In Los Angeles, a city known for its dearth of public spaces, architects have expressed the issues of privacy and transparency in the home in often-unusual ways, typically motivated by a perceived break with architectural tradition.

I wanted to build a barn,” says Richard Yulman, the client for the Inverted Guest House in Lake George, New York.

Glaciers sculpted the area north of the Great Lakes between Quebec City and Montreal into the immensely fertile St. Lawrence Lowlands.

Down a long, U-shaped gravel drive and surrounded by palm trees and Spanish-moss-shrouded live oaks, the Low-Country Residence opens onto Shem Creek in the Charleston, South Carolina, suburb of Mount Pleasant.

When we wrote about Milwaukee-based Johnsen Schmaling in February 2005, the then-two-year-old firm was just getting its feet wet with both residential and commercial projects that showed promise and innovation.