The scalloped pattern was a starting point for several features across the 646-square-foot apartment, which now has an open floor plan.
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.
From the Architect: "Bardo’s first project in Barcelona begins with a deep structural intervention: the removal of several load-bearing walls in a 19th-century building. This operation allowed the floor plan to be opened up and entirely rethought, while preserving the visibility of the original constructive essence. The most recognizable element of this architecture—the Catalan vaulted ceiling with its ceramic joists, known as revoltó—became the true starting point of the design. It is neither concealed nor neutralized; its rhythm and texture set the tone for the entire project. As a Madrid-based studio, this was not a system we were used to working with, yet it immediately caught our attention. This led to two key decisions: translating its cadence and geometry into curved forms—most notably in the large wardrobe/bed unit in the dressing area—and adopting a neutral palette throughout the house, reserving color exclusively for the ceiling beams and vaults, allowing them to stand out within the overall space.
"As a result, the only other color appears in the bathroom, the sole space free from this architectural element. From this cadence, the house develops a language based on curves. The dressing room becomes the most evident gesture: its curved facade echoes the rhythm of the joists and translates it into the vertical plane, transforming a functional element into an interior facade that organizes the space and guides movement. The overall palette is composed of warm, neutral tones—creams, wood finishes, and soft textures—providing continuity and calm. In contrast, the beams are highlighted with color, reinforcing their presence as key elements within the composition. The house is no longer understood as a series of enclosed rooms, but as a fluid sequence. Mirrors are used as spatial tools: they amplify natural light, visually connect different areas, and create depth without reintroducing partitions.
"In the bedroom, a curved glass enclosure filters the relationship with the living area. More than a door, it becomes a piece that softens the boundary and turns the transition into a continuous gesture, maintaining visual connection while introducing privacy. The kitchen acts as the domestic core, with fluted wooden fronts that contrast with the neutral palette, and a large smoked mirror that enhances the sense of openness in the living area. In the main bathroom, yellow ceramic tiles wrap walls and ceiling, creating a more intense and sensory atmosphere. The result is a home that emerges from its own structure. A house that respects the original architecture and transforms it into the driving force of a new spatial identity, where every gesture responds to a shared logic and the whole is experienced as a continuous journey."
On a trip to Roswell, a city known for UFOs and military secrets, my girlfriend and I stayed in an appropriately off-center spot: a former missile base made into a subterranean rental.
Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.
During the Cold War, when humanity seemed hellbent on annihilation, underground Atlas missile bases made of steel and concrete were built across the United States to ward off World War III.
Newer missile technology quickly replaced those Atlas bases, and the sites were all decommissioned and closed by the mid-1960s. Today, though, you can sleep in one below the plains of southeastern New Mexico, if you’re not claustrophobic. Gary "Siloman" Baker bought the decommissioned complex in Roswell—minus the missile—30 years ago and transformed its launch center into an overnight stay that he operates as an Airbnb.
Baker is one of a number of people around the country and as far away as Cornwall, England, and Australia who have turned subterranean bunkers into short–term rentals and even residences. In Arkansas, the Titan II Nuclear Missile Complex prioritizes the party over missile history; the former missile complex made into an underground rental includes a small nightclub. (Owner GT Hill says he’s hosted families from Taiwan, a slew of social media influencers including YouTube celebrity Mr. Beast, and, possibly, a swingers group.) A decommissioned Atlas base in Kansas has "survival condos" where owners, and pets of a certain size, can ride out apocalyptic events for up to five years for $1.3 million (there’s also an Atlas missile base Airbnb listing in Kansas), and a Texas company called Atlas Survival Shelters offers everything from bomb and tornado shelters to "billionaire bunkers" that, according to its website, can house up to 15 people in the event of "pandemic outbreak, civil unrest, malicious mobs," and other events.
Baker’s place in Roswell—listed as one of Airbnb’s top-rated OMG! homes—seemed like it’d actually be a pretty ideal overnight stay while my girlfriend, Jen, and I explored the alien kitsch of the desert city, where a UFO may or may not have been discovered in 1947. The decommissioned base sits just 20 miles from the area’s UFO-shaped McDonald’s and the giant alien outside the Dunkin’ Donuts downtown. And staying there—on Jen’s birthday—would be fittingly "out there."
Gary "Siloman" Baker turned the decommissioned Atlas missile base in Roswell, New Mexico, into an Airbnb that’s one of the platform’s top-rated OMG! vacation rentals. The silo extends 180 feet underground.
"The land beneath it is silent—but listening," read a confounding review by a former guest from Sedona that Jen found on the Airbnb listing. "The container was never meant for humans. And yet, we entered anyway."
