GRAPHĒ

A Scarpa-Inspired Venice Retreat Lists for $14.9M

Artistic sensibility radiates from this coastal oasis just half a block from Abbot Kinney.

746 Milwood Avenue in Venice, California, is currently listed at $14,950,000 by Layla Bodet at Sotheby’s International Realty - Pacific Palisades Brokerage.

Effortlessly balancing sophistication and soul, this Venice Beach estate is an inspired setting for both everyday living and gatherings. Set on a rare and expansive double-lot along one of the most sought-after streets in Venice, this newly constructed 6,459-square-foot residence, completed in 2022, is an exquisite expression of design and elevated coastal living.

Encompassing five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, including the one-bedroom, one-bath second residence and pool house, on an approximately 10,810-square-foot lot, the property offers both scale and intimacy. It’s a quiet sanctuary, yet only a block and half to Abbot Kinney and all of the very best that the local community and culture has to offer from dining and shopping, to arts and entertainment.

Every element of the home, from the architecture to the furnishings, has been custom designed and curated by AML STUDIO. The result is a cohesive, museum-quality residence where craftsmanship and intention are evident at every turn. Custom doors, windows, and built-ins create a seamless visual language echoing the home’s warm modernism, materiality and sculptural wood construction.

Interiors are grounded by Scarpa-inspired high-aggregate polished concrete floors with hand-laid brass inlay, with radiant floor heating that brings a layer of everyday luxury and comfort underfoot. Expansive walls of glass, juxtaposed with custom tinted board-formed concrete, frame landscape and invite natural light to move fluidly through the home, blurring the line between indoors and out.

Designed with both comfort and entertaining in mind, a bespoke media room offers an intimate cinematic experience, wrapped in rich walnut paneling that provides warmth and acoustic refinement. A sophisticated, fully appointed bar anchors the space, ideal for hosting elegant evenings or relaxed family gatherings.

Designed with wellness at its core, the primary suite is a private sanctuary, featuring a Boffi soaking tub, brass fixtures by Vola, and a serene, spa-like atmosphere. Some bathrooms are adorned with floor tiles by Commune Design, offering an artisanal richness.

The home is equipped with an energy efficient multi-zone VRF system, delivering precise climate control throughout while maintaining exceptional efficiency and quiet performance. A fully integrated Lutron lighting system orchestrates light and mood, enhancing the home’s tranquil, restorative environment from sunrise to evening.

Outdoors, the double-lot unfolds into a private resort-like setting, ideal for both intimate family living and grand-scale entertaining. A pool clad in Ann Sacks Zellige tile is surrounded by multiple beautiful and distinctive areas for lounging and dining, and impeccable landscaping by internationally renowned Stefan Hammerschmidt.

Listing Details

Bedrooms: 5

Baths: 5 full, 2 partial

Year Built: 2022

Square Feet: 6,459

Plot Size: 0.25 acres

Courtesy of Sotheby's International Realty - Pacific Palisades Brokerage

See the full story on Dwell.com: A Scarpa-Inspired Venice Retreat Lists for $14.9M
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This Crisp Cluster of Gables in Transylvania Started With Prefab Modules

The holiday home combines innovative materials like compressed hay insulation with the rural language of the Romanian countryside.

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: Moldovenești, Romania

Architect: MVAA / @mvaa_studio

Footprint: 750 square feet

Builder: PAECO

Structural Engineer: Moebius Engineering

Civil Engineer: HSC Instal

Photographer: Viewcatchers / @vwcatchers

From the Architect: "Located in Moldovenești, a village in Cluj County, this project sits within the cultural and natural landscape of the hills of Transylvania. The site is framed by nearby landmarks such as the dramatic Cheile Turzii gorge, the limestone peak of Piatra Secuiului, and the historic fabric of Rimetea. Within Moldovenești itself, the silhouette of the 16th-century Jósika Castle and the village’s churches provide immediate reference points. Against this backdrop, the design positions itself as a contemporary continuation of the region’s rural identity—rooted in tradition, yet responsive to the needs of contemporary living.

