GRAPHĒ

This $7.7M Classic Chicago Home Made of Limestone and Brick Hides a Striking Sunroom

The glass atrium is designed for year-round use, while the heated sidewalks and front steps are reserved for those infamous Chicago winters.

1838 N Burling Street in Chicago, Illinois, is currently listed at $7,750,000 by Ryan Preuett at Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty.

Vaulted ceilings and rich hardwood floors introduce the expansive main level, where a stone fireplace anchors the living room. A formal dining room is marked by crisp modern millwork and glass French doors that open out onto the deck. The culinary heart of the home is a chef’s kitchen, seamlessly integrated with a bespoke, built-in breakfast table. Transitioning into the everyday quarters, a sophisticated family room boasts a second hearth and detailed coffered ceilings. From here, sliding doors reveal a light-filled, four-season sunroom—a flawless transition to the property’s outdoor oasis. This outdoor footprint includes a swimming pool, outdoor kitchen, temperature controlled four-season glass atrium with accordion windows, sport court, and a gated parking pad for guests.

Upstairs, the second level serves as a private family retreat, hosting two secondary bedrooms, a dedicated laundry room, and a primary suite. This sanctuary is anchored by a third fireplace and flanked by dual custom walk-in closets, culminating in a spa-like en suite bath outfitted with a double vanity, a deep soaking tub, and a steam shower.

Find a dedicated entertainment destination on the top floor, where a sprawling game room features a full wet bar, a versatile guest suite or home office, and two private sky decks. Finally, the home’s lower level grounds the property with functionality, offering an expansive recreation room, a private guest bedroom with a full bath, a secondary laundry station, and access to the attached garage.

Additional callouts include heated sidewalks, front steps, and parking pad, amazing natural light throughout, arched transitions and doorways, designer light fixtures, an abundance of storage, composite decking, irrigation, and professional landscaping. There is also private neighborhood security with multiple cars working each night.

Listing Details

Bedrooms: 5

Baths: 4 full, 1 partial

Year Built: 2005

Square Feet: 6,031

Courtesy of Jameson Sotheby's International Realty

See the full story on Dwell.com: This $7.7M Classic Chicago Home Made of Limestone and Brick Hides a Striking Sunroom
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30 Years Later, They Reimagined Their Rome Apartment With a Glassy Central Kitchen

Transparent partitions create sight lines to the living area and dining room, emphasizing a sense of connection.

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: Rome, Italy

Architect: STUDIOTAMAT / @studiotamat

Footprint: 1,200 square feet

Builder: Editel BF

Photographer: Eller Studio / @ellerstudio

From the Architect: "The apartment is located within a refined residential building, whose character is already evident in the rationalist language of its entrance hall. Purchased by the owner more than thirty years ago, the home had gradually fallen out of step with the person living in it. Fragmented rooms and rigid hierarchies no longer reflected a daily life shaped by movement, conviviality, and sharing, nor the increasingly central role that cooking had come to play. The intervention therefore began as a broader realignment: a contemporary rewriting of the interior, restoring a dialogue between the house and its inhabitant. Upon entering, the apartment reveals itself gradually through a continuous sequence of rooms connected by visual and physical thresholds. At the center of this system lies the kitchen, completely rethought as the core of the home.

"Enclosed by custom-made burgundy glazed partitions, the kitchen becomes a central volume that is both practical and relational, turning food preparation into a shared gesture connected to the rest of the home. Around this nucleus, the living area takes shape through the union of three former rooms. Each retains its own identity, yet all are held together by visual and material continuity. Underfoot, the original paneled parquet flooring has been carefully restored and runs uninterrupted throughout the space, while above, a fine burgundy line traces the walls, marking their height. The apartment’s original geometry is embraced rather than concealed: structural columns are integrated into custom oak joinery housing bookshelves and built-in seating, transforming a constraint into a functional device that organizes space and encourages interaction. The custom terrazzo flooring, designed with a geometric pattern, adds another layer of continuity between surfaces and furnishings.

"The dining room acts as a hinge between spaces. More intimate in character is the reading room, where the project shifts toward a tactile and secluded atmosphere. A custom book niche with integrated seating houses part of the owner’s extensive library. Here, tones deepen and the atmosphere becomes quieter and more protected.

