Former NFL Coach Mike Tomlin Is a Total Lighting Snob

The first episode of his "Minecraft" YouTube series, which has gone viral, reveals some surprisingly considered interior design decisions.

The private lives of professional football players have long been their own spectator sport. Their faces populate advertisements, their relationships make headlines, and their extracurricular pursuits attract nearly as much attention as their performances on the field. But what about their coaches? Unless you’re former Patriots honcho Bill Belichick, it’s rare you get a spotlight off the field.

But in September, former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin became another unlikely exception. He released the first episode of his own YouTube series, giving the world wide web a tour of an elaborate city he’s spent the last 12 years building—in Minecraft. Naturally, the internet exploded. The popular video game, which launched in 2009 and lets players build open-ended worlds, commented under a video on its own YouTube channel, "i'm honored to be here coach [two-hands-raised emoji]". Barstool Sports joked on X, "Imagine drinking beers with the fellas in the Mike Tomlin Minecraft speakeasy." Former Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell was less impressed, posting, "we were tryna win super bowls and coach T was on minecraft building cities [loudly-crying-face emoji]."

Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin has spent hours building cities in Minecraft. This one started around a body of water.

Screenshot: Mike Tomlin/YouTube

Tomlin spent 19 seasons at the helm of the Steelers, winning a Super Bowl and never recording a losing season, before stepping down in January of this year. For much of his professional life, he was an authority in one of the most scrutinized jobs in professional sports. But in Minecraft, which he started playing as a proverbial rookie more than a decade ago, he’s been able to quietly hone is craft, mining iron ore, evading exploding monsters (a.k.a creepers), and, yes, designing buildings.

When his kids were in middle school they were obsessed with the game. First released in 2009, players Tomlin says he began by watching them play, fascinated by what could hold their attention for such long stretches of time. He eventually picked up a PlayStation controller and started a city of his own. At some point, his kids lost interest. He did not. "I started small and, of course, over the course of 12 years, you develop neighborhoods and communities," he says in the video.

Tomlin designed an apartment building that features an aquarium on every level.

Screenshot: Mike Tomlin/YouTube

In the nearly 20-minute first installment, ROOFTOPS, PENTHOUSES, AND URBAN LIVING [sic], Tomlin starts with the first building he ever built: a "boutique hotel" on a bay. Just off the lobby is the "executive spa"; across the way, a multipurpose space doubles as both a conference room and ballroom. And then there’s the basement: a stone-walled speakeasy whose pièce de résistance is a window looking into the swimming pool.

For all the fantasy Minecraft affords, Tomlin is equally attentive to the less glamorous side of running a hotel. The speakeasy has a kitchen and employee work area; elsewhere, men’s and women’s restrooms are complete with sinks and stalls, even if the game requires none of it. Unlike The Sims, Minecraft isn’t built around the logistics of human habitation. In Survival Mode—where players must source food and fend off zombies—nobody needs a toilet. And he doesn’t belabor the point: his bathrooms are relatively spare, not an excuse for some aesthetics-driven folly. "I was always really conscious of appropriate amenities," he says.

But Tomlin’s concern for realism goes beyond imposing real-world requirements on imaginary buildings. Some design problems, like lighting, are actually real within the game. "I was really lighting conscious," he says, explaining that when he started the city, illuminating interiors was a challenge. He added the glass ceiling in the hotel’s conference room mainly to let in light and "less for the architectural component of it." Down in the windowless speakeasy, he used Glowstone—Minecraft’s conspicuous, light-emitting block—not because he likes the look (he doesn’t), but because lighting, to him, is just that important.

Tomlin’s vision doesn’t begin and end with a collection of show-stopping structures with empty interiors, as many often do. From the get-go, he had a larger plan: a densely populated urban center, with high-rises clustered around bodies of water. (It’s unclear in the video if his city includes a football stadium, though there is an "MLS soccer stadium" and a baseball field.) Sometimes that required reshaping Minecraft’s randomly generated terrain. "I’d have to blow up mountains and hills and so forth and redevelop land around it," he says. "I would work areas around bodies of water and then over time the areas grew together." It’s actually a natural approach to urban planning; waterways, after all, have been shaping cities since ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Tomlin walks us through his design decisions for one of the aquarium apartments.

Screenshot: Mike Tomlin/YouTube

See the full story on Dwell.com: Former NFL Coach Mike Tomlin Is a Total Lighting Snob
Related stories:

• The Stahl House Still Hasn’t Sold—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week
• Take Me Home to the Old Ballgame
• Design Brands Are Now Duping Themselves—Sort Of

Entire Trees—Roots and All—Were Used to Build This Coastal Norwegian Home

Helen & Hard Architects digitally scanned spruce trees to precision mill them into structural elements that resemble their original forms.