"The project arose from the client’s request for three interconnected components: a new holiday home, a smaller guesthouse for occasional visitors, and the restoration of an old barn to accommodate social activities and remote work. Rather than condensing these functions into a single volume, the design draws inspiration from the traditional household organization of the area, where multiple annexes are scattered around a courtyard. The new ensemble embraces this fragmented composition, integrating itself naturally into the orchard landscape.

"Placed at the highest point of the site, the main house enjoys open views toward the surrounding hills and establishes a visual axis with Jósika Castle. Modest in size, it is carefully divided into three volumes: a ‘day’ wing with living and kitchen areas, a ‘night’ wing with bedrooms and bathroom, and a technical corpus that includes technical spaces and a covered grill area. The living room rises in part to a double height, a gesture that compensates for the home’s compact footprint by offering a sense of spatial generosity and openness. Between the day and technical wings, a shaded terrace forms a cool, sheltered extension of the living room, overlooking the courtyard with its playground and shed. On the opposite side, facing the landscape and castle, a sunny open terrace with a Jacuzzi provides a complementary space of openness and leisure. The placement of windows and openings was designed so that each interior space maintains a direct relationship either with the courtyard or with the panoramic views beyond.

"Materially, the houses combine contemporary techniques with sustainable and locally resonant choices. A concrete foundation supports prefabricated modular wooden structures, insulated with compressed hay, a relatively new but promising technology in Romania. The pedestal is covered with reused local limestone, grounding the buildings visually while recycling durable materials from the area. The facades are clad in thermo-treated pine, echoing the wooden annexes typical of rural households and maintaining the appearance of secondary structures in deference to the older houses aligned along the street. Roofs are covered with ceramic tiles in traditional scale-like patterns."

See the full story on Dwell.com: This Crisp Cluster of Gables in Transylvania Started With Prefab Modules
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If You Dream of Desert Minimalism, Here’s a $995K Marfa Getaway

Designer Barbara Hill turned the century-old adobe home into a restrained retreat with steel beams, plaster walls, and a garden oasis.

The pine floors were re-stained during the renovation.

Location: 309 North Highland Ave, Marfa, Texas

Price: $995,000

Designer: Barbara Hill

Footprint: 2,188 Square Feet (2 Bed, 3 Bath)

Year Renovated: 2006

From the Listing: "This home is gallerist and interiors guru Barbara Hill’s first home in Marfa, on the Courthouse Square. Hill removed the interior adobe walls, stabilized the 100-plus-year-old structure with steel beams, and layered the walls with gypsum plaster with a glow that alternates as the day begins and fades. This softness is carried through the 1,800-square-foot main home to a detached casita with an outdoor area that is conceived as a private garden oasis."

Designer Barbara Hill turned the century-old adobe home into a restrained retreat with steel beams, plaster walls, and a garden oasis.
Photo by Michael Phelan

See the full story on Dwell.com: If You Dream of Desert Minimalism, Here’s a $995K Marfa Getaway
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TFW You "Landline" Your Phone

Why we're using a shared nostalgia for the corded phone to free us from our screen-time obsessions.

About a year ago, Lauren Czajka stopped carrying her phone with her from room to room. A nonprofit executive working in the teen mental health space, she was acutely aware of the problems that smartphones cause—depression, sleep loss, lower cognitive performance. But while reading the book Stolen Focus, she learned just how much our attention spans are diminished by our devices and decided to change her relationship with her digital appendage. There was one problem, though: Her young kids would find her phone wherever she left it and would bring it back to her. They were trying to be helpful. "It breaks my heart that they see it as a problem when I don't have my phone," she says.