Jen and I have slept in some fancy New York hotels, and we’d recently spent a week in dreamy beachfront casitas in Oaxaca. I’ve also spent a lot of nights sleeping in tents, the bed of my truck, or in glorified sheds for reporting trips, and Jen had slept in an underground structure before. The silo felt somewhere down the middle. She was intrigued, so I reached out to Baker about his silo, and he offered us a media discount to stay there in early April.
"When do we leave?" Jen said.
Saturday
3 p.m.: An underground missile complex doesn’t stand out in the landscape, so we have to pay attention to the mile markers as we drive through sagebrush and yucca outside of Roswell. We flew from Philly to El Paso yesterday, and slept hard at a classic motor inn about 90 minutes away in Alamogordo. In the morning, we walked in the dunes at White Sands National Park for Jen’s birthday. Roswell is about a 120-mile drive from here.
Baker’s directions take you to a cattle gate and up a dirt road to a small, fenced-in area with a large concrete and steel pad. It looks like a public works yard in Anytown, USA. During the Cold War, though, that concrete pad could have opened up like some hellmouth, and an 82-foot missile could have rocketed toward Moscow to wreak havoc.
An employee of Baker’s named Manny meets us topside and leads us to a single, nondescript bulkhead door to the silo’s stairwell. Inside, it’s crammed with black-and-white Atlas photos from the 1960s down every step. That history-heavy theme plays everywhere down there, even into the bathrooms.
The guest apartment, which according to the Airbnb listing has "about 1,250 square feet of space," is in the upper level of the former launch control center. The complex also includes a part-time apartment for Baker.
Manny takes us to the apartment where Baker spends time when he’s not traveling with his wife. Baker, who was born in Alaska, is a warm and talkative historian who can wax about missiles and the Cold War for hours. He says he fell in love with missile silos when he attended Roswell’s New Mexico Military Institute decades ago. During the Cold War, more than 100 Atlas sites were built across the U.S. before they were decommissioned. Decades later, the Atlas sites that were left behind in Roswell became playgrounds for him.
"I bought two together thirty years ago for $55,000 a site," Baker tells us in his apartment, which sits below the guest quarters. "For me, this was just fun, something I always wanted to do."
Since then, he’s invested about $500,000 to make this place habitable for guests—it’s spotless and as well-lit as a big hole in the ground can be—and he charges close to $850 a night for overnight stays. He also hosts private tours between checkout and check-in. "If you’re looking just for a night’s stay, this is not it," he says.
5 p.m.: Manny takes us to the Airbnb unit, a former launch control room that sits beyond massive blast doors above Baker’s apartment. The launch controls are gone and the simple guest unit is circular, like Baker’s unit, with a laundry room, bathroom, and kitchenette that was, oddly, stocked with lots of food. The lighting isn’t great, but it’s not dark. There’s a couch and small table to eat meals, and more missile memorabilia, including magazines, coffee mugs, miniatures, pillows, and hard hats. A New Mexico vanity license plate affixed to the wall catches my eye; it says "Siloman."
The small bedroom, for some reason, has two twin beds (air mattresses are available for additional guests). "I guess we’re cuddling," I say to Jen.
This isn’t my first experience writing about underground living. In 2006, I visited a home/office built in New Jersey by Malcolm Wells, the late architect who pioneered underground buildings. I’ve also written about earthships, which are often quasi-underground. In 2024, I also profiled Rod Rylander and the off-grid, affordable home he was building halfway in the ground in southwestern New Mexico for Dwell.
Jen, as I mentioned, has actually slept beneath the earth though. During an Australian road trip, she stayed in a subsurface motel in Coober Pedy, a mining town where half the population lives underground because of extreme heat and flies. She visited a church there, shopped for opals, and had drinks with Greek miners, all underground. (There are plenty of "cave" and "earthen" Airbnb listings in Coober Pedy, too.) "The town resembles the surface of the moon and is just as quiet," she tells me on the drive to Roswell.
The guest unit is decorated with on-theme books, photos, drawings, and memorabilia.
Kawayan Collective referenced a centuries-old housing style to make prefabs that are easy to build and resilient in tropical weather.
Rosanne Ceriales knew it was time for her family to find a new home. A public school teacher, she had started a new job in her hometown of Santa Catalina, on the Philippine island of Negros, and wanted to build a home that felt different than the urban concrete housing she had lived in with her husband and 11-year-old son. Concrete homes become stiflingly hot and humid during the country’s torrid summers. "Ventilation and being environmentally friendly were my main concerns," she says, wanting something that leaves a smaller carbon footprint.
