Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Sant Cugat del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain

Architect: Raúl Sánchez Architects / @raulsanchezarchitects

Footprint: 1,829 square feet

Structural Engineer: Diagonal Estructuras

MEP: Mares Ingenieros

Photographer: José Hevia

From the Architect: “This home is built on an extreme slope without major excavations into the slate rock. It barely touches the ground, supported by a few structural concrete screens that leave the terrain practically untouched.

“Access is from the upper level, where the house presents itself as a regular and hermetic volume. As the terrain descends, it becomes evident that the house barely rests on a rock at the rear, instead extending its ‘legs’—the concrete screens—to find support on the facade walls and central core along the slope. A cantilevered staircase, connecting the pedestrian access and the parking area, descends and leads to the main level, where a large terrace welcomes visitors. This terrace extends from a spacious kitchen/dining area, which opens onto a outdoor balcony through four large sliding windows. The interiors are in constant dialogue with its environment, with views of surrounding trees and distant valleys and mountains in every corner.

“The main floor has a central block housing the staircase, a bathroom, and pantry, freeing up the entire perimeter for the kitchen, living room, and a viewing space. The latter faces the valley and features a built-in bench running along the entire glazed façade. These interconnected spaces are designed for both habitation and contemplation of the landscape.

“The interior staircase creates a double-height void, emphasizing visual and functional connectivity between floors within this continuous space. It then passes through a circular opening before emerging onto the roof through a rotated square turret. On the upper floor, a central space connects two small balconies that frame the landscape while providing access to three bedrooms and a bathroom. The primary bedroom includes a walk-in closet and an en suite bathroom, with sliding doors that allow for flexible space configuration.

“The house’s design follows the golden ratio in both plan and elevation, achieving a visual balance between simplicity and sophistication. The volume appears straightforward, with three of its façades—facing the entrance and neighboring properties—featuring carefully placed, restrained openings, some of which are covered with lattice screens to control sunlight.”

“The first step of the internal staircase—an enormous piece of local rock—pays tribute to Carlo Scarpa’s approach to staircases, always conceived as an invitation to ascend. This element reflects the project’s philosophy, blending sensitivity to the environment, formal and spatial inventiveness, landscape integration, and sustainability.”

Welcome to Someone Buy This!, a monthly shopping column featuring the fun, the frivolous, and the practical from a very discerning shopper.

When every square foot matters, the right pieces can make your space work harder and look better doing it. As someone with a lot of stuff, I’m always looking for ways to optimize how I store things. I rounded up six design-forward solutions that will make your home feel more intentional, more functional, and, frankly, more pulled together.

Whether you’re tight on storage or, like me, just allergic to visual clutter, these finds prove that utility and good design aren’t mutually exclusive.

A coffee table that hides your mess 

The Orbit Coffee Table by Sundays looks like something you’d see in a perfectly lit Instagram apartment. Underneath its smooth, walnut top is a hidden storage compartment roomy enough for blankets, games, or whatever else you don’t want out in the open. Best of all, the top swivels open. So if you need to grab something inside, you don’t have to disrupt the drinks and perfectly placed coffee table books on the surface.

A lazy Susan that finally brings order to your fridge

Not to be dramatic, but this lazy Susan changed my life. I was constantly forgetting about stuff in the back of the fridge, often finding things spoiled or accidentally buying duplicates. This lazy Susan attaches to the fridge shelf with suction cups and spins smoothly. It keeps all my jars and condiments visible (no more forgotten salsa fossils for me!). It works just as well in a bathroom cabinet or under the sink. It’s clear, clean, and makes you more organized with zero effort.

A storage cart that will fit in the tightest of spaces

This slim rolling cart from Yamazaki is a secret weapon for awkward gaps between the washer and dryer, next to the toilet, wherever. It’s super narrow, has shockingly smooth wheels, and hides tons of stuff inside its minimalist frame. It handles cleaning supplies, skincare overflow, and random tools without looking like it belongs in a utility closet.

Put your walls to work with pegboard tiles

Pegboards aren’t just for garages anymore. I’ve fantasized about adding one as a backsplash in my kitchen. One of my favorite things about pegboards is how accessible they are. You can get a budget-friendly one with a classic look at Ikea or opt for something a bit more elevated like this wooden one from George & Willy. It’s modular, minimal, and actually looks like something you’d want on your wall. Rearrange the pegs and shelves to hold tools, plants, bags, or whatever else you usually lose track of.