"The result is a carefully balanced dialogue between permanence and transformation. Original elements such as the parquet flooring are reactivated through a new system of spatial and material interventions that redefine domestic life. What emerges is a home that adapts naturally, welcomes and connects, built around a renewed center and a more fluid, living continuity—one that holds past memories while making room for new ones."

See the full story on Dwell.com: 30 Years Later, They Reimagined Their Rome Apartment With a Glassy Central Kitchen
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With Its Eerie Corporate Spaces, A24’s "Backrooms" Slashes Amnesiac ’90s Nostalgia

Fluorescent lighting and yellowing wallpaper imbue the film’s massive labyrinthian set with a sinister effect that the production designer wanted to feel "desperate."

Unlike the reverence for midcentury modernism that has been grounded in the belief that things were made better back then, today’s reminiscing of the 1990s by Gen Z youth is something else entirely. For those of us who lived through the era, watching the resurgence of low-rise jeans and babydoll tees has come with a shudder and a wince—after all, it’s not just a fashion but an atmosphere that we’re reliving. The ’90s in the U.S. were colored by a technology market boom that strengthened the middle class before its inevitable bust. It was a decade that dripped with the rise of corporate expansion and consumerism amidst Ronald Reagan’s pulsing afterglow. The growing commercial enthusiasm was built into our everyday details: Fluorescent-studded popcorn drop ceilings, seas of cubicles, overstuffed (or inflatable) furniture that tried to scream opulence while smothered in pastel florals; web-like shopping malls to trap every consumer imaginable. There was an aura of social collapse under a mountain of stuff we’d built and bought.

It’s the perfect setting, however, for Kane Parsons’s new A24 film, Backrooms. The horror flick is based on Parsons’s viral YouTube series that (borrowing an unauthored singular, awkward image of a strange empty room that made its way across the internet) uses "found footage" to tell a fractured story about an otherworldly dimension called "the backrooms." Through 22 episodes, viewers encounter a maze-like wasteland that resembles an abandoned white collar workplace. Yellow wallpaper lines an endless clustering of rooms connected by doors and hallways; furniture and other artifacts seem to melt into the interior landscape that is lorded over by a malevolent creature.

Renate Reinsve plays therapist Dr. Mary Kline, whose office is decorated with plain though period appropriate furnishings.
Photo courtesy A24

Parsons, who was 16 years old when he released his first episode, garnered such a following from his online debut that A24 gave him the opportunity to turn the idea into a long-form story, one that fleshes out the throwback conglomerate aesthetics: We get a good dose of oversize shoulder pads, sure, but we’re also injected with a reminiscent shudder from the 1990s economic precarity and materialism. Rather than relying on a plot that spells out the era’s spirit, the film instead focuses intently on its scenic design to evoke a generational horror. Led by production designer Danny Vermette, Backrooms is as much a scary flick as it is a period piece set in the ambiguous late-’80s-early-’90s, rehashing the era not as a nostalgic time of millennial optimism or Gen X counterculture, but as a harbinger to the agonies of our present.

The movie follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an out-of-work architect, and Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), the therapist who is guiding him through healing from his recent divorce. Through his recounting in therapy, we learn that Clark gave up architecture to support his now-ex wife’s education by managing a struggling furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, in a dying strip mall. One night while attempting to fix some unruly circuit breakers he discovers that the store’s basement contains an invisible passageway into the backrooms. We watch him transform from a curious architect, mapping out the strange dimension’s floor plans, to an obsessive explorer, drawing his therapist into a gruesome chase in the inescapable, maze-like space. Throughout the movie, the set and props play another character entirely: the backrooms seem to have a life (and memory) of their own.

The Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire furniture store is bleak in an entirely different way than the backrooms.
Photo courtesy A24

When Vermette first read the script, he says he knew that the ’90s would play a significant role—not just in the story’s setting, but in its ethos—and wanted to create two distinct sets for the furniture store and the backrooms that would complement each other aesthetically. As Clark attempts to pilot his languishing furniture store, Vermette sought a palette that, he explains, would feel "desperate." "We wanted to highlight that Clark isn’t doing so hot, but at the same time we wanted to make it beautiful; so how do we do that with the signage, with the color palette of the furniture, with the layout?" he says. The resulting interior features a variety of bulging La-Z-Boy recliners, maple bedroom and dining sets, and hand-painted signage reading "EVERYTHING MUST GO." The store feels sparse and foreboding, with awkward columns and too-bright fluorescent lighting. But beneath it, through its yolk-colored basement wall, the backrooms echo Cap’n Clark’s subtle despondency.

