In the spring of 2020, when Covid lockdowns began, Manny Rionda retreated from his home in Guatemala City to his family’s finca, or ranch, in the highlands 35 miles to the west. At first he lived with his parents in their two-bedroom 1960s house on the mountainous estate, but he fell in love with country living and decided to stay. His parents granted him some space on the working farm to build his own home, and Manny, a fashion photographer and furniture designer, got to work on his first architectural project.

Casa Zanate, as Manny named it, doesn’t immediately reveal itself. Manny minimized its footprint to avoid damaging the coffee, macadamia, and guava trees on the site, and the home—a 1,480-square-foot, single-story box—is shrouded in greenery. “The trees here are sacred, since it takes almost a decade for them to flower,” Manny says. Cantilevered concrete steps draw visitors in and lead to a floating deck that wraps around the home’s flat front facade, connecting to a spacious side terrace hovering among the leaves.

To meet the $80,000 to $100,000 U.S. dollars budget, Manny had the walls built with cinder block and coated in chukum, a low-cost material made of tree resin mixed with limestone. “It was used by the Maya, and it can be easily colored, though we left it in its natural shade,” he says. “It’s waterproof, heavy duty, and I don’t have to paint the exterior.” After the home’s first rainy season, the walls began to stain naturally, blending with the landscape.

When Sean Famoso, cofounder of LVRN Records, started searching for a second home in Los Angeles, he knew exactly what he was—and wasn’t—looking for. Having grown up in a Craftsman house in Atlanta, he was set on finding a midcentury with warmth and character rather than a minimalist white box. “I wanted a house with a soul of its own,” he says.

When he put in a bid for a 2,022-square-foot Hollywood Hills home built in 1950 by architects Armet & Davis, he initially lost out to another buyer. But as luck would have it, the two-bedroom, three-bathroom house went back on the market almost immediately—albeit for an additional $200,000. Charmed by its floor-to-ceiling views of the city and the ample surrounding parking, Sean swooped in to close the deal.

Sean envisioned the house—which he calls “Before Brentwood”—as his final bachelor pad before he ultimately settles down in a tony L.A. neighborhood a bit farther west. He commissioned Christopher Cahill of CASC Design Inc. to knock out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, but he left the original layout largely intact. “My biggest pet peeve is when people find the most beautiful home and modernize it beyond belief,” Sean explains.

When Amalia Branaa Donner and Uzi Sabah moved from Los Angeles to Montevideo, Uruguay, their hometown, at the height of the pandemic, they had to find a rental quickly. They had moved back because Covid was less prevalent there, and they wanted to reconnect with family. A brisk search led them to a house in a residential area that had been off their radar: Punta Gorda, a neighborhood built on a low hill overlooking Montevideo’s riverside promenade, known as La Rambla.

The couple enjoyed staying there and, during one of their afternoon walks, noticed a midcentury house that was uninhabited—and for sale. It had a simple, rectangular exterior, and because it was built on a slope, the back of the property had views over the neighborhood’s rooftops and treetops and all the way down to the Rio de la Plata in the distance. It also had a huge garage occupying the entire ground level, which they immediately envisioned as a living space.

They decided to buy it, but they needed an architect to help them transform the two-story structure, built in 1950 and never renovated, into a contemporary family home for themselves and their two children, now 10 and 8. Amalia and Uzi are both creatives—she’s a graphic designer, he’s a filmmaker and an artist—so they wanted to work with someone willing to push the boundaries of convention.

“Everything was the way it had been designed in the ’50s—the closets, kitchen, bathrooms all were from that era, and small.”

—Uzi Sabah, resident

Welcome to Origin Story, a series that chronicles the lesser-known histories of designs that have shaped how we live.

The porch, as part of the American home, is more than an architectural feature: It’s a viewpoint into the country’s changing cultural (and literal) climate. Since the mid-19th-century golden age of this classic U.S. domestic design element, its look and role have revealed wider societal fluctuations, from the car’s impact on suburbia to the more recent push for walkable neighborhoods. The porch is so important that it’s the subject of this year’s U.S. Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Here, we trace the road to its revival.

