Contents
- 1 Explore This Year’s Top Home Design Stories
- 1.1 1. This Award-Winning Beach House Surprises In More Ways Than One
- 1.2 2. Embrace Nature In This Home on the Hills of Lake Michigan
- 1.3 3. Explore The Hanok Heritage House, a Dreamy Escape Near Seoul
- 1.4 4. Artful Accents Enliven This Tuscan Family Home
- 1.5 5. Soak In The Sunshine At This Malibu Beachfront Retreat
- 1.6 6. How 3Eleven Honors Manhattan’s Little Known History
- 1.7 7. This Ski Chalet Doubles As A Luxurious Rental Property
- 1.8 8. Aidlin Darling Design Creates A Picturesque Northern California Home
- 1.9 9. Old Meets New In This Updated Brooklyn Carriage House
- 1.10 10. NicoleHollis Transforms A Storied Space Into A Chic New York Duplex
Home interiors invite community, warmth, and hefty dose of personality so, naturally, we’ve rounded up the top residential reads of 2024. From a beach house with unexpected accents to a refreshed carriage house with historic charm, these must-see home designs offer a cozy escape from winter weather—and endless design inspiration for the year ahead.
Explore This Year’s Top Home Design Stories
1. This Award-Winning Beach House Surprises In More Ways Than One
Photography by Eric Petschek.
At the hands of Interior Design Hall of Fame members Steven Harris and Lucien Rees Roberts, this project is way more than the sum of its parts. The 13,800-square-foot, glass-and-brick residence, perched on a lushly landscaped property in Bridgehampton, New York, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, is all clean lines and rectilinear forms in the tradition of mid-century modernism the clients admire. But the addition of a knife-edge pool and its sculpted-plaster pavilion—capped by a reflecting-pool roof in the shape of a boomerang, another mid-century reference—nails the composition. Walk through the space.
2. Embrace Nature In This Home on the Hills of Lake Michigan
Photography by Ty Cole; Styling: Cate Ragan.
Thousands of years of westward winds have built up clusters of rolling sand dunes along Lake Michigan’s eastern shoreline. One of the largest and most impressive of these groups is at Saugatuck, and it’s there—on top of a dune—that architect Kevin Toukoumidis and his partner, a doctor, built their new house. “We sought a place that blurred architecture, art, and nature,” says Toukoumidis, founding principal of dSPACE Studio across the lake in Chicago, where the couple also has an apartment. “In short, a home that offered an innovative, highly tailored response to the nuances and considerations involved in coastal living amidst sand hills.” Explore the home.
3. Explore The Hanok Heritage House, a Dreamy Escape Near Seoul
Photography by Jaeyoon Kim.
Sangyoon Kim, an interior architect and industrial designer, founded Listen Communication in 2013. The Seoul-based firm’s primary tenet is to reinterpret Korea’s beauty through spatial and product design. In terms of architecture, perhaps nothing represents the nation’s culture better than the hanok, a traditional residential structure characterized by a tiled gable roof, natural building materials for sustainability and health benefits, underfloor heating, a courtyard configuration, and adherence to feng shui principles for harmony with environs. The Hanok Heritage House, a massive 73-acre hospitality complex a two-hour drive southeast of Seoul, embraces and interprets these traits. Explore this home away from home.
4. Artful Accents Enliven This Tuscan Family Home
Photography by Eric Laignel.
Castiglione della Pescaia is a coastal Italian town in southwest Tuscany known for its Etruscan ruins, nature reserves, and relaxed beaches. Within it is Pineta di Roccamare, a private community in a 200-year-old pine forest. Architect Valerio Ferrari, principal of VMCF Atelier, first visited the enclave when he was young. “It’s a magical place because it’s untouched and wild,” he says. “It’s not crowded, even in August.” Decades later, he and his architect wife, VMCF coprincipal Cinzia Mazzone, bought a seven-bedroom summer compound there and turned it into an unconventional canvas for contemporary art. Take a look inside.
5. Soak In The Sunshine At This Malibu Beachfront Retreat
Photography by Kevin Scott.
Architect David Montalba knows the Malibu, California, coastline almost as well as he does Santa Monica, where he maintains his eponymous American studio, and Lausanne, Switzerland, home of its European counterpart. The rarefied real estate along a certain stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway includes several Montalba Architects–helmed hospitality projects, Nobu, Nobu Ryokan, and Little Beach House Malibu among them. Discreetly private, however, are the nearly dozen residences the firm has completed in the enclave over the past two decades. See the firm’s most recent beachfront getaway.
6. How 3Eleven Honors Manhattan’s Little Known History
Photography by Adam Kane Macchia.
What better position is there to be in as a Manhattan renter than lazing about in a pool, watching boats cruise the Hudson River? For those empty nesters and young professionals who have nabbed an apartment at 3Eleven, a new 930-unit building named after its address in the “foothills” of Hudson Yards near Chelsea, it’s a summertime reality. The 58-story structure by FXCollaborative Architects is industrial in affect, honoring the nearby High Line, with enormous pitted-concrete structural columns and LED ropes lassoed around the lobby. See how the space pays homage to Manhattan’s past.
7. This Ski Chalet Doubles As A Luxurious Rental Property
Photography by Ulysse Lemerise.
Named after an Alpine goddess in Germanic mythology, Chalet Bertha is a family vacation home and rental property in Charlevoix, a region of Quebec, Canada, long famed as a year-round resort area of breathtaking natural beauty. Located high on a hillside in the Laurentian Mountains near the picturesque town of Baie-Saint-Paul, a celebrated arts and crafts colony, the three-level, 7,500-square-foot chalet enjoys panoramic views of the surrounding forested landscape and the mighty Saint Lawrence River beyond. Escape to Chalet Bertha.
8. Aidlin Darling Design Creates A Picturesque Northern California Home
Photography by Adam Rouse.
Despite such modern bona fides as flat planes, pared-down palettes, and open-to-the-outdoors living spaces, this primary dwelling and guesthouse, together totaling nearly 8,000 square feet, have agrarian roots and exemplify sustainability and longevity—which also happen to be guiding principles of Interior Design Hall of Fame members David Darling and Joshua Aidlin’s studio. Sited on a working farm with challenging topography, the main residence is constructed on the pads of its predecessor. Walk through the home.
9. Old Meets New In This Updated Brooklyn Carriage House
Photography by Frank Frances.
Mass timber has been gaining traction as a more sustainable alternative to concrete and steel, which emit large amounts of greenhouse gases in their production. The engineered product has made headlines when used in skyscraper construction, but it has also been deployed in small-scale projects, as witnessed in this 1870’s carriage house in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, outfitted with a new 3,100-square-foot interior by Schiller Projects. Take a look inside.
10. NicoleHollis Transforms A Storied Space Into A Chic New York Duplex
Photography by Douglas Friedman.
The apartment in downtown Manhattan was expansive, sprawling over more than 5,600 square feet on two levels. And it was located on the opposite side of the country. But it took just two months for Nicole Hollis, principal and creative director of her namesake San Francisco–based firm, to get the duplex—located on the top two floors of the historic Puck Building—up and running and her clients moved in. Explore the space.