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: Randaberg, Norway

Architect: Helen & Hard Architects / @helenhardarchitects

Footprint: 1,205 square feet

Structural Engineer: Aanesland Treindustri

Photographer: Sindre Ellingsen / @ellingsensindre

From the Architect: "The site is defined by the vast horizon over the Atlantic Ocean; the dark, and rough, rocky landscape descending toward the sea; and the untouched natural vegetation in the rear part of the property. Our aim was to create an architecture that connects these distinct landscape zones while establishing a strong relationship with the site’s inherent qualities.

"Four rows of tree-like columns open out in a fan-shaped formation, framing a long horizontal opening toward the western sea horizon. The cantilevered roof beams meet pairwise in the center and are tensioned between pairs of tree columns. They create a horizontal opening more than 29-feet long toward the sea, while simultaneously forming a narrow vertical window and an entrance oriented toward the morning sun and the green natural garden.

"Another important source of inspiration was the Norwegian tradition of boat building, which dates back to the Viking Age. In this tradition, the naturally grown connection between trunk and root was used to stiffen the rib structures of wooden boats. In the project, entire tree trunks including their roots are used to reinforce the connections between columns and beams, while also creating an organic interior space and a wave-like roof scape. The spruce trees were excavated, cleaned, dried, and digitally scanned. Based on these scans, digital models were developed and used to program robotic fabrication processes. The robots then milled precisely fitted brackets directly from the roots. The timber structure creates a spatial rhythm, intimacy, and a sense of protection against the open and rugged surrounding landscape. At the same time, it evokes the feeling of being immersed in nature beneath a canopy of trees.

"As the glazing wraps continuously around the entire building, light, shadows, and atmosphere constantly change throughout the day, the seasons, and shifting weather conditions. In addition, the organic timber structure integrates partitions, doors and windows, shelving, seating, stairs, and lighting. The construction therefore invites interaction, exploration, and engagement with the space. The result is the impression that all elements are interwoven into a holistic spatial experience.

"The funnel-shaped main space is flanked by two lateral zones: the kitchen on one side and two workspaces on the other. One of these workspaces is positioned on a half-level above the living room with a bathroom located beneath it. Although the cabin is perceived as one continuous space, these side zones create spatial depth and a rich sequence of spatial experiences.

"Another important objective was to embed the cabin gently into the rocky landscape. For this reason, the roof was shaped to follow the natural topography, while a protective base was constructed from the same stone material found on the site itself. Resting on this massive stone plinth is the tree-like timber structure."

Photo: Sindre Ellingsen

Photo: Sindre Ellingsen

Photo: Sindre Ellingsen

See the full story on Dwell.com: Entire Trees—Roots and All—Were Used to Build This Coastal Norwegian Home

How They Pulled It Off: A Former Spiritual Retreat Becomes a Family Home That Waves at Its Past

Denver chef Justin Cucci was attracted to the Santa Fe area house because of its "special energy," so when it came time to renovate, the design team worked to keep its sense of history alive.

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

Having transformed a mortuary, a brothel, and a gas station into popular restaurants, Justin Cucci isn’t one to let a building’s past define its future. So when the Denver-based chef and founder of the hospitality group Edible Beats saw a former spiritual retreat near Santa Fe that featured circular living spaces crowned with domes, and arches and nichos—that is, wall recesses that are traditionally used for displaying crosses or figures of saints—hand-painted with Tibetan motifs, he knew he’d found the perfect mountain getaway for his family. "I don’t know exactly how it had been used, but there were Buddhist paintings and artworks and a lot of outdoor zones with unique touches," he says. "Though it was outdated, and we didn’t know if we had the appetite to spend the time, energy and money to do it, the bones and the energy around it felt really special, and it felt like there was better feng shui hidden in the layout."

Justin and his wife, Denielle Nadeau, asked architect Douglas Eichelberger and interior designer Chandler Prewitt to help them bring cohesion to the interior. As plans to convert a glassed-in, ground-floor garden room into a primary suite were underway, Prewitt and Justin worked together to create an open kitchen and dining area upstairs. They found creative ways to incorporate architectural salvage and colorful slag glass along with recycled bottles from Justin’s restaurants into the redesign. "We elevated what was there into a kind of modern Earthship," Prewitt explains, referencing the sustainable houses Michael Reynolds developed in Taos in the 1970s.

The domed living room was one of the features that drew homeowner Justin Cucci to the house. "I was thinking something urban or midcentury, and Chandler helped balance that by bringing in some traditional New Mexican architecture," he says. "We found a happy balance." 

