects will tell you that they need constraints in order to conceptualize, this was going above and beyond. The firm effectively sliced the home in half — its diagram shows how the final form emerged — and made it better. The tighter geometries created dynamic, idiosyncratic conditions in a house that now measures 3,230 square feet.

Instead of a double patio, the house now wraps its two levels around an interior courtyard. The building is a composition of concrete and glass, its sharp angles — the most dramatic being a flat-iron elevation — complemented by the curved curtain wall of the atrial volume. The interior (by Yes. Design Architecture) features a sculptural spiral staircase as a focal point against minimal furnishings and neutral finishes — save for the ostentatiously veined marble of the kitchen island.

Completed in 2025, Trim House shows how innovative thinking can overcome the steepest obstacles and that smaller is sometimes better.

To see this and other works by the firm, visit kwkpromes.pl.

Photos by Jakub Certowicz and Juliusz Sokołowski.

The stone houses of Westchester’s early 20th-century neighborhoods carry a particular material candor – their masonry is pulled from the same geological bed as the landscape around them, their permanence a direct expression of the region’s character. Ravi Raj’s renovation of a Mount Airy house in Croton-on-Hudson treats that original fabric as the project’s main thesis, organizing every intervention around it while carefully reconciling past and present into a cohesive whole.

Local flagstone sourced to match the existing masonry extends and reinforces the base of the house, preserving its historic texture while subtly expanding its footprint. In contrast, white lap siding wraps the upper floors, introducing a lighter, more contemporary expression that distinguishes new from old without disrupting their dialogue. A 1980s addition that had previously fragmented the roofline was reworked entirely—its massing clarified through a new upper level, steeply pitched roof, and dormers that restore a sense of formal continuity while nodding to the region’s vernacular traditions.

Entry at the below-grade level establishes the interior palette immediately. A foyer and adjacent mudroom unfold in textured limestone flooring and wood-paneled walls, grounding the experience in materials that echo the surrounding terrain. From here, circulation rises toward the main level, where a sculptural staircase—Raj’s reinterpretation of a former spiral—acts as both connective tissue and spatial anchor. Its presence is less about movement alone and more about orientation, framing calibrated views of the stone boulders behind the house and reinforcing a continuous dialogue between interior and landscape.

Curved thresholds carry this spatial logic through the plan, softening transitions and introducing a measured rhythm between rooms. The main level unfolds from the stair into a sequence of living spaces—a galley kitchen, great room, and primary suite—each tied together through this language of subtle curvature. In the great room, a gently sloped fireplace and an arched portal over built-in seating extend the motif, balancing formal restraint with moments of permeability that open outward to the wooded site beyond.

The primary suite holds the residence’s temporal layering within two adjacent rooms. In the bedroom, exposed original rafters—painted a deep green—retain the weight and memory of the earliest structure, paired with a restored fireplace clad in dark soapstone. The material’s matte density reinforces a sense of historical grounding. This is set in deliberate contrast to the adjoining bathroom, where marble hex tile and white lacquered wood wainscoting introduce brightness and refinement, articulating a quieter, more contemporary sensibility.

Beyond the interior, the project extends its architectural language into the landscape through a series of outdoor interventions. An elevated deck off the great room, anchored by a burnished metal firepit, and a bluestone patio off the kitchen with a built-in barbecue create multiple points of occupation, allowing the house to engage the site across seasons.

Throughout, a restrained palette of natural finishes—lacquered wood, honed marble, soft textiles, and custom built-ins—contributes to an atmosphere that feels both timeless and deliberate. A once-disparate structure becomes unified through material continuity, calibrated interventions, and a clear architectural narrative that bridges inheritance and inhabitation.

To see this and other projects by the studio, visit ravirajarchitect.com.

Photography courtesy of Sarah Elliott.

Mexico’s Riviera Maya is chock full of bombastic resorts with massive footprints and gimmicky attractions. Xcaret’s boutique offering, La Casa de la Playa, is the exception. The 63 key, adults-only accommodation tucks away along the northern edge of the multi-pronged resort’s expansive campus and on the other side, untouched jungle. Its circuitously tiered structure makes the most of unencumbered Caribbean Sea views.