A Welcome Arrival

Outdoor coverings connected to a building have existed in various forms across cultures for millennia, from Greco-Roman porticos and Venetian loggias to ancient Indian alindas (verandas), among others. It wasn’t until the second half of the 19th century, however, that the porch became a ubiquitous part of American homes—particularly in the South, where French Colonial–style galleries, which echoed features of cabins built by enslaved people of African descent, provided shade and air circulation in hot, humid climates. Early American porches were often wooden structures with columns, railings, and roof overhangs and were characterized by their symmetry and restrained ornamentation.

Evolving Purpose…

Before air-conditioning or electric fans, “sleeping porches“—screened-in spaces allowing cool nighttime breezes—became popular in many Victorian-era and early-20th-century American residences. People also saw using these spaces, usually on the second floor, next to bedrooms, as a way to avoid one of the leading causes of death at the time: tuberculosis. (Before antibiotics, the standard treatment for the disease was extended fresh-air exposure.) Meanwhile, at its peak popularity, the front porch served as a prominent open-air parlor for socializing in American households. In some communities, the porch carried an even deeper cultural significance: As Black Americans faced discrimination in public spaces, porches became places where families and friends could safely congregate and build community.

…and Expanding Aesthetic

As the American porch endured as a staple residential feature and site for socializing, it became embedded in diverse architectural styles across the growing country. Porch designs became more elaborate and distinctive, largely reflecting vernacular styles of their regions. The Victorian era saw the introduction of intricate wraparound porches adorned with delicate spindle work, which was often painted in vibrant colors, reflecting the era’s penchant for excess. The Craftsman style, emerging in the early 20th century, favored sturdy, exposed beams, unpainted wood, and deep eaves. The front porches of New Orleans shotgun houses were often extensions of the living rooms inside.

A patio or a porch, a backyard or a garden, even a tricked-out fire escape—an outdoor space can be as important a part of your home as the living room. Yes, it might be a personal escape to meditate and chill or a place for amusement-park-level family activity, but the sun really shines when you’re hosting friends, neighbors, and strangers in an open-air social space.

The homes in this issue all present possibilities for what a great outdoor environment for entertaining can be. In Puerto Escondido, a Venezuelan creative and her architect friend enjoy hanging out in a palapa-draped A-frame. The hefty concrete stairs at the heart of the home do a great job anchoring the invitingly open house. The porous screens at the Los Angeles home of one of my favorite artists make it feel a bit inscrutable from the street, but they frame space for music and a garden full of native plants that’s worth inviting people over to see. It’s the first phase of an ambitious building project that will eventually include a guest apartment for friends and family. We also dispatched our managing editor to a wooded cluster of prefab vacation outposts a couple hours from Mexico City that defy every precious cabin cliché.

While I’ve had some of my favorite backyard experiences over red Solo cups, our Modern World section has all kinds of accoutrements to set the scene for several seasons’ worth of memorable outdoor parties. Whether you’re full-on renovating (I’ve never seen someone go completely Copacabana on their patio with curvy pavers like the ones we feature here, but someone should) or just adding a few key pieces (the bar cart with a built-in streetlight looks brilliant), our recommendations will make an impression.

When you’re staying at a cabin in the woods, how much does the design of that cabin matter? You’re there for the trees, the birds, the glory of nature—not the architecture. At least, that was my thinking as I drove through the narrow cobblestone streets of Mineral del Chico, a small mountain town just over two hours from Mexico City, to test out a new offering from Wander Cabins, a company that rents design-forward short-term stays in various locations across the Mexican countryside. The setting would put on the show, I figured, and the structure, though handsome, would be a supporting player.

When I get to the site, nature does take center stage; it is a forested hillside that overlooks the surrounding lowlands, like a mountain by the sea. It’s quiet, save for the patter of birdsong, and the sunlight dappled by treetops swaying in the breeze is almost hypnotic. The cabins nestle into the slope, and mine is a green, flat-top box that blends into the earth. From afar, it’s pretty unremarkable, but closer up, its unusual curves become clearer. The two short sides of the 269-square-foot cabin bow out, and Santiago Garcia Rey, Wander Cabins’ founder, shows me how one rounded wall slides away, opening the interior up to the idyllic setting.