Photo by Jenna Peffley

How they pulled it off: Reimagining a spiritual retreat as a vacation home

• Making sense of a round kitchen: Since the kitchen and the dining area had been awkwardly separated by a partial wall, Prewitt and Justin envisioned an open plan that would be more welcoming as well as functional, given that Justin is a professional chef. "We had to create a model of the room and get specific measurements of the curves and the dome overhead because the room wasn’t a perfect circle," Prewitt says. Given the challenges of fabricating curved cabinets, the designer took the concept drawings to a cabinetmaker who had experience doing yacht interiors. For the kitchen floor, Prewitt and Justin considered five or six different tile layouts before they found one they liked. "It’s really unique and seemingly random," notes Prewitt. 
  

Once awkwardly divided into two spaces by a partial wall, the kitchen-dining room is now open and welcoming, while functioning at a high level for a professional chef. The tile for the kitchen floor is from Pratt + Larson. In the sitting area at left is an Ergofocus gas fireplace via European Home and a Vestaboard programmable artwork. 

Photo by Jenna Peffley

Prewitt designed the dining banquette, which was built by Wood Design, and stained the floors black. "We sanded down and cleaned the existing wood, did a stain of India ink and then we sealed it," he says. "It’s not a normal stain." 

Photo by Jenna Peffley

See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: A Former Spiritual Retreat Becomes a Family Home That Waves at Its Past
Related stories:

• With a Wall of Curved Glass, This "Boxy" Utrecht Home Finally Found Its Flow
• Eleven Types of Tile Lay the Groundwork for a Home Renovation in the Tuscan Countryside
• Rental Revamp: With the Owner’s OK, They Put $1,200 Worth of Plywood Into Their Topanga Kitchen

Near Lake Como, This €690K Concrete House Makes the Most of Its Narrow Site

A departure from the area’s grand villas, the bunker-like home by Lorenzo Guzzini Architecture sits above a stream on the edge of a wooded valley.

Location: Tavernerio, Como, Italy

Price: €690,000 (approximately 773,735 USD)

Year Built: 2024

Architect: Lorenzo Guzzini Architecture

Footprint: 1,345 square feet (4 beds, 2 baths) 

Lot Size: 0.71 acres

From the Agent: "Designed by Lorenzo Guzzini Architecture between 2021 and 2024, this 125-square-meter home in Tavernerio, just outside Como, grew out of a close dialogue between the architect and its owners —and from an unusually complex site crossed by a stream.

Rather than treating the constraints of the land as obstacles, Guzzini made them part of the architecture. The house occupies a long, narrow footprint, responding directly to the topography and to the traces of what was already there—including the remains of an old garage and an abandoned chicken coop. 

The result is a compact, site-specific building arranged entirely on a single level. Its elongated form follows the landscape, connecting the interiors with the surrounding vegetation and the water running beneath and alongside the property.

Inside, the plan accommodates four bedrooms and two bathrooms, with living spaces conceived as a sequence rather than as isolated rooms. Materials are deliberately restrained, allowing texture, light, and the changing character of the landscape to define the atmosphere of the house.

Elements recovered from the site and materials allowed to weather and oxidize naturally reinforce the sense that the building belongs to its setting rather than simply occupying it. Though its architecture is contemporary, much of the house’s character comes from the way it responds to what was already there. 

The property is currently offered for sale at €690,000 and includes approximately 2,890 square meters of land and three parking spaces. 

For a house this specific, the transition to a new owner does not necessarily mean the end of its architectural story. Narrow House grew out of the relationship between client and architect, and Lorenzo Guzzini remains available to continue that dialogue with a future owner. 

Rather than treating the house as a finished object, the architect is open to helping complete unfinished elements and working with a new owner on materials, doors, finishes, and other details, while preserving the spatial concept that defines the project.

In that sense, buying Narrow House means acquiring not only an existing piece of architecture, but also the possibility of continuing its evolution with the architect who conceived it."

Designed by Lorenzo Guzzini Architecture between 2021 and 2024, Narrow House is a 1,345-square-foot home in Tavernerio, Italy, in the hills just outside Como. The property sits above a stream on the edge of a wooded valley. Viewed from the street, the flat roof is covered in stone and pebbles. The approach descends through the site toward the courtyard and house below. 

Photo by Alessio Fantinato / Mooves Studio

Photo by Alessio Fantinato / Mooves Studio

At the center of the elongated plan, the inner courtyard sits between the home’s narrow interior spaces and the surrounding forest and stream.  