Czajka’s longtime friend Kate Trey came up with an idea: a coiled phone charger that’s an homage to the kitchen landline she grew up with that would require walking to a set location in your home to use your phone. Czajka made a model out of a pizza box for a wall mount that would attach her phone to a charger using a long, loopy wire; several prototypes later, the cardboard prototype became Coilie, a silicone-coated aluminum perch for your smartphone that turns it into a "landline" by tethering it to the wall. It’ll formally launch on Kickstarter later this summer in a variety of bright, throwback colors.

Czajka and Trey are part of a growing movement of "landlining" smartphones to curb our addictions to devices while at home. Partially driven by a nostalgia for the corded phone, the idea to dock your smartphone has been making the rounds on social media, solidifying the trend of turning one’s everywhere-all-the-time phone into an old-school landline. On Instagram, Laura Ambrosia, who runs a wellness retreat in Sacramento, posted a video of her "landline" system that’s meant to set a better example of boundaries for her children; Tiffany Ng, author of the blog Cyber Celibate, posted a video of homemade landline experiments, using pearl strings and climbing rope to hang a cellphone from a wall peg. (Each received more than 32,000 likes and 10,000 likes, respectively.)

Coilie’s founders note that when they began sharing their product’s website they hoped to get 1,000 pre-orders in the first month. They quickly surpassed 4,000. "People want this product, they want to buy it, they want to be able to hang up their phones," Trey says. Oddly, tethering our phones reflects an expanding desire for freedom from them; of course, a slew of new apps that turn your phone into a "dumb" device, blocking social media but allowing calls and texts, is another option.

For interior designer Ryan Shand, unplugging from your device is as much a design problem as it is one of self-control. "I believe that our homes pave the way for our nervous systems, and how we’re able to show up in a space and our environment can alter the way that we feel," she explains. Shand, who co-owns Shand Design with her mom in Santa Barbara, recently shared her personal home phone solution on Instagram: Instead of opting for a wall-mounted charger, she stores her cell in a 1920s brass wall planter when she gets home from work. Having a specific place that the phone lives creates what she calls a "landing zone"—a design principle with a calming effect that she encourages for her clients’ homes, too.

Shand recommends spaces near an entryway or in a common area, places where we might store keys or wallets. Placing your phone in its "home" or perch transforms it from a mobile device to a landline and stops that panicked feeling of "where’s my phone" when it’s not immediately in reach. "People then have a connection to where something might be, especially because we are designing quite large homes," she says. If your home is your sanctuary, can you really relax after a long day when your obligations are immediately accessible? Shand doubts it. The landing zone instead affirms the home’s purpose as a haven, putting hard boundaries around what is required to actually unwind.

Both Shand and Coilie’s founders are parents to young kids and mentioned the struggle to model better behaviors toward technology; such skills aren’t easily communicated to children who grow up watching their parents scroll, text, and check emails all day. "We were not the generation that made smartphones and got us all addicted, but it’s up to our generation to solve that problem and establish what is appropriate behavior for smartphone usage," says Trey. Some parents are opting to literally bring back the old apparatus: Artist Andy Bellomo has thought about getting a landline after years of being "swallowed" by her cell. With a four-year old daughter who was rapidly making new friends, Bellomo purchased a Tin Can—a screenless, internet-enabled device that allows kids to call other Tin Can phones for free.

Lauren Czajka and Kate Trey developed a smartphone dock called Coilie to create boundaries around usage at home. — Lauren Czajka and Kate Trey developed a smartphone dock called Coilie to create boundaries around screen time at home.
Rendering courtesy of Collie

When Bellomo’s family got the Tin Can, she and her partner realized they had to train their daughter in phone etiquette—though many parents of young kids might have grown up watching their parents answer the phone and hold long conversations with friends and family, these practices aren’t always modeled for today’s kids. "We taught her how to say hello, how was your day, and what are you doing; now she practices that and the conversations are interesting," says Bellomo. She adds that her daughter has learned how to listen to others and to wait for pauses in the voice on the other end before adding to the conversation—a type of mindfulness that requires attention to others’ verbal cues without seeing faces. Her daughter also learned that conflicts can be resolved over the phone.