The meticulously “crafted” eco-integrative hotel—a deft mix of roughly hewn natural materials sourced from the site and uniform industrial components—forms as a fluid matrix of indoor and outdoor spaces, hugging a coastal cliff and embedding below its idiosyncratic formation. Designed by award-winning architect David Quintana, the carefully sited hotel nods to the climate-responsive spatial distribution of tropical Modernism and the colorful geometry of oh so influential Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

On offer: several Michelin-Star fusion-cuisine restaurants; a subterranean wine cellar with impressive local selection; a self-service tequila and mezcal bar with even more range; a comprehensive multi-level spa; a 130 foot infinity pool that juts out of the water; and series of yachts at the ready for special request excursions along the coast and over to Cozumel. The kicker: the sizable suites—not just furnished with private Caribbean-facing pools and rock-hewn bathtubs—feature bedside aquariums with jellyfish. The level of attention from staff—personal butlers and others—is unmatched and yet tempered.

These accommodations, distributed on three stories and divided by massive “white earth” sascab stone fortifications, are accessed by a series of rectilinear concrete tunnels pitched at split level. Regional sourced wood and red brick inserts create a striking contrast. Certain ceilings are rendered in a collage of sequenced branches.

The constant presence of especially verdant native plants cropping across the semi-indoor, semi-outdoor spaces is an added touch of grounding as is the meticulous collection of bespoke Mexican furniture and art—much of which was crafted in the surrounding Quintana Roo region. The total composition is a feast of visual and visceral contrast, emphasized only by the turquoise sea emerging below. Though eclectic and bold, this confluence of texture and detail feels cohesive, it imbues each public and private space with a rooted, calming effect.

While Xal—helmed by celebrity chef Andoni Luis Aduriz—uncovers the unexpected “global south” culinary connections between Mexico, Basque country, and the Philippines, equally famed Martha Ortiz’s Tuch de Luna serves up local staples in a relaxed eatery setting. Nestled along an interior courtyard that seems to have been extracted from the bustling streets of Mexico City, the Lumbre/Centil restaurant has a chameleon-like decor. A suite of custom furnishings easily changes over each night to reflect the respective haunt’s distinctive Northern and Southern Mexican menus. Here, wood spindle barstools flip over and become low-slung dining chairs and the previously mentioned red brick forms in a particularly patterned three-dimensional wall.

Like in these various restaurants, the Muluk Spa—replete with massage cabins, salt rooms, mud rooms, saunas, steam rooms, and more—utilizes as much locally sourced ingredients as possible.

What: La Casa de la Playa
Where: Playa del Carmen, Mexico
How much: $1,736 per night
Design draws: An eco-integrative boutique hotel bold crafted out of locally sourced materials, set along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, and features an extensive offer of hyper-refine culinary experiences.
Book it: Casa de la Playa

Photography courtesy La Casa de la Playa.

Architecture, when reframed, is about space rather than walls; it does not enclose, but reveals. The Garden Apartment by Aranda\Lasch, reimagines the domestic interior as a calibrated aperture: a sequence of frames, thresholds, and volumes that attune everyday life to light, landscape, and time.

At the center of this Lower East Side (LES) project is a near-mythical condition for New York living—a double-wide private garden. Rather than treating this as an amenity to be accessed, the architects position it as the project’s conceptual and spatial anchor. The apartment home becomes, in their words, “a frame for the oasis outside,” a device through which the shifting outdoor atmosphere is continuously registered from within.

This framing is not metaphorical alone. A newly introduced double-height volume operates as the primary viewing device, pulling daylight deep into what was once a compact, compartmentalized plan. And the vertical expansion increases perceived space by reorganizing daily rituals around the daylight void itself. Dining, gathering, and rest unfold within a tall, luminous chamber where the presence of the garden is constant, even when not directly visible.

Crucially, the aperture here is not a single opening but a sequence of calibrated thresholds. The existing rear facade is opened to accommodate expansive glass, dissolving the boundary between interior and exterior. Yet the project resists the totalizing transparency often associated with contemporary residential design. Instead, openings are composed as “dramatic frames,” guiding the eye outward while maintaining a sense of interior depth and enclosure.

Material becomes instrumental in reinforcing this layered permeability. Reeded white oak volumes flank the central space, their vertical striations subtly echoing the texture of the exterior fence beyond. This dialogue between inside and out leans into visual resonance—soft alignments of surfaces, which allows the two realms to bleed into one another without collapsing their distinction. The effect is atmospheric rather than literal, a quiet synchronization of planes that heightens spatial awareness.

