Summer Homes for the Season
Summer surroundings.
A look at some of the best houses for summer featured in our Home of the Week column. These homes embody summer with light, airy designs and plentiful outdoor space. From Oaxaca to Sydney, this is the architecture of the warmest season.
Two Architects in New Brunswick Design Themselves a Home for Living Boldly
Photograph by Ema Peter.
For many architects, the toughest client can be oneself. That was the case for Stephen Kopp and Monica Adair, two architects living and working in New Brunswick. After purchasing a piece of property in Saint John, the couple, who are partners in life and in work, spent several years using the land for recreation before building a new family home for themselves and their two young boys.
This Family Home Floats Over the Rocky Landscape in Quebec
Photograph by David Boyer.
After designing a renovation for a family of four in Montreal, architect Guillaume Pelletier was called back. “Because we had a great connection, they asked me to design their country house,” he says, referring to a new design he created for the family in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. “They had bought this piece of land on top of a hill with a very small rocky plateau next to an impressive exposed cliff. Their goal was to be able to enjoy the green area on top of the cliff easily.”
In Mexico, Veinte Diezz Arquitectos Transforms a Nearly Ruined Home
Mérida, the capital of Mexico’s Yucatán state, is a city of jaw-dropping colonial architecture and hidden courtyards—so it’s no wonder that it’s home to a booming expat community and tourism industry. With that market in mind, Mérida-based architecture firm Veinte Diezz Arquitectos has designed Vistalcielo, an adaptive reuse project that turned an abandoned building into an earthy yet airy vacation rental.
In Sydney, a Home Gets an Art Deco-Inspired Facelift and Opens to the Ocean
In an Eastern suburb of Sydney, Australia, one couple saw the potential in a nondescript, 1990s concrete-framed home. Hugging the cliffside, the house had stood up well to the high winds and lashing storms that sweep in from the ocean, but it was suffering from poor planning with an illogical layout disconnected from the views.
A Restored Historic Home in Oaxaca Pays Tribute to Mexican Culture
From the sculptural light fixtures to the apothecary-style shelving in the kitchen, creativity abounds at Ex-Hacienda Guadalupe, an 18th-century farmhouse in Oaxaca. Its owners, the Colombian designer and shop owner Raul Cabra and his partner, the American writer Michael Sledge, acquired the dilapidated property in 2007 with a singular goal: to transform the former Dominican Order farm into a permanent home, as well as a space to welcome locals and international creatives through events and workshops.
