GRAPHĒ

Massive Steel Panels Conceal (and Reveal) a Deceptively Airy Home in Tbilisi

Flanges form an operable armored facade that can open to let in light and breezes.

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: Tbilisi, Georgia

Architect: TIMM Architecture / @timmarchitecture

Footprint: 5,400 square feet

Photographer: Grigory Sokolinsky

From the Architect: "Located in the hillside district of Okrokana overlooking Tbilisi, the House of Iron Doors reinterprets the typical residential condition of the area through an architecture of enclosure and controlled openness. The surrounding neighborhood is characterized by individual houses hidden behind high perimeter fences, creating a fragmented streetscape defined more by walls than by architecture. Instead of replicating this condition, the project proposes a different strategy: the house itself becomes the perimeter. The building forms a protective architectural envelope that encloses the site and generates a private interior landscape.

"The street facade appears as a continuous rusted steel surface punctuated by a sequence of large perforated iron doors. These pivoting panels function as a dynamic environmental and spatial filter. When closed, the facade reads as a monolithic metal screen, offering privacy and protection from the street. When opened, the panels transform the building into a porous structure that allows light, air, and views to penetrate the interior spaces. The perforations create constantly shifting patterns of light and shadow throughout the day, giving the otherwise solid envelope a sense of movement and temporal variation.

"Behind this outer layer, the house organizes its spaces around an inward-oriented courtyard. All primary living areas are directed toward this internal garden rather than toward the surrounding streets and neighboring plots. This strategy allows the interior to maintain openness and transparency while preserving privacy from the outside. The courtyard becomes the spatial and environmental center of the house, providing daylight, greenery, and visual continuity across different levels of the dwelling.

"The ground level contains the main living spaces, including the living room, dining area, and kitchen, arranged in a linear sequence along the courtyard edge. Large sliding glass openings allow the interior to extend directly into the outdoor garden. Above, the private rooms continue the same spatial logic, maintaining visual connections to the internal landscape while remaining protected by the outer metal skin. A secondary layer of exterior panels functions as adjustable sun-shading devices for the interior rooms. These movable elements regulate daylight and reduce solar gain while simultaneously shaping the visual identity of the building. Their rhythmic placement along the facade establishes a strong architectural character that changes depending on their position and the angle of the sun."

See the full story on Dwell.com: Massive Steel Panels Conceal (and Reveal) a Deceptively Airy Home in Tbilisi

Topped With a Colorful Shingled Roof, an Ornate French Villa Seeks $2.5M

The belle époque property near Paris is over a century old, but it’s in pristine condition with an updated kitchen, a wine cellar, and chandeliers to spare.

This belle époque property near Paris is over a century old, but it’s in pristine condition with an updated kitchen, a wine cellar, and chandeliers to spare.

Location: Villennes-sur-Seine, Yvelines, France

Price: €2,090,000 (approximately $2,450,000 USD)

Year Built: 1900

Footprint: 2,755 square feet (5 bedrooms, 3 baths)

Lot Size: 0.24 acres

From the Agent: "This delightful listed 19-century belle époque–style property is set in a leafy 985-square-meter plot, just a five-minute walk from the station, near shops and schools. In perfect condition, it includes a spacious entry with a cloakroom, a utility room, and a guest water closet; a drawing room; a living room with a fireplace; a kitchen with dining facilities; and an adjacent pantry. Upstairs are two suites, a study, three bedrooms, a shower room, and a separate water closet. The property also includes a convertible annex, a two-car garage, and an outdoor parking space."

The home is in Villennes-sur-Seine, — The home is set in Villennes-sur-Seine, a village on the Seine river about 19 miles west of Paris.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Féau Conseil Immobilier, SA./Luxury Portfolio International

Photo courtesy of Daniel Féau Conseil Immobilier, SA./Luxury Portfolio International

The home was built during France's Belle Époque era, a period of significant flourishing in the arts and culture. — The 1900s home pairs ornate belle époque details with contemporary finishes and fixtures.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Féau Conseil Immobilier, SA./Luxury Portfolio International

See the full story on Dwell.com: Topped With a Colorful Shingled Roof, an Ornate French Villa Seeks $2.5M
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That ’70s Cabin Just Listed in Wisconsin for $445K

Timber paneling, wall-to-wall carpet, retro lighting, and three woodburning fireplaces—what more do you need?