The restraint of the material palette further sharpens this perceptual clarity. Oak defines the primary living zones with warmth and continuity, while terrazzo and terracotta ground the more functional spaces in durability and tactility. The kitchen, rendered entirely in brushed metal, introduces a counterpoint—cool, reflective, yet softened through finish. There is a notable absence of excess; each material reads as both surface and signal, delineating use while maintaining cohesion.

“There is nothing extravagant here, and that is where the beauty lies,” says Aranda\Lasch cofounder and principal architect Ben Aranda. “Life itself can be extravagant, but architecture can be the quiet, enduring backdrop that accommodates it.”

Even the plan participates in the logic of aperture. The first floor is kept deliberately open, punctuated only by a monolithic stair and kitchen—two sculptural anchors that organize movement without constricting it. The stair, in particular, operates as both object and interface; its handrail, described as the project’s singular moment of extravagance, becomes a tactile point of contact between body and architecture. In a home defined by visual porosity, this detail grounds the experience in touch.

What emerges is a domestic environment that privileges continuity over separation, yet never abandons the need for gradation. Apertures evolve beyond being ‘seen through’ and become about ‘sensing across’—light filtering, textures aligning, volumes expanding and contracting, all in response to daily rhythms. Even from deep within the apartment, the garden’s presence is perceptible.

Leveraging its unique advantages, the Garden Apartment proposes an alternative model for urban living that maximizes spatial experience in the service of life rather than square footage. It does not impose itself as an object to be admired, nor does it operate as an instrument to capture attention for social currency. It continually directs awareness to personal moments outward, inward, and everywhere in between.

To see this and other works by the studio, please visit arandalasch.com.

Photography courtesy of Aranda\Lasch and RBM Lab.

When one thinks of Savannah, they picture cobblestone streets enveloped in draping Spanish moss and lined with Antebellum-era, Georgian-style row houses. What they might not realize is that this compact, historically significant, and undeniably haunted port town is also home to a sprinkling of distinctive Moderne and Midcentury Modern tower blocks, rising amid the Hostess City’s quaint park squares.

One such postwar structure is the six-story First Federal Savings & Loan Association Building—erected by architecture firm Levy and Kiley—along the central commercial drag of Broughton Street. For the past six decades, the landmarked edifice has stood out with its well-maintained gray granite volumes, white concrete frames, and blue mosaic tile walls. When transforming the 36,000-square-foot building into the newly opened, 44-key Municipal Grand Hotel, polyvalent firm AAmp Studio sought to emphasize—even exaggerate—the texturally complex surface materials found within. Working with local practice Ward Architecture + Preservation, the studio achieved this by peeling back existing layers. What they uncovered was not only accentuated, but also served as inspiration for the non-structural changes that followed.

“The challenges in taking a landmarked former bank—and later municipal building—and transforming it into a full-service hotel experience were evident from the start,” says Andrew Ashey, AAmp Studio co-founder. “But rather than be daunted by the task, we saw it as an amazing opportunity for creative design interventions that united historic and new in a very holistic fashion.” What this largely amounted to was the almost surgical introduction of deeply referential yet softening finishes and curvilinear inserts.

As respectful as these additions are, they clearly distinguish themselves from the original elements. The strategy reflects a more holistic, interpretive, and frankly successful form of architectural preservation, in the vein of the widely lauded 19th-century theorist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. For him, the continuation of a building’s original intent and relevance—achieved through the technological advancements of its time—should supersede superficial facsimile.

AAmp Studio began the building’s careful conversion by easing the threshold between the ground floor and the streetscape. The once uninviting entrance is now freshly illuminated and features an inviting lounge seating area, with new lush planters smoothing the transition. The subsequent double-height lobby now serves as the main hospitality space, complete with an expansive bar and a range of table and sofa arrangements. Original blue tile mosaics wrap the columns in this exuberant interior.

Because of this repeated material language, the firm extended a tropical modernist sensibility across all public areas—a fitting response to the sweltering climate. Nods to Roberto Burle Marx’s proclivity for botanical motifs and Oscar Niemeyer’s organicism appear throughout. This locally rooted haunt is designed to operate at all hours: a family restaurant by day and a bustling watering hole by night. A former bank boardroom now ingeniously serves as a private dining space.

“We hold a deep, and slightly obsessive, reverence for the all-day lobby bar, which is really the foundation of Midnight Auteur,” says Ryan Diggins, partner and CEO at Midnight Auteur. “We love the idea of immersing our team and our guests in a vibrant, celebratory experience that only a hotel lobby bar can appropriately capture.”