Bringing the otherworldly backrooms to life involved building a 30,000-square-foot labyrinthian film set. Initially Parsons provided Vermette with a drawing of the layout that he created using Blender, an open source 3D-modeling software. The file was so large that his computer crashed, Vermette says. They carefully chose which spaces could be physically built, understanding that many of the scenes required creating something fantastical—long hallways in the backrooms become trompe l’oeils that lead to nearly impassable doors, Escher-like stairways mess with the viewer’s spatial reasoning. Some scenes trigger vertigo, while others elicit claustrophobia.

30,000 square feet of studio space was used to build out the backrooms for the film, in conjunction with the 3D-modeling software blender.
Photo courtesy A24

See the full story on Dwell.com: With Its Eerie Corporate Spaces, A24’s "Backrooms" Slashes Amnesiac ’90s Nostalgia
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In the Eastern Sierra, an Off-Grid Property With a Mystic Past Seeks $1.7M

Designed by Linda Taalman, this glass-encased IT House sits on land once owned by the transcendental philosopher Dr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff.

Location: 3800 Granite View Drive, Lone Pine, California

Price: $1,650,000

Year Built: 2020

Architect: Linda Taalman

Footprint: 1,368 square feet (2 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms)

Lot Size: 2.39 Acres

From the Agent: "This two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,368-square-foot house on roughly 2.5 acres offers unobstructed and protected views of the picturesque western vistas that have made Lone Pine a premier Hollywood filmmaking destination for decades. Designed by Linda Taalman, AIA, the house is flanked by Tuttle and Diaz Creeks, and its structural footings sit in an ancient clearing between two glacially sculpted boulder deposits. Amidst the endless natural beauty enjoyed from the southeast-facing sunroom, the west-facing 700-square-foot Stepstone deck, and the enveloping nighttime dark skies, the residence is a model for off-grid living matched with state-of-the-art reliability. Employing Taalman’s iT house concept vocabulary, the house combines off-the-shelf Bosch aluminum framing, steel Epic decking, and glass walls; architectural materials selected to create site-specific homes with minimally invasive footprints. A propane generator and a woodburning stove serve as fail-safes for the hydronic heating and cooling. A 650-foot well, advanced filtration, a 1,200-gallon water reserve tank, and an insulated pump house ensure an adequate and fresh spring water supply. The interior is appointed with rift-cut white oak panels, granite and stainless-steel counters, Leight cabinets, and all-electric Bosch and Miele appliances. Included on the property is a 1,024-square-foot three-car garage with its own dedicated solar power and wood-pellet stove, making it suitable for fitness, wellness, and creative pursuits."

The site was once part of the ranch of transcendental mystic Dr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff, who studied spirituality and consciousness and founded the group Assembly of Man.
Photo by Sterling Reed

A 20-panel solar array helps power the home.
Photo by Sterling Reed

See the full story on Dwell.com: In the Eastern Sierra, an Off-Grid Property With a Mystic Past Seeks $1.7M
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Wait Until You See the Living Room in This $5.2M Bay Area Midcentury

The hilltop home is built around a hexagonal volume with a dramatic oculus and panoramic views from San Francisco to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

This hilltop home is built around a hexagonal volume with a dramatic oculus and panoramic views from San Francisco to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Location: 135 Hill Top Drive, Los Gatos, California

Price: $5,200,000

Year Built: 1967

Footprint: 4,165 square feet (4 Bedrooms, 7 Baths)

Lot Size: 1.05 Acres

From the Agent: "Offered for the first time following a total transformation, this profound California midcentury occupies a rare knoll-top pinnacle with 270-degree views. The structural soul is a hexagonal pavilion utilizing a ‘spoke-and-hub’ plan. A soaring, timber-clad pyramidal ceiling with a hexagonal oculus transforms the living room into a sundial, while free-form lighting counterbalances the post-and-beam drama. The single-story layout allows outdoor access from almost every room. The estate includes a detached yoga studio, solar-integrated roofline, and comprehensive landscape lighting."