Location: 28931 Tall Moon Circle, Danbury, Wisconsin

Price: $445,000

Year Built: 1970

Footprint: 3,062 square feet (4 bedrooms, 3 baths)

Lot Size: 1 acre

From the Agent: "Welcome to Camp Green Pine, a four-bedroom, three-bath cabin offering 3,500 square feet of midcentury-modern style with a nostalgic ’70s camp feel. Set on a private one-acre double lot, this home is designed for gathering, with multiple indoor and outdoor living spaces. Thoughtful updates throughout honor its original 1970s character, elevated by designer touches. The entire property is carefully curated to help you reconnect with nature including the spacious bonfire area as well as a cozy screen porch for rainy days. Enjoy Voyager Village amenities including an 18-hole golf course, private lakes, clubhouse dining, an indoor pool and sauna, tennis courts, a fitness center, a dog park, and hiking, biking, snowmobile, and ski trails. Welcome back to camp."

The home is a member of Voyager Village, a "recreational community encompassing over 5,000 acres of woodlands, lakes, streams and wetlands in Northwest Wisconsin." — The home is set in Voyager Village, which the agent notes is a "recreational community encompassing over 5,000 acres of woodlands, lakes, streams and wetlands in Northwest Wisconsin."
Photo by Madelyn Kozlowski

Three woodburning fireplaces are spread throughout the home.
Photo by Madelyn Kozlowski

See the full story on Dwell.com: That ’70s Cabin Just Listed in Wisconsin for $445K

A Private Club Comes to NY’s "People’s Beach"—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week

NASA reveals Mexico is sinking at an alarming rate, Airbnb plots a return to NYC ahead of the World Cup, and more.

The 1930s-era Jacob Riis Bathhouse in The Rockaways is reopening this summer as the $88 million Rockaway Ocean Club, a members club and hotel bringing pools and restaurants to what was historically known as the "People’s Beach." Some locals worry the club model could threaten public access and the site’s long-standing role as an LGBTQ-friendly space. (The New York Times)
The U.S. housing affordability crisis may be "hiding in plain sight": 22 million older, modestly priced homes already exist across cities like Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago, but a broken mortgage system has left many buyers unable to finance or repair them. Now, cities are experimenting with new rehab loan programs to bring these overlooked homes back to life. (Bloomberg)
New NASA satellite imagery revealed that Mexico City is sinking nearly 10 inches a year as relentless groundwater pumping drains the city’s ancient lake bed, threatening everything from historic landmarks to critical infrastructure. (AP News)

Mexico City, which is built over a lake bed, is sinking at an alarmingly fast rate.
Geography Photos/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

As single women increasingly outpace men in homeownership, many say their financial independence is reshaping modern dating, exposing lingering anxieties around masculinity, money, and the very much fading ideal of a male breadwinner. (The Guardian)
As New York braces for a surge in visitors ahead of the World Cup, Airbnb is courting Black leaders, including pastors and homeowners, through hosting town halls in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, and Queens to push for looser short-term rental laws after years of crackdowns shut the company out of the city. Some are pushing back, arguing the rental company would only worsen gentrification and displacement. (The New York Times)

Top photo by Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock

How Do You Safeguard Your Home From Hurricanes? This Long Island Family Raised Theirs 12 Feet

After Hurricane Sandy flooded their 850-square-foot East End home, they embarked on a years-long renovation that included a material refresh, better views, and a storage area for water toys.

The rugged coastline and relaxed communities of the East End of Long Island have long drawn residents seeking quiet, scenic retreats. However, increasingly severe storms and hurricanes have threatened these waterfront homes. Now residents are figuring out how to adapt to the changing climate while retaining the charm that drew them there in the first place. How do you welcome the beauty of the natural environment while staying safe from it?

In 2011, Daniel and Julie bought a modest 1950s house in Lazy Point, a charming enclave on the East End of Long Island. They loved the coastal parcel and thought their three children would enjoy being able to kayak, paddleboard, and go boating right from their backyard.

