The moment you enter through the gates of Chelster Hall, a grand home in Oakville, Ont., it feels like you’ve entered a retreat where all stress and worry seem to disappear. Once you’re past the wide front doors, a magnificent chandelier comes into view. Hanging from a domed ceiling some 30 feet above you, it’s in perfect elegant symmetry with the custom oval Persian carpet underfoot. Just ahead of you are vistas of Lake Ontario sparkling in the distance. On a cold winter day, you can see the mist rising from Niagara Falls.

Vertical gardens, which transform plain walls into lush landscapes, are being employed as signature architectural features in interior and exterior spaces. “Luxury clients, especially, perceive them as a differentiator, a status art piece,” says Irina Kim Sang, managing partner of Miami Vertical Garden.

To understand the latest trends in art, architecture, and design, you have to go back to the time when objects were handcrafted, bricks were hand-molded and every element in the house was a work of art. Rediscovered and burnished by a new generation, these old ideals are setting a new style.

For land-scarce metropoli like New York, architectural innovations tend to scale vertically: without a place to spread outwards, development takes to the skies. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, innovation can be found at sea. A district of water homes located on a string of artificial islands adjacent to the city’s historic canals feels distinctly Dutch: dubbed the WaterWonen project (translates literally to living in water), modern houseboats are moored at a harbor conceived by Danish architecture firm Monteflore (responsible for designing one of the city’s most luxurious hotels). The independently-sailing vessels include homes—like this spacious steel converted cargo ship—that invite guests to come down out of the clouds and enjoy the delights of open water.

There is nowhere quite like the Sapphire Residences – an exquisite collection of apartments and penthouses boasting uninterrupted panoramic views overlooking the Indian Ocean and the Beira Lake. Inspired by the famous Sri Lankan blue jewel, Sapphire Residences has been meticulously designed for those who expect the best things in life.

One of Toronto’s quirkiest homes, the angular blue property at 1 Bond Ave. that made waves in cookie-cutter Don Mills when it was built in the late ’90s, is on the market. The house, along with its fraternal twin property at 3 Bond Ave., drew the chagrin of neighbours when it was built at the turn of the millennium.

When it comes to home design, inspiration can be found in any era. Whether contemporary or colonial, Tudor or Victorian, the tastes of the past have a way of influencing the present. Reviewing architectural conventions can be a great way to curate your preferences when it comes to selecting your next home. Below, eight popular home styles explained.

Hearkening back to the birth of our country, rural properties evoke an idyllic spirit of place, whether for their recreational lifestyle offerings or potential for farm and ranch production. Tied to the history of the Pacific Northwest, many homeowners are reveling in the opportunity to take part in our region’s storied past while experiencing an up-close and personal connection to nature through outdoor adventures. Farms and ranches are more than just land and crops—they represent heritage and future. Discover a collection of Pacific Northwest Farm and Ranch listings that elevate the rural lifestyle to new heights.

Thanks to modern advancements in augmented reality and 3D printing, redesigning a space or building a new home has never been more futuristic. We are living in an era of unprecedented innovation, where homes can be assembled from scratch in just under 24 hours, and living spaces designed from a few taps on a smartphone. More than just passing trends, these technological leaps represent a disruption of the home and design industry. Here, we examine two of the most promising advancements in home construction and retail, and why they’re catching the world’s attention.

When you think of the world of condos and new-build apartments, “unique” may not be the first word that springs to mind. Condos have a reputation for being uniform, but thanks to a new crop of savvy architects and technology-embracing designers, the best modern condos on the market feel more custom than cookie-cutter. From virtual personal assistants capable of ordering in-home beauty treatments to personal chefs hirable at the tap of a button, it’s never been easier to design a lifestyle that feels entirely bespoke. These modern condos are called smart homes for a reason.

Let’s play a little game. Imagine you have a $15 million real estate budget. You can buy any house, anywhere. What matters to you? What a $15 million house looks like varies—both in terms of square-footage and amenities—depending on the home’s location around the world. Most everyone knows that real estate in New York City or Monaco, for example, is more expensive in terms of square footage than, say, in Houston or Atlanta. Would you prefer to spend the $15 million on roughly 2,418 square feet of space in the hustle and bustle of New York City? Or would you splurge on 11,248 square feet (not to mention the 1.71 acres of land) in quieter Houston?

There’s a subtle shift under way in the Greater Toronto Area’s presale condominium market in 2018: As developers are launching fewer towering projects designed to woo investors, they are finding there’s still a strong market for people looking to pay a little more money for a larger, family-friendly unit in neighbourhoods outside the downtown core.

With 50 Scollard, the developer set out to build something for the ages.

At this point in the architecture history of downtown Toronto, with each new building aspiring to outshine what came before, it’s not easy to build something iconic.

But when Lanterra Developments, the company behind much-praised projects like Ice Condominiums at York Centre, The Brit Residences at Bay and Wellesley and One Bedford, acquired 50 Scollard Street, they knew they had all the ingredients to make something special. The prime Yorkville location, at the corner of Bay and Scollard across from the Peter Clewes-designed Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Toronto, certainly demanded excellence and elegance.

Fast growing e-commerce platform Shopify Inc. says it will invest as much as half-a-billion dollars into its forthcoming Toronto office, in a large downtown development where it plans to house thousands of new employees.

The Ottawa-based company’s neon-green shopping-bag beacon is expected to top the 38-storey skyscraper at the corner of Front Street West and Spadina Avenue when The Well complex, jointly owned by Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT, opens in 2022. Shopify’s investment and its anchor-tenant logo rights are part of a 15-year deal that Michael Scace, who brokered the transaction, said is one of the biggest-ever completed in the King West market on the edge of Toronto’s downtown core.

Amazon has made its first foray in prefab construction, investing in a company known for sustainable construction and smart home technology.

Today’s announcement of Amazon’s investment in Plant Prefab, a startup based in Rialto, California, comes on the heels of the company’s announcement of a new line of Alexa-enabled smart home devices, suggesting a potential new avenue of smart home development, experimentation, and expansion.

Canada’s biggest science and technology incubator is expanding to Toronto’s eastern waterfront as it joins a host of other companies jostling for extra space in the city to grow.

MaRS Discovery District, which houses some of the country’s biggest AI hubs and more than 50 startups, is in the final stages of securing a lease with Menkes Developments Ltd. for 24,000 square feet (2,230 square meters) at a new development by the Lake Ontario waterfront, according to a statement Tuesday.

Omar Gandhi was lost. It was his first day of high school and he found himself wandering in circles through the halls of Mayfield Secondary School, in the town of Caledon. For anyone else, this might have been standard first-day-of-grade-9 stuff — a minor embarrassment. For Gandhi, one of Canada’s foremost young architects, however, it proved to be a formative experience.

Meet three Canadian architectural firms who are using their talents to make an impact on society. In this age of mounting social and political activism, architects are making a powerful statement in their own right. They’re tackling issues close to their hearts, from helping the homeless to supporting the cause for sustainable food and building better cities through design. We’ve rounded up three leading Canadian architectural firms who are boldly breaking new ground — with a conscience.

Toronto architect Brian Brisbin wanted to look behind the curtain on one of the world’s buzziest buildings, Milan’s Bosco Verticale, two towers that are widely acknowledged as the world’s first vertical forest — green buildings designed specifically to counteract the smog and heat of a city.

It goes without saying that architects leave indelible marks on our lives; they are the masterminds behind the homes we live in and the homes we aspire to. From time to time, architects soar above the baseline notoriety of their peers, pushing the envelope, and creating pieces of live-in art that alter the landscape of their industry.