Organizers that make your drawers feel custom

There’s nothing glamorous about a junk drawer, unless you’ve conquered it with a system like this. These bamboo dividers instantly make even the most chaotic drawers feel like a custom setup. They’re an elegant upgrade to plastic trays, allowing you to configure sections for utensils, clothing, or whatever else you’re storing. The deep construction makes them perfect for oversize drawers or bulkier items.

A catchall that doubles as wall art

This wall-mounted catchall might help you become the person who always knows where their keys are. It can hold your daily essentials, like your wallet, sunglasses, and mail, without forcing you to take up valuable floor space with an entryway table. It’s functional, obviously, but also just nice to look at. The yellow one is so cute!

We love the products we feature and hope you do, too. If you buy something through a link on the site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Reading:

My Search for a Modular (and Stylish) Storage Solution for Loft Living

Four Years Into WFH Life, Here’s What You Need for an Aesthetically Pleasing Home Office

Location: 708 N Kenter Ave, Los Angeles, California

Price: $5,498,000

Year Built: 1956

Renovation Date: 2025

Renovation Designers: Joelle Kutner and Jesse Rudolph of Ome Dezin

Footprint: 3,175 square feet (4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths)

Lot Size: 0.33 Acres

From the Agent: “Step inside this masterfully reimagined single-level midcentury home. At the heart of the house, the open-concept living and dining areas are anchored by a sleek fireplace, creating the perfect space for intimate gatherings or lively entertaining. A custom-built banquette offers a cozy spot for morning coffee, while the kitchen boasts high-end appliances, custom cabinetry, and impeccable finishes. The family room provides a flexible retreat, opening directly to the backyard for seamless indoor/outdoor flow. The primary suite is a sanctuary unto itself, with a spa-like en suite bathroom. Three additional en suite bedrooms offer ample space for kids, guests, or a home office. Every system in the home has been fully updated, ensuring modern efficiency without compromising its midcentury soul. A brand-new pool and lush landscaping create a serene retreat.”

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Gavin Cater

On a street of gray Vancouver specials (a boxy style of home mass-produced from the 1960s through the ’80s) and plain-vanilla, vinyl-sided ranchers, the Fluevog family’s jagged, mint-colored house, with its wild, wonderful cutouts, will make you look twice. “The neighbors call it a ‘shape sorter’ house,” says homeowner Ali Palmer-Fluevog, who lives there with her husband, Adrian Fluevog, and their two young sons, Jonah and Lucas. It’s a moniker she and Adrian—CEO of John Fluevog Shoes, the cult fave Canadian brand founded by his dad in 1970—take as a compliment. “I’ve grown up making ‘unique soles for unique souls,’” says Adrian. “I’m used to quirkiness.”

Vancouver firm MA+HG Architects is to thank for this eye-catching, 3,155-square-foot salute to Euclidean geometry. “We were trying to riff on this notion of ‘How would you create architectural designs in a similar way to how you would design footwear?’” explains MA+HG coprincipal Harley Grusko. “They use two-dimensional patterns to create three-dimensional objects, so we developed the facades as a singular pattern and folded it to create the home’s shape.”

When I was a kid, bath time for animals meant rinsing Ellie, our family’s eager-to-please Yorkie-poo, in an unfinished concrete sink or, during one misguided incident, plunging our distraught cat, Chester, alongside me in an alcove tub. The awkwardness of bathing our dirty pets—whether you care for a fluffy Pomeranian or a scruffy retriever—is universal, which is why some are tackling the problem head-on with design.

In 2025, pets are rarely relegated to the doghouse. The proof is in the numbers: Millennials, many of whom are delaying or not having children, are investing in their fur babies: 70 percent of 983 surveyed millennial and Gen Z pet owners report having a budget solely for their pets, according to a study by The Harris Poll. “When I was younger, our dog was in the yard,” says interior designer Kishani Perera, whose recent work includes a laundry room with a walk-in dog shower and a home office with an eight-foot-tall cat tree. “Now my dogs sleep on cashmere blankets.”