Other Municipal Grand venues include the concealed-access Hot Eye cocktail lounge in the basement, clad in a palette of dark terrazzo, deep-stained wood, and shades of red. Sun Club abuts the rooftop pool—lined with an azure zellige tile wall—and frames some of the best views in town.

Available in five tiers, guest rooms take on a far more subdued, sand-toned aesthetic—still aligned with the property’s Midcentury Modern character. Hints of Finnish master Alvar Aalto are hard to miss. Across the offering, bathroom-anchoring vestibules in a rich shade of green lead through millwork thresholds into the main bedrooms. Here, red marble countertops—serving as minibars and desks—play against style-appropriate curved mirrors, undulating banquette seating ideal for remote work, and plush headboards. Highly detailed terrazzo floors tie everything together, while some suites feature private balconies overlooking Broughton Street.

The overall scheme is a deft marriage of site responsiveness—both to the building itself and the surrounding neighborhood—and sophisticated references to international design movements and sub-movements.

What: Municipal Grand
Where: Savannah, Georgia
How much: $281 per night
Design draws: A rare modernist gem sensitively restored and turned into a thriving, public facing hotel with extensive nods to various modernist movements and a local, contemporary culture.
Book it: Municipal Grand

Go virtually on vacation with more design destinations right here.

Photography by Brooke Holm.

The fundamental tension at the heart of this San Diego residence is one familiar to anyone working along California’s coastline: how to make something genuinely new from a structure that, by regulation, must remain. Bound to a 1950s footprint that could not be fully demolished under Coastal Commission guidelines, architect Daniel Joseph Chenin approached the La Jolla beachside project less as renovation and more as recalibration—working with contractor Hill Construction to strip the house to its essential framework before reconstructing an interior that feels wholly reauthored, yet quietly in dialogue with what came before.

Beyond spatial reconfiguration, the result is a disciplined study in restraint. The kitchen island, carved from solid onyx, becomes the project’s conceptual anchor—selected not for decorative veining, but for its capacity to hold and refract light, mimicking the rhythmic shimmer of the Pacific just beyond. Its sculptural, rounded form operates in the round, shifting from workspace to bar, dissolving boundaries between utility and hospitality. Above, a rudder-inspired fixture underscores this sense of orientation and balance, while warm oak millwork runs throughout the home, establishing a continuous tonal field against which these moments of expression can register.

Nautical references surface repeatedly, though never as overt motif. The living area’s oak-paneled ceiling pitches subtly overhead, recalling the hull of a ship in a way that reads as structural logic rather than decoration. In the powder room, a steel porthole mirror frames a hand-painted underwater tableau, while a circular port window in the main living space captures a precise view of the peninsula—each gesture operating as a controlled aperture, making the act of looking outward feel intentional, almost choreographed.

That same preoccupation extends to how the house manages light and movement over time. Morning sun enters first through a central courtyard—conceived as both threshold and communal core—before tracking across onyx, lacquered surfaces, and finely tuned wood grain.

As the day progresses, the interior shifts in register, textures revealing themselves gradually, never all at once. Rather than performing under a single, static condition, the material palette is calibrated to respond to change, allowing the house to unfold in tandem with the coastal atmosphere that surrounds it.

The owner’s brief—shaped by a life of travel and a preference for environments that feel both curated and calm—called for tranquility and material authenticity over overt expression. Chenin’s response is one of rigorous spatial editing, where absence becomes an active design tool. Integrated storage, concealed systems like a hidden television lift embedded within the central bar, and furnishings selected for proportion and tactile quality rather than statement all contribute to a space that resists excess while remaining deeply sensorial.

Even where conventional art might typically occupy walls, architecture itself assumes that role. Curved ceilings echo the motion of nearby waves, custom vanities blend wood, leather, and metal into singular compositions, and every touchpoint is considered for its physical and emotional resonance. As Chenin notes, “In a home like this, anything the hand touches should feel exquisite,” reflecting a practice that elevates the everyday into something quietly ceremonial.

“He wasn’t looking for an ornate or overly stylized space,” Chenin explains. “It was about distilling the essence of simplicity, order, and material authenticity—an understated luxury that isn’t overt, but felt.”

Architecture, material, and light are held in careful equilibrium—each one calibrated to the steady, unhurried rhythm of the sea.