So, after some research, she turned to a material her grandparents had used: bamboo. Still, she didn’t come across bamboo until seeing homes built with a technique called composite bamboo shear walls, where structural bamboo panels are held together with mesh and enveloped with cement, significantly reducing the use of concrete. Some of the homes, built in the northern Philippines, had withstood strong typhoons. "I thought, Oh, it’s also possible that these houses will be storm resistant and not easily moved by earthquakes," Ceriales says.
Bamboo has been used as a building material for centuries in Southeast Asia and South America, both of which boast dozens of native species. In the Philippines, it has traditionally been used to build small rural cottages called bahay kubo, which are breathable in humid climates and raised on stilts to avoid flooding and pests. These homes, like that of Ceriales’s grandparents, are an icon of rural areas, but they are generally bespoke. But a cooperative she found is working on a way to turn the archetype into a mass housing solution. Kawayan Collective manufactures prefabricated bamboo frames at a facility just two hours away, outside the scuba diving destination of Dauin. It was founded in 2019 by Filipino-American architect Ray Villanueva and his wife, Amy Villanueva, who left the U.S. and started building bamboo structures in the Philippines using composite bamboo shear wall technology developed by Base Bahay, a nonprofit based in Manila.
Kawayan Collective, a cooperative in Dauin in the Philippines, produces panelized bamboo walls to build tiny homes that start at $15 a square foot.
Courtesy of Kawayan Collective
Workers load bamboo panels onto a truck at Kawayan Collective’s facility.
Courtesy of Kawayan Collective
Homes can be finished with plaster to create an additional moisture barrier.
Tucked away on a five-acre wooded cul de sac backing up to Big Bear Creek, this reimagined Colleyville estate offers a rare, multigenerational layout centered on indoor/outdoor connectivity. Through a recent comprehensive renovation, the property trades typical suburban sprawl for a cohesive compound design, linking a 5,978-square-foot main residence to a 903-square-foot independent guest house via an intimate central courtyard.
The design bridges clean contemporary updates with rugged natural surroundings, prioritizing sight lines through extensive glazing. In the main house, a game and entertaining wing opens to the outdoors with panoramic full-slider glass doors. An adjacent lounge offers quartzite surfaces, commercial-style glass entry doors, and dedicated AV-home automation infrastructure.
The culinary core is anchored by a massive 15-by-6-foot central island wrapped in book matched Panda Marble, pairing high-contrast stone with premium integrated Thermador and Wolf appliances, dual farmhouse sinks, and discrete custom cabinetry.
Across the shared courtyard, the steel-framed guest house functions as a flexible, self-contained pavilion. Punctuated by six sets of updated steel doors and minimalist Juliet balconies, it serves as an airy, light-filled volume for extended stays or remote work.
In the terraced backyard, over 2,000 square feet of low-profile patios and updated timber decking step down toward a bridge-approach pool and spa, a stone fireplace, and a built-in outdoor kitchen. Framed by a dense greenbelt, the design creates a highly private, resort-scale footprint that defers entirely to the landscape.
Listing Details
Bedrooms: 5
Baths: 4 full, 2 partial
Year Built: 1982
Square Feet: 5,978
Plot Size: 5.16 acres
Courtesy of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
Courtesy of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
Courtesy of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
Forget those rickety particle board shelves. The Swedish furniture giant’s new collection doesn’t require assembly and is built to move.
Picture this: you’re 19 and you’ve just moved into your first apartment. You have plenty of books and tchotchkes to store so you buy Ikea’s infamous Billy bookcase. It’s the most affordable shelving you could find without scouring Facebook Marketplace for half a lifetime and it fits all your stuff. A year passes. Your rent gets raised, you decide to move to another part of town with friends. You pack all of your odds and ends up into boxes, and break down the Billy to bring it with you. Once you get to your new place, try as you may, the Billy bookcase just won’t stand straight in the way it used to, and it now wobbles whenever anything bumps. It’s a story as old as flatpack furniture, and it’s one that Ikea’s latest collection might actually solve.
Kompishäng, which launches in U.S. stores on July 31 and online on August 15, includes 11 pieces that don’t require assembly and are designed to be easily moved. There’s range: a side table; a jute bag with handles that functions as a plant pot cover; a rolling bag on wheels that looks an awful lot like a Hulken; and a foldable desk with a built-in handle, among other first apartment basics. The smartest piece from the collection is probably the stools, which can nest like the Artek 60 for compact storage, or stand atop one another to create a shelving display. Since the pieces don’t have separate components, there aren’t pesky tools, oddly vague instructions, or the challenge of having to build them or reassemble them.