For Frederick Tang Architecture, designing for clients’ lifestyles is always part of the deal, so the idea for a dog spa came somewhat naturally. When working with homeowners in Manhattan to renovate their postwar co-op apartment, firm founder Frederick Tang transformed roughly 55 square feet of underused space into a surprisingly luxe dog spa for about $10,000. Tang had envisioned the former utility room as a full bath, but the nearby guest room already had a shower. Being tucked away near the service elevator made it the perfect place for bathing a pair of dirty dogs. With the plumbing already in place—and the scope built into the budget—Tang modified the shower footprint to counter height and added a surround to contain errant splashing.

“A pet area doesn’t have to be purely functional,” says Tang. “It can be well designed and suited for the context of the house.” Blending modernity with quintessential Upper East Side traditionalism, Tang stuck with a black-and-white palette: The basket-weave stone-mosaic floor is clad with Carrara and veined black Nero Marquina trim, which extends upward to form the crisp basin.

Subsequently approached by a couple renovating a recently built farmhouse in the upstate hamlet of Pine Plains, New York, Tang designed a sculptural spa for Albee, the family’s bernedoodle. At a cost of around $15,000, it is similarly steep in budget; however, comparisons end there. The design is tailored to the home’s rural location and contemporary aesthetic. Conceived as a modified apron-front sink, the basin has tall, curving sides that keep water in and soapstone with a supple look. It rests on white oak millwork that doubles as storage space for Albee’s food—turning a pet feature into something more like a pet room.

If a custom dog bath sounds indulgent, it doesn’t have to be just for the dog. For Emilie and Brandon Conaway, living on a lake with their three boys and Australian labradoodle, Harry, means things get messy. Between rinsing a muddy canine, soaking laundry, and washing postgame cleats, there was never a doubt that a generous washbasin would get good use.

“These spaces are designed for pets, but they’re not stainless-steel sinks. They’re sensitive to the contexts in which they were built.”

—Frederick Tang, architect

The couple worked with Popix Designs to renovate their 1970s A-frame house in Canyon Lake, California, with dreams for a dog bath that matched the playfully retro aesthetic. Popix founder Lizzie Green chose cream-and-tan ceramic tiles for the checkered basin and gray porcelain floor tiles—both of which, Green says, are durable and easy to clean. The family spent a combined $4,482 on the tiling and faucet, but saved on the sink’s vintage light pendant—a relic from the original home. “The dog bath is just pretty,” says Emilie. “I don’t wash my dog as often as I probably should, but when I do it’s so handy.”

Details aside, the secret, it seems, is the same. “It’s about listening to the client and incorporating all of their loved ones,” says Tang. “Even the animals.”

A large wooden table in the center of the communal kitchen/dining room is the gathering spot. Here, women are learning to make modern takes on traditional Native American ribbon skirts or create vision boards as part of the cultural, wellness, and life skills programming offered by Anduhyaun, the oldest Indigenous women’s shelter in Canada (and the only one of its kind in Toronto). The table has been refurbished and brought over from the shelter’s former location, a cramped, city-owned historic home, to Anduhyaun’s new, 11,862-square-foot building designed by LGA Architectural Partners, a local firm with years of experience designing transitional shelters and affordable housing.

“That’s the original house meeting table from the beginning of Anduhyaun,” says Danielle Belyea, shelter director of the nonprofit, which was founded by four Indigenous grandmothers in 1973. “That table has been present with us since the beginning of all the programs, every house meeting, all the tears.”

Honoring the cultural identities of Anduhyaun’s women and children clients (most but not all of whom are Indigenous) informed the design for the three-story emergency shelter, which opened in summer 2024. Architect Brock James, a partner at LGA, recalls planning conversations with Anduhyaun’s former executive director Blanche Meawassige (who retired just as the new center was opening). “She would talk to us about an Indigenous way of seeing, where things are interconnected,” he says. This concept influenced the fluid layout of the common and private spaces, as well as the palette of soft blues and mauves representing the sky and flowing water. “The building has to feel alive because what’s happening in here is that transformation and growth,” James adds. Anduhyaun—meaning “our home” in Ojibwe—aims to envelop the people within and protect them.

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

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.

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.

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.