Architect Daniel Joseph Chenin

View this and other works by the internationally-recognized firm by visiting djc-ltd.com.

Photography by Tim Hirschmann and courstey of v2com.

Architecture often reveals itself most clearly when stripped back to its essentials. Space, light, proportion, and material—these enduring elements have shaped the discipline for centuries, yet they are rarely expressed with such quiet clarity as in the Conrad Residence in Malvern, a leafy suburb in Melbourne’s inner east. Designed by architect Paul Conrad of Paul Conrad Architects for himself, his wife, and their two children, the home operates as both a family dwelling and a distilled manifesto of the studio’s design philosophy.

The project began with patience. Conrad spent two years searching for a site that could capture the garden character of the neighborhood while offering northern orientation—an important condition in Australian architecture for maximizing natural light. The opportunity finally appeared during Melbourne’s extended COVID lockdowns, when the property was purchased through a Zoom auction and the design process quietly commenced.

From the outset, Conrad approached the house differently than many contemporary residential projects. Rather than allowing the façade or external form to drive the design, the project began with what he describes as “interior architecture”—the careful orchestration of spatial relationships, proportions, and views between rooms. In Conrad’s practice, this internal structure forms the connective tissue between architecture and interior design, determining how spaces feel, how light moves through them, and how occupants experience the home over time.

That internal logic ultimately shapes the home’s outward presence. From the street, the residence presents a restrained and almost reticent façade. Covered in Boston Ivy, the structure reveals little of itself beyond a limestone-clad portal framing a dark-stained oak door. The gesture is deliberate: an architectural quietness that allows the house to settle naturally into its established suburban context while hinting at classical proportion beneath its contemporary expression.

Inside, the architecture unfolds as a carefully balanced sequence of spaces—formal and intimate at the front of the home, more open and contemporary toward the rear. Conrad describes the aesthetic as one of deliberate contradictions: minimal yet rich, restrained yet bold, poised yet relaxed.

These tensions are expressed through spatial transitions. A study near the entry adopts a more classical sensibility, with tall steel-framed French doors emphasizing vertical proportion and symmetry. Part library and part gallery, the room functions as a creative retreat where Conrad develops his architectural work. Further into the house, the primary living, dining, and kitchen areas expand into a more fluid environment defined by floor-to-ceiling aluminum sliding doors that open toward the garden and northern sun. Here, architecture dissolves into landscape, with an oversized marble kitchen bench and custom brass pendant acting as sculptural anchors within the space.

The home’s material palette reinforces the same philosophy of restraint paired with richness. Limestone, Calacatta Paonazzo marble, aged brass, linen, silver leaf, and textured European oak form a tightly controlled vocabulary that appears throughout the house. Rather than polished perfection, the materials are chosen for their ability to age gracefully—limestone brushed to reveal its grain, oak floorboards hand-scraped and laid in varying widths, steel handrails beaten and blackened to emphasize their hand-crafted origins. Over time, Conrad expects these surfaces to accumulate patina, allowing everyday family life to become part of the architecture itself.

Light, meanwhile, becomes one of the home’s most expressive materials. A sculptural stair beneath an elliptical skylight draws daylight deep into the interior, while expansive glazing toward the garden blurs the boundary between inside and outside. Artificial lighting is equally deliberate, with adjustable LED systems calibrated room by room. In the gym, color temperature shifts from warm tones for yoga and meditation to cooler daylight for more energetic workouts; in the bedrooms, lighting subtly follows the rhythms of the day, echoing the natural cycle of the sun.

Programmatically, the residence unfolds across three levels. The ground floor holds the primary living spaces alongside Conrad’s study and a children’s art and study room. Four bedrooms and Katrina Conrad’s study occupy the upper floor, while the basement accommodates a gym, playroom, wine cellar, and parking. Landscape architect Paul Bangay designed the garden, where lawn, pool, and plantings extend the home’s spatial composition outward into the site.

Designing one’s own home presents its own set of challenges. While Conrad’s studio frequently works on expansive luxury estates, this inner-city block came with tighter spatial and budgetary constraints. The project was developed largely after hours, evolving slowly between professional commissions over a year of design and eighteen months of construction. Yet Conrad notes that working for himself also simplified the process: the brief was already instinctively understood.