It’s extra parenting, for sure, but Shand says that the mythology of design is that it is always used to make something difficult easier—but that is precisely what got us hooked on smartphones in the first place. Landlining our phones might add a little friction to the now-seamless act of picking up a call or responding to a text. But that friction could make our lives infinitely better.

Top photo by Harold M. Lambert / Getty Images

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An Entire Wall of Screens Opens This Australian Beach Home to Its Breezy Setting

When deployed, they make the residence feel more like an airy pavilion.

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: Moffat Beach, Australia

Architect: Arcke / @matt_arcke

Footprint: 807 square feet

Photographer: Christopher Frederick Jones / @christopherfrederickjones

From the Architect: "This compact home sits behind a commercial property, an adapted old fibro and tin roof beach shack, which is typical of the building type in the area. We styled the project’s high, pitched roof and clerestory windows as a nod to this ’50s and ’60s era architecture.

"Defined by the north-eastern elevation’s operable slatted screens, the house can be opened up to the prevailing breezes and filtered light, or closed to provide privacy and security. The design fosters intimate nooks for private moments as well as open living spaces for entertaining. The entertaining area can accommodate a large crowd around the barbecue and into the garden, and the indoor dining table can seat eight.

"The weather in subtropical South East Queensland is pleasant most of the year and lovely on warm summer evenings. This livable weather is central to our aesthetic, and we tend to make little distinction between interior versus exterior design in our projects. Wherever appropriate we use textures, materials, and colors that sit comfortably both indoors and outdoors creating a cohesive, integrated whole. Here, the thermally modified timber battens used on all the screens were fabricated on aluminum supports. The natural rosewood timber doors and windows formed the basis of the color palette. Adding plywood joinery to the interiors and cooling green tiles set against crisp white brings the feel of the natural world indoors.

"Often our design choices result from choosing sustainable materials. Zincalume and pale concrete complement the simplicity of stainless-steel fixtures and fittings, all of which are more resilient in the coastal environment. Similarly, copper outdoor showers won’t corrode and the showers keep the sand at bay when returning surf boards from the beach.

"The Sunshine Coast is known for high rainfall, and is hot and humid in summer, so keeping well ventilated to stop moisture ingress is very important. High ceilings and louvre windows channel hot air out of the home and optimize cross-ventilation, supplemented by efficient ceiling fans to increase airflow.

"The large garden was also designed for local weather. Since hard surfaces create heat sinks, the outdoor space has limited concrete or paving. The driveway and parking area is grass paving, a permeable surface that allows grass to grow through it, reducing heat and letting water seep into the earth. The garden plants have been chosen to tolerate high moisture with a focus on native varietals to attract birds and wildlife.

"Aging in place was also an important consideration for our semiretired clients. The home is compact, easy to maintain and clean, safe and secure, almost step-free, and designed with generous circulation space."

See the full story on Dwell.com: An Entire Wall of Screens Opens This Australian Beach Home to Its Breezy Setting

Before & After: Pops of Green and a Sunken Sofa Bring an Alpine Home Back to Peak Condition

Through subtle updates, Studio Classico and Chapitre restore an ’80s stone residence originally designed by Alain Amédéo in the French countryside.

The original upstairs cabinet was refinished, and new cabinets in the kitchen were designed in the same Beech wood with a cinnamon-colored oil to be consistent. The vertical detailing earmarks that they are new insertions.

This house nestled above the hilltop village of Dauphin, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region of southeastern France, is easy to miss. About a 90-minute drive from Marseille, it’s located off a narrow country road that leads to hundreds of acres of woods and hiking trails. "You can’t see the house from the village," says architect Antoine Lallement. "And the road is not that comfortable to drive." By the time the property reveals itself, with a main house, a guesthouse, and a pool tucked into a steep hillside, "It’s kind-of a surprise," he adds.