Because of land use and permitting restrictions in the area, Daniel and Julie were only allowed to renovate their house; new construction was not possible. So working with the architect John Berg, they developed a plan to retrofit their home and place it atop a new, taller foundation that would elevate the habitable area to 12 feet above sea level. This meant raising the entire structure on temporary supports. Berg also rotated the house 90 degrees.

That’s precisely the dilemma that Daniel and Julie faced after buying a home in Lazy Point in 2011. After getting through Hurricane Irene unscathed, next came Hurricane Sandy, and two feet of floodwaters rushed into their 1950s house. They had to immediately address damaged drywall, broken mechanical equipment, and mold. "That’s the price you might have to pay for access to a pretty wild coastline," Daniel says. Realizing they wouldn’t survive another event without extensive renovations, they began a years-long process of planning and getting local permits approved in order to prepare for the next big one.

Their ground floor was only four feet above sea level while FEMA’s newest guidelines stipulate a minimum standard of 10 feet. Working with architect John Berg, they raised their home 12 feet above sea level and in the process upgraded the structure to withstand heavy wind and rain. Since new construction wasn’t permitted on the property, Berg raised the house and rotated it 90 degrees to get the height and orientation he wanted to maximize light and views, per his clients’ requests.

Black-stained hemlock clads the front of the house for a more modern look.
Photo by Simon Lawrence Howell

See the full story on Dwell.com: How Do You Safeguard Your Home From Hurricanes? This Long Island Family Raised Theirs 12 Feet
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This Blackened Cedar Home Was Designed to Vanish Into the Trees—Almost

The all-electric home by OPAL Architecture pairs a striking charred timber exterior with bright interiors to create a forest retreat for a family of four on the coast of Maine.

A generous covered entry porch provides a sheltered connection between the main house and a small garage and workshop. The warm-toned wood soffit creates a striking contrast against the charred Japanese cedar cladding, while the open breezeway beyond frames a view through to the woods.

Half a mile from the Atlantic, down a narrow road bordered by old stone walls, a dark stacked form emerges from the birch, oak, and pine of Maine’s York County. This is the Elemental House, a home for Joe and Katie Edwards and their two young children that was designed by OPAL Architecture to feel as if it had always been part of the landscape.

"We wanted the home to have a dark tone on the exterior that would make it disappear to some extent in the shadows of the woods," explains OPAL design partner Riley Pratt. "The dark exterior and moments of transparency through the home create a lantern-like effect that we find quite beautiful."

The L-shaped plan and detached garage sit within a clearing on the family's two-acre wooded lot on Raynes Neck, a peninsula located about half a mile from the ocean. The cedar exterior of the home, Gendai Linseed Black yakisugi by Nakamoto Forestry, all but disappears into the surrounding forest. — The L-shaped plan and detached garage sit within a clearing on the family’s two-acre wooded lot on Raynes Neck, a peninsula located about half a mile from the ocean. The cedar exterior of the home, Gendai Linseed Black yakisugi by Nakamoto Forestry, all but disappears into the surrounding forest.
Photo: Trent Bell

Coming from nearly a decade in small city apartments—including a six-year stint in a basement unit—the couple’s brief was clear. "Our first priority was a house that made us feel connected to the outside world," says Joe. Beyond that, they desired space to grow as a family, the ability to work from home, and the efficiency of a house informed by Passive House principles to minimize ongoing costs.

The composition of flat-roofed volumes—clad entirely in Nakamoto Forestry yakisugi sourced from PEFC-certified, air-dried Japanese cedar—reads as a single dark form against the forested landscape, punctuated by carefully placed openings that offer glimpses of the bright interior. At twilight, the entry facade (as seen here) becomes illuminated by warm light spilling from the covered porch and windows onto the gravel path.
Photo: Trent Bell

See the full story on Dwell.com: This Blackened Cedar Home Was Designed to Vanish Into the Trees—Almost
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From the Archive: Low and Long, This Rural Home Was Designed to Feel Like Moving Through the Forest

Built for Bill Moggridge, the designer of the first laptop, and his wife Karin, the property provided a reprieve from the couple’s intercontinental life.

Welcome to From the Archive, a look back at stories from Dwell’s past. This story previously appeared in the January/February 2003 issue.