Ultimately, the Conrad Residence reads less as a showpiece and more as a quiet architectural essay—an exploration of the enduring qualities that continue to define the discipline. Space, light, and proportion guide the experience, while materials deepen with time. The result is a home that does not attempt to shout its presence, but instead settles confidently into its surroundings, embodying the timeless ambition of architecture itself.

To explore more works by the designer’s eponymous firm, visit paulconradarchitects.com.

Photography courtesy of Timothy Kaye.

Across fifty acres of forest in upstate New York, Piaule sits as a small constellation of modernist structures connected by footpaths neatly tucked into a west-facing rise, which overlooks the Catskill Mountains. The landscape hotel first debuted in 2021 with two dozen cedar-clad guest cabins on stilts, alongside a communal space, a restaurant focused on locally sourced fare, a spa and wellness facility a short walk away, and a braided network of trails threading the site.

Double Cabin

Double Cabin

For founders Nolan McHugh and Trevor Briggs, who conceived Piaule after establishing a homeware line of the same name, design decisions have been guided by modern precedents and deference to the natural surroundings. This focus now carries into a new collaboration with Design Within Reach (DWR), marked by refreshed furnishings across shared spaces, cabins, and the newly completed Oak House. From dining tables set with Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chairs to fireplaces framed by John Pawson’s low-slung Drift sofa, canonical works of modern design appear alongside new classics and Piaule original furnishings, shaping the interiors and their relationship to the landscape beyond.

Double Cabin

Double Cabin

The collaboration builds on shared references established over time. From the earliest stages of Piaule, McHugh and Briggs had been drawing from DWR’s portfolio, incorporating pieces that resonated with the property’s architectural restraint and material sensibility. “We have a shared belief in the role of modern design as both educational and experiential,” says Debbie Propst, President of Global Retail at MillerKnoll.

Double Cabin

“Piaule’s vision for how architecture, interiors, and nature intersect strongly aligns with DWR’s long-standing commitment to inspiring people through well-designed spaces.” As DWR’s assortment expanded to encompass a broader spectrum of works, the collaboration evolved in step. Selections emerged through sustained dialogue, with close attention to material and proportion.

Oak House

Oak House

Set apart from Piaule’s main cluster of cabins, the Oak House occupies a twenty-acre parcel uphill from the Main House. Configured as a three-bedroom residence, it is oriented to the landscape on all sides, allowing light, weather, and sound to register continuously inside. Views shift from room to room, opening onto meadow and mountain outlooks, pine groves, and stands of mature oak and hickory. Each vantage registers differently within the interior space.

Oak House

Oak House

The furnishings follow suit, with most crafted in solid wood and positioned in direct relation to the landscape. “Placing these pieces in this context lends them an even greater beauty and gravity and gives the guest a greater appreciation for the craft of each piece,” says McHugh. “The source material, decades-old and standing 60-plus feet tall, is visible in all its glory just outside.” Seating from Herman Miller and Fritz Hansen is joined by tables and storage from USM and Cassina, alongside furnishings developed in-house by Piaule.

Oak House

Oak House

Lighting by Vaarnii brings a soft, diffuse presence to the interiors and continues onto the outdoor deck, where dining and seating frame the fire pit and views beyond. “Each room has its own door to the deck so that everyone can control their own interactions between indoor and outdoor—leaving the door open to let in the breeze, wandering out to one of the chairs with a cup of coffee, or gazing out at the stars while lying comfortably in bed,” McHugh adds.

Oak House

Oak House

Oak House

Piaule’s Double Cabins and 3,200-square-foot Main House exhibit the same modernist sensibility. For the hotel’s signature two-bedroom accommodations, which are linked by a shared living room, furnishings were selected from DWR’s assortment with an emphasis on design that heightens the spaces without asserting itself against the site. “Taking inspiration from our surroundings, there is an entire palette of materials that ensure a luxurious experience for guests but does not distract from the landscape outside,” says Briggs.

Oak House

Oak House

Updates to the main house build on references already present across the property. Oak Tabouret stools designed by Charlotte Perriand for Cassina echo the three-legged form of traditional Alpine milking stools, a vernacular object Piaule has long incorporated throughout the hotel. “When we are so closely linked to both the source material and the finished product, a deeper gratitude for those earthly gifts arises,” says McHugh.

Oak House

Oak House

The collaboration between Piaule and DWR is underpinned by modern precedents and material sources grounded in the conditions of the site itself. Furnishings are placed in direct relation to their surroundings, allowing the landscape to remain a constant presence that evolves with the interiors over time.

