Plain Magazine

10 stories

Plain MagazineA Cabinet Cube Anchors This 700-Square-Foot Backyard Studio in Seattle Best Practice Architecture designs Lavanadu in Seattle’s Seward Park, featuring a cabinetry bed nook, lake views, and a gable roof.

October 17

Plain MagazineBrazil’s Casa Votupoca is Arranged to Welcome Light and Encourage a Dialogue with the Surrounding Vegetation At just six metres wide and 30 metres deep, Casa Votupoca by Arkitito Arquitetura in Brazil makes a convincing case for thinking upwards rather than outwards.

October 16

Plain MagazineGabled Volumes and a Gigantic Glass-Clad Room Make an Incredible Indiana Guest House With its dark timber skin and three pitched roofs, this Indiana guest house by SEEK Design looks more like a cluster of agricultural outbuildings than a place to retreat to on weekends.

October 15

Plain MagazineMcLean Quinlan Raises a Courtyard Home Above a Surrey Wildflower Meadow McLean Quinlan designs Virginia Water, a countryside home in Surrey featuring a floating floor, a brick courtyard, and a ground source heat pump.

October 13

Plain MagazineCayucos Ridge Barn Runs Off the Grid Among Syrah Vines In the Santa Lucia Range near Cayucos, California, stands Cayucos Ridge Barn, a 4,315-square-foot working barn that runs entirely off the grid.

October 13

Plain MagazineWhite Oak and Concrete Unify an Expanded Phoenix House blank design studio + architecture takes charge of the Klose Residence's renovation in Phoenix, Arizona featuring an oxidized steel canopy, white oak panels, and concrete floors.

October 10

Plain MagazineThe Canopy House in Canada Is Built onto a Hillside to Meet the Steep Topography In Vancouver, Canada, the Canopy House by Lamoureux Architects brings an appealing tree-house-like quality, blending with the dense woodland so that its surroundings feel almost part of the…

October 9

Plain MagazineSea and Jungle Views Extend from this Serene, Low-Profile Home in Mexico Casa Malonica by HW Studio is informed by its location, its low-profile form poised on a plateau from which the sea stretches out beyond the site to one side and dense jungle surrounds it to the…

October 7

Plain MagazinePeriscope-Like Skylights Jut Out from the Roof of this Contemporary House in Portland In Portland's St Johns neighbourhood, a former postwar house became the Gradient House and Studio, designed by Observation Studio to make working from home feel less like a compromise and more like…

October 6

Plain MagazineAn Ontario Lake Cottage Borrows Its Plan From the American South Williamson Williamson designs DogTrot Magnetawan, a prefab cottage in Ontario featuring a breezeway, cedar cladding, and Passive House walls.

October 6

A room is a decision about how you want to be tired at the end of the day.

I live in forty-eight square metres in Tokyo with one good chair and far too many bowls, so I have had to mean that. I trained as an architect and left to write, which my teachers took badly. Uchi (内) means inside, and it means home: the room you come back to. The palette comes after the tiredness. So does the name on the lamp.

This is where I keep what the world's rooms are doing. Around seventy sources, read in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, French and English: an apartment in Seoul, a house outside Taipei, a Copenhagen showroom seen from here rather than from Denmark. East first, because east is where I am sitting.

Each story is a headline, an excerpt of a few lines, one photograph and a link to whoever did the work. We never reprint the piece, and the photograph belongs to the person who took it. When a room was written up in Korean or Italian it stays in Korean or Italian here; the link takes you to the writer's own words.

I am not trying to be complete. I am trying to notice.

— Mio Tachibana, Tokyo