Heading south from San Francisco on Interstate 280, the "little boxes made of ticky-tacky" (made famous by singer/songwriter Malvina Reynolds in the ’6os) that line the hillsides of Daly City and South San Francisco rapidly give way to rolling green hills that turn a smoldering gold in the summer. Twenty minutes down the road, you can take any number of exits and creep farther away from civilization. As you turn onto Skyline Boulevard and drive through towering redwoods, the city and surrounding suburbs become a memory.

Here, deep in the woods, about an hour from downtown San Francisco, Bill and Karin Moggridge found the land that would become their home. "When Karin found this place, she did a little dance," says Bill, a cofounder of Ideo, the international design consulting firm. "From that moment, I knew it was all over." "It was just so incredible to see it," continues Karin, a fiber artist and clothing designer from Copenhagen. "I’m not a religious or spiritual person in any way, but it was as if something had said, ‘This is it. This is where you should put down your roots.’"

High above the Silicon Valley smog and sloping toward the distant Pacific, the land captivated the Moggridges from day one. Eccentric neighbors (including a helicopter-flying, horseback-riding, earth-moving-equipment-obsessed emergency-room doctor and a Cadillac-driving Neil Young), attracted by the area’s seclusion and beauty, are hidden at a safe distance among the manzanitas.

After Ideo took off in the ’8os, the Moggridges found themselves living the intercontinental life, splitting their time between London, where they owned a flat, and Palo Alto, where they owned a small house. "But everything had to be sacrificed for this," Bill says of their new house.

The Moggridges had long thought about building their own house but hadn’t seriously considered the possibility until 1994. "Basically, our freedom started with the kids leaving home and Ozzy passing on," Bill says, referring to their two grown sons and now-deceased dog, named after the infamous Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne.

With their freedom granted, the couple quickly staked their claim. Just 7o days after Karin first saw the land, the Moggridges were the proud owners of 17 acres of trees, dirt, wildflowers, and their fair share of poison oak, spiders, and mice. The two creative forces quickly got to work on their dreams, setting up a tent in a clearing and spending as much time as possible imagining what could be. "The first thing we did was to try and understand the land," Bill says. "So we got maps and an aerial photograph from the USGS. Then we started exploring the land, surveying the edges to find out where the periphery was, putting little flags every hundred feet."

"We were hoping to design the house," Karin says. "We made this little book in order to find out what we liked. The book got some of the desire to actually design it ourselves out of the way." "It also allowed us to work out our differences and discover what we each wanted," says Bill.

With the idea of designing the house on the back burner, the Moggridges made a short list of five architects whom they were interested in working with, including the small San Francisco firm of Baum Thornley. "We knew Doug [Thornley]," Bill explains, "from having worked with him on Ideo’s San Francisco office."

The Moggridges sent their 62-page book—containing chapters titled "The Land," "What We Want," "First Ideas," "Where We’ve Lived," and "Planning"—to the five firms and waited to see how each responded. "Most of the well-known ones sent us a copy of the book that they had published. They didn’t try particularly hard, but Doug and Bob [Baum] came to us with a portfolio and then finally presented us with the biggest proof of their interest in doing the job," Bill explains.

Thornley and Baum had been so moved by the site at their initial meeting that they snuck back to it without the Moggridges’ knowledge. They scoured the land, collecting dirt, tree bark, flowers, shedded snakeskin, and leaves, putting them in test tubes and constructing a wooden box to safely hold them all—a crafty presentation of the hues and textures that the architects saw playing a crucial role in Bill and Karin’s home.

"It was the first ground-up residential project for the firm," Thornley says, "so we really wanted to do it. Having worked with Ideo, we knew this house had the potential to be special. We looked at their book and thought, Wow, they’re ready to go. They really thought it through, and it wasn’t just a matter of how many square feet they wanted in the bathroom. It was a whole other level of how they lived, and how they wanted to be."

At the final meeting, the architects placed their creation in the center of the table and told the Moggridges they couldn’t open it till the end of the presentation. When they finally did, the deal was done. "It proved that they understood what we liked about the place—because we really felt that the house needed to have everything to do with the natural qualities of the place, the foliage, the earth, the trees," Bill explains.

See the full story on Dwell.com: From the Archive: Low and Long, This Rural Home Was Designed to Feel Like Moving Through the Forest
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