Main House

Main House

Main House

Main House

Main House

Main House

Main House

Main House

To learn more about the collaborating bodies, visit piaule.com and dwr.com.

Photography courtesy of Piaule Catskill.

Two neighboring lots in North Vancouver, British Columbia, were combined into a single ground plane where a main residence, a pool house, and a greenhouse sit not as standalone buildings but as moments within one continuous landscape. Designed by Garret Cord Werner Architects with interiors by HB Design, landscape by Donohoe Living Landscapes, and built by Meister Construction, the project treats architecture, interiors, and terrain as a single continuous material argument – one where no element claims hierarchy over the others and every threshold between inside and outside is deliberately blurred.

Roughly 6,100 square feet of built space splits between a three-level main house at 4,235 square feet and a 1,870-square-foot pool house. No corridor or breezeway connects them – only an alley that the landscape plan transforms into a true threshold. When the interior gates open, a view corridor cuts cleanly through both properties toward the North Shore mountains. The greenhouse and vegetable planters face the public lane, while boulevard plantings extend beyond the property line, softening the transition between private residence and neighborhood street.

For Ryan Donohoe, founder of Donohoe Living Landscapes, that gesture was intentional. “I’m quite opposed to landscapes that completely block out the neighbors,” he says. “Treating the laneway as part of the design allowed the landscape and its functionality to anchor into the local community rather than shutting it out.” Instead of a conventional fence line, the team developed a layered system of clipped hedging and sculptural metal screening that modulates privacy while guiding views through the site.

Materially, the garden mirrors the architecture’s restrained palette. Basalt paving and concrete define the pool deck, red cedar fencing adds warmth, and powder-coated steel forms pergolas, gates, and fire elements. A metallic bronze finish ties these elements together. “It’s a bit of a chameleon,” Donohoe notes. “From some angles it reads almost black, while from others it shifts toward a light brown that harmonizes with the brick and greenery.”

Planting reinforces the sense of a landscape still unfolding. Native species dominate much of the site, while the pool garden introduces a layered composition of Japanese maples, tassel ferns, forest grass, smoke bush, and switch grasses. Over time, these plantings will thicken into a lush envelope around the architecture. “The hardscape is extremely precise,” Donohoe says, “but the softscape is designed to grow into itself, creating layers that cool the ground and bring a sense of calm away from the busyness of modern living.”

The modern farmhouse vocabulary of brick, wood slat, and expansive glazing finds its counterpoint in HB Design’s interior strategy. Partner Shannon Bradner led the interiors alongside principal Jennifer Heffel, joining the project at an advanced stage yet delivering a remarkably coordinated drawing package.

“The architecture already had a strong presence,” Bradner explains, “so our goal was to soften that rigor through layers of natural materials and subtle tonal shifts.” The palette remains neutral and earthy, drawn from the surrounding North Shore landscape, but the interiors reveal themselves through texture rather than color alone. Porcelain tile, quartzite, and carefully selected woods were chosen for how they capture and shift light throughout the day while complementing the brick exterior.

The sourcing process stretched across several months, calibrating undertone and grain so that materials feel timeless rather than trend-driven. Custom millwork integrates storage directly into the architecture, minimizing visual clutter while highlighting natural surfaces.

The three-level main house organizes family life across an open-plan ground floor with bedrooms above, while the basement introduces a guest suite for visiting family and friends. Across the alley, the pool house acts as a social hub, its sliding glass doors opening onto a sunken lounge and pool deck. A gym, spa, and private office occupy quieter corners of the structure.

For Meister Construction, maintaining the clarity of the design intent was central to the build. “Our objective was to protect the design vision while delivering a home that feels calm, coherent, and enduring,” says owner Gordon Gildemeister. Close coordination between consultants and trades allowed details to be resolved through mockups and sequencing rather than on-site improvisation.

Durability also guided many decisions. Natural materials were selected not only for their character but for how they weather over time in the Pacific Northwest climate. “Assemblies need to manage water and movement properly,” Gildemeister explains. “Our goal is a house that performs reliably and becomes easier – not harder – to own over time.”

Seen together, the architecture, interiors, and landscape resolve into a quiet thesis on West Coast living – one that privileges light, durability, and a generous relationship to the outdoors. Or, as Donohoe puts it: “modern living set into a West Coast vernacular where outdoor life matters just as much as what happens inside.”

View more information on HB Design’s website.

Photography by Ema Peter.