Instead of walking through the cabin’s front door, we climb through the massive new portal to get inside. The dark, wood-clad interior is modest—a kitchenette is on the open end, a built-in bed and some seating are in the middle, and the bathroom is on the other end—but high ceilings give the place a grandeur. With the rounded wall opened, it feels less like I’m inside and more like I’m tucked under the canopy of a century-old tree. It’s not a feeling I’ve had in any other forest hut I’ve visited.

Throwing an epic party outside requires more than just some space and a cooler. If you really want to stage events to remember, then you’ll have to think beyond the menu. Furniture, lighting, and even hardscaping can take backyard entertaining from just okay to amazing. If the idea of updating your patio feels overwhelming, don’t give up! We asked five (over)qualified hospitality experts for tips on executing their ideal outdoor event—from a chic block party to a laid-back dinner—and we also recommend a few new products to set the scene, whether you’re game for a major renovation or just sprucing things up for the season.

A Backyard Chill

For Natasha Pickowicz, a New York pastry chef turned writer and recipe developer, the season for outdoor entertaining starts early. “A lot of people in the Northeast think that eating outside is a summer thing,” she says. “I love a March-April moment.… If it’s above fifty-two degrees, I’m having people over for brunch.” Thanks to her small Brooklyn home, Pickowicz has no choice but to move the party outdoors. “I treat my backyard as a sort of dining room, living room, and everything room—an extension of my apartment,” she says. “All the entertaining that I do happens outside.” 

Channeling the coziness of a café keeps things comfortable even when it’s chilly. “Even if I’m doing just a barbecue in my backyard, I kind of approach the setup as if I were building out a little pop-up restaurant,” she adds. Pickowicz tends toward the colorful and the mismatched for tableware and linens, in lively shades of red and pink, but her one essential is unexpected and practical: “I bought a Slim Jim—they’re tall, skinny trash cans you usually see at a bar,” she says. “It’s always good to have a place for trash outside.”

Shop the Look

I knock on the front door of Cal Somni, but there’s no answer. It feels like the kind of place where you don’t knock anyway. You just arrive. There’s a car in the driveway indicating someone’s presence so I wander along a redbrick path toward a garden pavilion, its doors wide open with quiet invitation. Beyond the pavilion, the murmur of a creek calls my attention into the bushland where Nigel Chouri and Crick King emerge barefoot, fresh from a swim. 

At Cal Somni (“place of dreams” in Catalan), water is a constant companion. There’s a tidal creek behind, the Tweed River across the road, and the Pacific Ocean roaring just beyond the mangroves against the shores of Dreamtime Beach. And with the water table just 28 inches below the surface, Cal Somni doesn’t just feel like it’s floating—it practically is.

Nigel and Crick purchased the 1950s beach shack online in 2020 from their apartment in Barcelona, where they had lived for the past 20 years designing hotels, hospitality venues, and culinary experiences. They wanted to live closer to family, and they decided on Fingal Head, a narrow peninsula in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. But the couple soon realized that Fingal Head was too remote, too quiet compared to the bustling social rhythms they’d grown used to in Spain.

Location: 31 Ninth Street North, Edgartown, Massachusetts

Price: $1,195,000

Year Built: 1972

Architect: Robert Orr

Footprint: 1,275 square feet (2 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 0.34 Acres

From the Agent: “Nestled among the trees near Sengekontacket Pond, this distinctive contemporary home offers privacy while being conveniently close to downtown Edgartown and the picturesque trails at Felix Neck Sanctuary. Designed by architect Robert Orr, this multilevel residence showcases unique architectural details and striking angled ceilings. The living area is bathed in natural light, surrounded by windows, and features a charming brick fireplace. The eat-in kitchen has stainless-steel appliances, an exposed brick backdrop, and opens to a spacious deck, perfect for outdoor dining and entertaining. The primary bedroom suite is a bright and inviting retreat, complete with a private bath. A comfortable guest bedroom and a convenient powder room complete the main level. Upstairs, you’ll find a sun-filled office with a curved wall of windows and access to another lovely deck.”