Photo by Alessio Fantinato / Mooves Studio

See the full story on Dwell.com: Near Lake Como, This €690K Concrete House Makes the Most of Its Narrow Site
Related stories:

• It’s Easy Being Green at This $1.2M Passive House in Minneapolis
• You Can Buy an Entire Venetian Island With a Napoleonic Fort for €5.5M
• Seeking $775K, Ron Fridlind’s Tucson Compound Is a World of Its Own

Recycled Marine Plastic Covers This Former Whaler’s Tavern Turned Home in the Azores

A prefab construction style melds with stone ruins and environmentally friendly cladding.

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: Azores, Portugal

Architect: Atelier Backlar / @atelierbacklar

Footprint: 1,400 square feet

Builder: SIP Europe

Cabinetry: Mestre Luis

Photographer: Francisco Nogueira

From the Architect: "Overlooking the traditional whaling bay of Capelas on São Miguel Island in the Azores, Blue House Azores transforms a ruined former whaler’s tavern into a contemporary coastal house rooted in ecological responsibility, cultural continuity, and a close relationship with its landscape. The project began with the preservation of an existing basalt stone ruin, which had stood abandoned since the 1980s. Rather than replacing the ruin, Atelier Backlar repaired and incorporated it into a new architectural structure, maintaining a tangible connection with the building’s history and the maritime culture of Capelas. Traditional basalt stone builders from the neighboring town of Rabo de Peixe, where the craft is still passed between generations, were commissioned to restore the existing masonry. 

"The new structure is constructed primarily from sustainably sourced timber using a prefabricated structurally insulated panel (SIP) system by SIPEurope. Timber was selected for its low embodied carbon, environmental performance, and suitability to the humid and seismic conditions of the Azores. The prefabricated timber system provided both a technical and logistical solution. The high degree of precision offered by prefabricated SIP panels allowed the structure to be produced off-site, transported to the island, and assembled in only ten days. Carpentry and window fabrication could take place simultaneously with panel production. 

"The choice of timber was also informed by research into vernacular architecture in other humid and seismic island environments, particularly Japan, where timber has historically been used as a primary structural material. In the Azores, the material provides a warm and breathable interior while allowing the structure to respond more flexibly to the small but frequent seismic movements characteristic of the region.

"The project’s most distinctive material intervention is its extensive use of recycled ocean plastic. The facade, roof, and exterior deck are clad in recycled marine plastic, transforming a material associated with long-term environmental pollution into a durable architectural envelope. The recycling facility normally produces components at a much smaller, furniture-scale dimension, making sourcing sufficient material for an architectural application one of the project’s principal challenges.

"Most of the furniture and built-in elements were designed by Atelier Backlar and produced locally with craftsmen, including the dining table, coffee tables, and dining room and bathroom benches. Much of the timber came from the island. Local makers combined furniture-making skills with techniques traditionally associated with boat construction, reinforcing the relationship between the house and the island’s maritime culture.

"The interior was conceived as a restrained and serene environment, designed to support calmness, mental clarity, and slower, more mindful ways of living. A limited palette of tactile, durable materials reduces visual complexity while allowing subtle variations in texture and color to become perceptually important.  The ground-floor structural slab is insulated concrete finished in microcement, a material that continues onto the built-in sofa and kitchen counter. A former whaler’s harpoon mounted on the living-room wall provides another, more direct connection to this history. Used in Capelas Bay more than a century ago, the object has been removed from its original function and rendered inert as a historical artifact. 

"The garden extends this relationship between architecture and landscape. The blue volume gradually ‘melts’ into the garden, transforming into an organic and functional deck. Around it, endemic, low-maintenance species are allowed to grow. The house is currently operated as a holiday rental. Ultimately, however, its intended future is as a permanent home for retirement."

Photo: Francisco Nogueira

Photo: Francisco Nogueira

Photo: Francisco Nogueira

See the full story on Dwell.com: Recycled Marine Plastic Covers This Former Whaler’s Tavern Turned Home in the Azores
Related stories:

• Construction Diary: How a Chocolate Bar Inspired This Austin Architect’s Hill Country Home
• With a Wall of Curved Glass, This "Boxy" Utrecht Home Finally Found Its Flow
• This New Zealand Tiny Cabin’s Glass Sliders Are So Big They Hang Off the Side

Construction Diary: How a Chocolate Bar Inspired This Austin Architect’s Hill Country Home

"We opted to do a modular system where everything is the same," says Miguel Rivera. "This is what we call a Hershey bar—you know, with the grid of small rectangles? We used six-foot modules."

