Gallerist Yuri Psinakis turned to designer Mark McCullough (unfortunately no website yet) when it came time to turn his 3 floor loft in the Soma area of San Francisco from cookie cutter new build into a stylish and sophisticated home. McCullough has created a number of intimate spaces within the box like space using a mature colour palette and rich layering of textures. Psinakis then added the finishing touches from carefully curating an enviable art collection to the smart tableaus dotted around his home. No sterile art gallery existence here but a rich still life for everyday living.

The photos by Lynn Kloythanomsup of Architectural Black. Wonderful!

3 levels of Paddington, Sydney terrace house redesigned as a luxurious inner city pad. Rough brick walls sit alongside velvet, leather, silk and crystal while in the kitchen Calcutta marble meets polished concrete. Rising through it all the star of the show is the glass and steel staircase. A house that needs more sympathetic photography to really convince me but oh my the staircase against that wall…. brilliant. Link here while it lasts.

Rough luxe, rustic yet modern, traditional married with minimalism. Indoor melds with outdoor, concrete and stainless steel, glass and pebbles and everything washed with beautiful natural light. The gallery and dwelling of Valerie Traan in Antwerp, Belgium by LENS°ASS Architect. Subtle beauty, the preservation of the old and the juxtaposition of the modern in a sympathetic way and always the presence of repeating patterns of brick or herringbone or block. After the jump a few more images from the firm’s design of a GP surgery in an old brick barn like structure.

Delicious. Divine. Dinesen. A Danish flooring company that sources floor boards that are so beautiful, so perfect that the best in the business must have them in their designs. Think Anoushka Hempel, John Pawson and almost any Scandinavian architect you can name. I stumbled across them when I found the MacDonald Wright Architects website. There, lurking in the links, was a company that puts the wood in my flooring love. Oh bad, bad pun but folks if I could marry a piece of oak or Douglas fir I’d tie the knot with these planks.

Common in the inner city areas of my part of the world are small wooden worker’s cottages from the late 19th century. Four rooms with a central corridor wrapped with a verandah. This extension by Brisbane based architects Owen and Vokes adds areas to eat and meet and bathe but orientates them to the outdoor spaces. The lovely old garden with its spreading frangipani is now a part of the indoor outdoor lifestyle along with an outdoor fireplace for entertaining and cooking. Windows and openings allow the light to penetrate the building and a modern take on the lean-to or enclosed verandah is given a new lease on life. A relaxed and stylish family space that respects the heritage of the building but lets the home re-invent itself for the present.

 Photography by Jon Linkins.