In 2023, architects Suleïma Ben Achour of classico studio and Antoine Lallement of Chapitre were hired by a Belgian writer to remodel his property in Dauphin, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region of France. — In 2023, architects Suleïma Ben Achour of Studio Classico and Antoine Lallement of Chapitre were hired by a Belgian writer to remodel his property in Dauphin, France.
Courtesy of studio classico

The 1980s home was originally designed by Marseille architect Alain Amédéo, in a style that combines traditional Provençal character—thick cement, stone walls, and a tiled roof—with modernist underpinnings. "We call this régionalisme critique," says architect Suleïma Ben Achour. "In English, it would be critical regionalism."

The style emerged in 1977 in opposition to cookie-cutter globalization and kitschy revivalism. "It’s a movement that incorporates modernist architecture with a vernacular vocabulary," explains Ben Achour. In this case, the home is sited on the shelf of the hillside, its thick stone walls pierced with large windows framed in thin green metal.

Before: Annex

Before: The architects appreciated and preserved the home's original details, like the thick walls and green metal windows. This building had a garage with a lot of unused space. — Before: The architects appreciated and preserved many of the home’s original details, like the thick walls and green metal windows.
Courtesy of studio classico

In 2023, the two architects—Ben Achour runs Studio Classico in Paris, while Lallement founded Chapitre in Marseille—were invited to the house by the owner, a Belgian writer, for a kitchen remodel. "It was tiny in comparison to the rest of the house," says Ben Achour. At the time, the owner was interviewing multiple architects, and he asked the pair to deliver a proposal summarizing their approach.

Ben Achour and Lallement suggested maintaining Amédéo’s approach, and incorporating changes that share the same "vocabulary," while keeping them distinct from the original home. "We use the word ‘affiliation,’" says Lallement. "It’s not about making a copy of the original, or giving the impression that everything was built at the same time." Adds Ben Achour. "We don’t build against the architecture, but we try to make our interventions blend in."

Before: Annex Garage

Before: The owner wanted to convert the smaller 130 m² building into an artists' residency, and the garage was transformed into a studio. — Before: The owner wanted to convert the smaller 1,399-square-foot building into an artists’ residency with a studio.
Courtesy of studio classico

See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: Pops of Green and a Sunken Sofa Bring an Alpine Home Back to Peak Condition
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Concrete Blocks Meet Glass Walls at This $635K Michigan Home

Designed by famed local architect Jackson Hallett, the 1970s Midland residence manages to be monolithic and airy at the same time.

Designed by famed local architect Jackson Hallett, this 1970s residence in Midland, Michigan, manages to be monolithic and airy at the same time.

Location: 5208 Sunset Drive, Midland, Michigan

Price: $635,000

Architect: Jackson Hallett

Year Built: 1970

Footprint: 4,824 Square Feet (5 Bed, 5 Bath)

Lot Size: 0.58 Acres

From the Agent: "Set among mature trees, Jackson Hallett’s Dean House immediately feels grounded in its surroundings. Designed in 1970 for Dale and Judith Dean, the house is a great example of Hallett’s architectural language. From the approach, you notice the composition first: a series of geometric forms that come together in a way that feels both sculptural and balanced. The shapes echo the vertical rhythm of the trees, and the whole structure reads as one cohesive idea. Floor-to-ceiling glass lines the living spaces, pulling in natural light and framing views of the surrounding woods. The living room, dining area, and kitchen flow easily without heavy divisions or unnecessary walls. Throughout the house, fireplaces anchor the main spaces, integrated storage keeps things clean and uncluttered, and a lower-level recreation room features a wet bar. In 1988, the home was expanded with a primary suite designed by Saginaw architect Rex Reittenbach. The addition is seamless, staying true to Hallett’s original vision. It offers a spacious retreat with an en suite bath, a private sitting area, and its own balcony."