Dwell

When I was growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the city was best known for what was no longer there. By the early 1990s, steel and other industries had mostly departed, taking with them the economic stability of a large group of people across the

Lured to Phoenix by the promise of toasty weather and access to the great outdoors, former Montana residents Eric and Sondra McVeigh purchased a home on the outskirts of the city in 2007. “We bought the property for its proximity to hiking—there’s a

Michigan couple Liz and Kevin Hoekzema knew they wanted a home to help them connect with their lush surroundings and keep a constant eye on their four energetic kids. Located in a wooded clearing just outside Kalamazoo, the family’s Danish-style farm

The connected home is inevitable. Like the plumbing, electricity, and refrigeration that came before it, the smart-home system will soon be an integral part of our domestic lives. Today, more than a third of Americans with high-speed Internet own sma

Christopher Hawthorne made a surprising career change. Last year, after nearly 14 years as the architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times, he took a job under Mayor Eric Garcetti as the city’s first chief design officer. Hawthorne had been one of t

It’s an image out of Robert Frost. Walter Sargent would take his daughter, Katherine, hiking on the densely wooded piece of land the family owned outside Stowe, Vermont. On their many ambles, they’d pass crumbling stone walls and the foundations of c

Sherry Scott and John Kosich had vacationed in the Sierra Nevada near California’s Donner Summit for years when they decided to buy their own property in the region. The couple, both architects, took their time looking, and in 2010, they found a site

The couple bought a vintage Louis Poulsen PH Artichoke pendant on eBay around the time they purchased the lot. It arrived in miserable shape and sat in their garage for years, until Sherry and John stripped its 72 petals, put in an LED light, and had

Rick Hawkins grew up on a rented farm 25 miles east of Columbus, Ohio, growing corn, wheat, and soybeans with his parents and five siblings. When the farm was put up for sale in the late 1970s, Rick, by then a successful entrepreneur, purchased it so

In the conventional reading of the Los Angeles landscape, there’s the beach, there’s the hills, and there’s the flatlands: three of the city’s four “ecologies,” as the critic Reyner Banham famously called them—each with its own brand of domestic arch

The first thing you notice upon arriving at Julie and Scott Pelletier’s house outside Portland, Maine, is what you don’t see: a front door. There isn’t one. Which doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to enter. You steer up a steep wooded driveway, p

Cecily Young and John Ruble were thinking about a second home. The architect couple were keen to collaborate again, having designed their sprawling, palm-tree-shaded house near Culver City, California, in the early aughts. This time they wanted to bu

Joel and Meelena Turkel, owners of Turkel Design, have produced dozens of prefab houses for other people since starting their company more than a decade ago. But when the couple decided to relocate from the East Coast to Palm Springs around two years

The neighborhood is quintessential South Philadelphia. East of the city’s Italian Market along the Delaware River, Pennsport’s streets are lined with weathered brick row houses and anchored by 19th-century school buildings and grand churches. The clu

Chris Fisher and Blair Moritz were closing on a wonky, neglected weekend house in East Hampton, New York, in 2014 when they made their discovery. Amid the ruins of a recently demolished shed at the edge of the property, stashed between some windows p

At Arc’teryx, we are a group of designers, perfectionists, makers, and outdoor lovers. In a series of new stories, we sought out problem solvers who are leaning into challenges and applying design to create a greater sense of possibility. One account