"This table isn’t just a temporary solution," says David Wahl, the designer of the collection’s foldable red table pictured here. "It’s designed to accompany life’s transitions—equally at home in a first apartment, a family house, or even a retirement space."
Courtesy of Ikea
The idea for Kompishäng—an Ikea-ism for "hanging out with friends"— was inspired by conversations between twentysomethings living in Central London and Ikea staff. Two recent industrial design graduates working as interns at Ikea also brought their firsthand experience. With input from a young set, Ikea aimed to address the most persistent irritations one faces at that particular phase of your life, namely moving often, sharing furniture with flatmates, and not having an easy way to transport anything. This involved practical solutions, like a metal bookend that sits on the floor and holds titles in place, and stylistic guidance: the interns felt that a more neutral color palette, rather than the bolds Ikea is known for, would help bring calm to these transient spaces.
"We wanted to create a collection that could be moved with your body alone. Without needing a car," Ikea designer Wiebke Braasch said in a statement shared with Dwell. "Moving plants was a bigger problem than I ever imagined, and it was fun to come up with a new solution that makes it easier to both carry and protect them while moving." Given how geared the pieces are toward lowkey moves, the practicality of these pieces also depends on them being sturdy enough that they can hold up against the banging and shoving required of those of us who move by Uber, or even the subway. Though vintage Ikea furniture may command high prices nowadays, newer pieces aren’t particularly known for their longevity.
The furniture in Kompishäng is low profile, but that’s one of its greatest assets. When dinnertime is over, the table can be folded away and the stools can cleanly stack atop each other.
Courtesy of Ikea
Even with its subdued color palette and solutions-oriented design, the furnishings mercifully still have personality; they look like they’d get along easier with used furniture than some of the more playful Ikea designs (we’re looking at you, inflatable chair). It’s also easy to imagine a new grad appreciating being able to fold this stuff up and sling it over their shoulder when it comes time to move across town. Or, if they manage to settle into some place for longer than a year, that it’ll outlast the lease.
Architecture in Formation gave a shingle-style ’90s home a well-needed refresh by reworking the layout, updating the material palette, and adding bold pops of color.
The Long Island hamlet of Springs is one of the only places out East that might still feel undiscovered. The farmland turned working-class suburb turned artists’ haven is known for shingle-style homes on modest wooded lots, where savvy weekenders now go to escape not only the hustle of New York City, but also the rest of the Hamptons summer crowd.
Before: Exterior
Before: In 2002, lawyer Gianni Servodidio purchased a cottage in the East Hampton hamlet of Springs. The shingled home had a front bay window and minimal landscaping.
Photo courtesy of Architecture in Formation
After: Exterior
Architecture in Formation founder Matthew Bremer introduced large Anderson 400 series windows and doors to provide access to the pool from the living room and dining area.
"It’s this little enclave where you’re immune from the traffic, chaos, and pretentiousness of the rest of the Hamptons," says lawyer Gianni Servodidio, who first visited the area on a summer timeshare in his twenties. In 2002, Gianni decided that if he couldn’t yet afford to buy a home in Manhattan, he’d invest in one where he could get away from its rat race. "I landed on this quaint little house, way out deep in a rural part of the Springs, and bought it for not a lot of money," he says. Two decades later, it needed a refresh, so Gianni called his neighbor.
Before: Dining Room
Before: The dining room was the home’s only space with an indoor/outdoor connection.
The renovated residence still has its original moldings and windows—plus a contemporary two-story addition.
Location: 1112 Park Street, Charlottesville, Virginia
Price: $2,250,000
Year Built: 1870
Footprint: 5,340 square feet (4 bed, 4 bath)
Lot Size: 1.1 acres
From the Agent:"The owner/architects have taken one of the original stately Charlottesville homes from 1870 and brought the outdoors into the house. Keeping the charm at the front with original moldings and windows, the two-story addition flows seamlessly to the backyard. This newer build has floor-to-ceiling Spanish cedar windows with views of the 1.1-acre manicured lawn. The heart of the house has accordion doors that open completely to a sapele wood deck overlooking the 6.5-acres of green space at Davis Park. The kitchen includes custom cabinetry, a separate bar, and a large pantry. The home also has a concrete pool with a bluestone terrace, and a one-car garage."
The renovated residence still has its original moldings and windows—plus a contemporary two-story addition.
Photo by Beth Monaco
The lush site is home to mature shrubs, historic oak trees, and tulip poplars.