Architect Miguel Rivera, his wife, and their two teenage daughters enjoy living in Austin for the easy proximity to restaurants, art galleries, and the downtown core—but over time, the couple started looking for something different. "We’ve always liked the outdoors, the countryside," says Miguel, who grew up in Puerto Rico, noting that his wife, who is from Colombia, spent her childhood summers on her grandparents’ dairy farm. "We were thinking it would be nice to have a piece of property where we could escape the city and be away from the noise, from the cars, from everything." 

Architect Miguel Rivera sited his Texas Hill Country weekend house on the highest point of a 25-acre plot, strategically avoiding the surrounding oak trees.

Photo: Casey Dunn

Constructed primarily of dark steel and glass, the simple, rectangular form blends seamlessly with its surroundings.

Photo: Casey Dunn

The caveat was that it had to be less than an hour away from their home in Austin. "For me, driving over an hour is like going to the moon," Miguel says. "I would never go."

He and his wife started looking at properties in Texas Hill Country, but the first two they toured weren’t quite right. One was too loud—you could hear noise from the cars passing on the road—and the other had access issues. Around this time, Miguel’s firm, Miró Rivera Architects, was hired to design a house on 64 acres about 50 minutes outside of Austin. 

"One day the client said to me, ‘I don’t need all this land. Why don’t you buy some of it?’" Miguel recalls. "We made kind of an exchange and decided we could build two houses, one for him and one for me. It’s kind of remote and expensive to bring people in to work, so we thought we could share those costs." 

Deep overhangs on either side protect the house from direct sunlight, especially on hot summer days. Miguel used Douglas fir decking for the ceiling—a durable material that brings warmth to the stark steel beams.

Photo: Casey Dunn

See the full story on Dwell.com: Construction Diary: How a Chocolate Bar Inspired This Austin Architect’s Hill Country Home
Related stories:

• With a Wall of Curved Glass, This "Boxy" Utrecht Home Finally Found Its Flow
• This New Zealand Tiny Cabin’s Glass Sliders Are So Big They Hang Off the Side
• Eleven Types of Tile Lay the Groundwork for a Home Renovation in the Tuscan Countryside

With a Wall of Curved Glass, This "Boxy" Utrecht Home Finally Found Its Flow

HOP Architects reimagined the ground floor with an Art Deco–inspired extension that connects the common areas to the garden.

When Linde Weeteling, a Dutch banking executive, decided to move out of Amsterdam, she had a clear picture of the kind of change she was looking for. Her apartment had become too cramped for her small family (Linde, her partner, and their young daughter), so space was a priority, as was moving closer to her parents in Utrecht, a city 22 miles southeast of Amsterdam, where she grew up. 

"I knew I wanted a family home that was both practical and beautiful, but a bit different," she says, adding that she was undaunted by the prospect of purchasing and renovating an old house.

Before: The "boxy" old house had a lower level composed of lots of small spaces.

Photo by Michael Cerrone, HOP Architects

The one she ended up buying is set in a leafy residential neighborhood, close to a huge park but also just five minutes by bike from central Utrecht and six minutes from her parents’ place. Built around 1900 (although the records of the exact date are unclear), the house appealed to Linde because of its high ceilings and two additions: a long, narrow shed on one side and a makeshift extension on the other. While some might have put off by the old, boxy building, Linde saw the opportunity to open it up—so she reached out to Michael Cerrone of Amsterdam’s HOP Architects.

When Cerrone of first saw the three-story, 1,475-square-foot space, he was confident that it could be "really nice." However, he never imagined how collaborative and fruitful the design process would be. "Sometimes, the relationship you have with your client develops in a way that you inspire one another and stimulate each other’s creativity," he says.

When Michael Cerrone of HOP Architects first proposed the curvaceous extension, he didn’t expect his client to go for it.

Photo by Michael Cerrone, HOP Architects

While he hadn’t initially expected Linde to be on board with the curvy, Art Deco extension he proposed, he was delighted when she approved the plans.

"When we’d suggested things like this to previous clients, they’d seen the cost and decided they didn’t want it. But Linde told us she’d shown it to her friends and family, and everyone loved it so much that she had to do it," he recalls.

A long line of cabinetry runs from the living area into the kitchen. The Neva bar chairs are by Artisan.

Photo by Michael Cerrone, HOP Architects

See the full story on Dwell.com: With a Wall of Curved Glass, This "Boxy" Utrecht Home Finally Found Its Flow
Related stories:

• This New Zealand Tiny Cabin’s Glass Sliders Are So Big They Hang Off the Side
• Eleven Types of Tile Lay the Groundwork for a Home Renovation in the Tuscan Countryside
• Rental Revamp: With the Owner’s OK, They Put $1,200 Worth of Plywood Into Their Topanga Kitchen