The home's floor plan radiates off the central great room. — The home’s floor plan radiates outward from the central living area.
Photo provided by Arthur Sharif

See the full story on Dwell.com: Wait Until You See the Living Room in This $5.2M Bay Area Midcentury
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Blink and You Might Miss This Super Skinny Japanese Home on Stilts

A raised volume forms an entry sequence that leads to more robust living spaces and a kids’ play area with shelving on tracks.

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: Saitama, Japan

Architect: ICADA

Footprint: 1,216 square feet

Builder: Sakaki Juken

Structural Engineer: Graph Studio

Landscape Design: Murata Engei

Energetic Consultant: Studio Nora

Timber Procurement: Anai Wood Factory

Photographer: Nobutada Omote

From the Architect: "Live Sawn House confronts a paradox in contemporary Japanese forestry: thick, high-quality sugi (Japanese cedar) logs are valued less than thinner ones. This inversion stems from postwar reforestation policies and the decline of sawmills capable of processing large timber, leaving mature cultivated trees underutilized. Forestry workers lament that decades of growth are sold cheaply and cut into standardized pieces. Rejecting this logic, the project embraces an alternative: showcasing thick logs in their raw, expressive form using dara-biki (live sawing), a traditional method that reveals each tree’s unique character while maximizing yield and structural integrity.

"This two-story residence occupies an irregular urban site with a winding alley. Built on a modest budget, it integrates design with material sourcing. The building system is straightforward and legible: 105 millimeter planks are used for corner and wind-exposed columns, while 70 millimeter planks serve lighter loads; beams are consistently 105 millimeter thick. Boards retain natural edges and occasional bark, enriching visual texture while minimizing waste. Timber is oriented along the grain, ensuring high bending strength without industrial processing.

"In a dense residential district outside Saitama, the largest city in one of Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures, the building appears from the street only in fragments: a slender box raised on rhythmic timber posts. The ground floor contains the dining kitchen, while living and sleeping areas occupy the upper floor. A suspended walk-in closet—skywalk-in-closet—extends over the alley, culminating in a study nook. Below, timber pilotis allude to the wooden interior structure. The children’s space features movable shelves for adaptability. By embracing the overlooked potential of thick sugi logs, Live Sawn House proposes a sustainable, site-specific architecture grounded in material honesty, craftsmanship, and respect for local forestry traditions."

See the full story on Dwell.com: Blink and You Might Miss This Super Skinny Japanese Home on Stilts
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In Paris, a ’70s Flat With Skyline Views Seeks €570K

Updated by ALORS Studio, the 19th-arrondissement apartment comes with fresh cabinetry, custom built-ins, parquet flooring, and a full-length balcony.

Location: 19th Arrondissement, Paris, France

Price: €570,000 (Approximately $662,881 USD)

Year Built: 1978

Architect: Michel Holley

Renovation Date: 2021

Renovation Architect: ALORS Studio

Footprint: 600 Square Feet (1 Bedroom, 1 Bath)

From the Agent: "Located on a high floor, this balcony apartment is situated in the Flandre district of Paris. Completely renovated by the architects of ALORS Studio, it offers open and bright spaces. The entrance leads to a spacious living area oriented toward the northwest, featuring a living room with a library, a dining area, and a fully equipped kitchen. The apartment also includes a bedroom with balcony access, a shower room, a dressing room, and built-in closets."

See the full story on Dwell.com: In Paris, a ’70s Flat With Skyline Views Seeks €570K
Related stories:

This $7.7M Classic Chicago Home Made of Limestone and Brick Hides a Striking Sunroom

Listing Details

30 Years Later, They Reimagined Their Rome Apartment With a Glassy Central Kitchen

Project Details:

With Its Eerie Corporate Spaces, A24’s "Backrooms" Slashes Amnesiac ’90s Nostalgia

In the Eastern Sierra, an Off-Grid Property With a Mystic Past Seeks $1.7M

Wait Until You See the Living Room in This $5.2M Bay Area Midcentury

Blink and You Might Miss This Super Skinny Japanese Home on Stilts

Project Details:

In Paris, a ’70s Flat With Skyline Views Seeks €570K

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