Architecture and design writer Marc Kristal's new book, Re:Crafted: Interpretations of Craft in Contemporary Architecture and Interiors, features 25 architectural projects that challenge the traditional view of craft. Here's a look at some of these projects and how each of them have incorporated the "personal touch" in a modern way.

Deformscape
San Francisco, California
Faulders Studio

When architect Thom Faulders took on this project in the backyard of a San Francisco residence, he wanted to retain the slope of the natural landscape. The client, however, wanted a flat surface that was more conducive to entertaining. Faulders' solution was to create an optical illusion--the deck is made of plywood tiles that form a deformed grid, making the flat surface look like it's sloping in towards the Japanese maple tree.

Orchard East
Chicago, Illinois
Wheeler Kearns Architects

The clients who own this Chicago house wanted a home that was warm and intimate but could also accommodate hundreds of people. Architect Dan Wheeler's firm created a structure whose second floor is nearly windowless, but instead look inward into transparent light courts that are open to the sky and the elements. The first floor is just the opposite--it's enclosed in glass, which can be opened almost entirely to the garden outside. To bring some warmth (and acoustic relief) into the stone- and glass-clad structure, Wheeler created the ceiling out of wood.

Ini Ani Coffee Shop
New York, New York
Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis

This 350-square-foot coffee shop in Manhattan's Lower East Side is designed around the components of a cardboard coffee cup. Architects David Lewis, Paul Lewis, and Marc Tsurumaki personally undertook the fabrication of the design elements to ensure quality craftmanship. The wall lining the entrance to the service counter is made up of 479 plaster casts of coffee cup lids, and the enclosure surrounding the lounge area is created from two-inch-wide strips of cardboard.

Hot Rod House
Seattle Washington
Tom Kundig/Olson Kundig Architects

Tom Kundig used his early hot-rodding days as inspiration for his own house in Seattle, Washington, which started out as a dilapidated shack before he started tinkering with it. Kundig took the opportunity to push the boundaries of what would be commercially possible, experimenting with ideas that seemed "cool" to him, like installing the front door lock backwards so that the moving parts would be visible.

Villa for an Industrialist
Shenzhen, China
Studio Metasus, Peter Lynch (Studio Them), and Ahlaiya Yung

Shenzhen's Mission Hills claims itself as "the world's No. 1 golfing community," with 12 courses and 216 holes. Its villa incorporates design details like intricate tiling and ceiling installations. Here, the ground floor features curved walls and structural tree-like columns. The walls are covered in green and white high-relief slip-cast ceramic tiles.

Hotel Seeko'o
Bordeaux, France
Atelier D’Architecture King Kong

The left bank of the Garonne River in Bordeaux is lush with historic buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Atelier D'Architecture King Kong disrupted that traditionalism with The Seeko'o ("iceberg" in Inuit), a stark-white, ultra-modern hotel tucked into an existing street corner.

Integral House
Toronto, Canada
Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

This five-story house sits on a site that begins at a city street and slopes down into a wooded ravine, and was built for a mathematician with a passion for music. The structure and design of the house is influenced by mathematical curves, and the space is meant to be for both performance and living. The double-height performance space begins the transition from street to landscape--the wall dissolves into a series of oak-clad fins that are angled in different directions to create multiple views of the ravine outside.

Tanner Studiolo
New York, New York
Rick Jordan

The private study of physician Michael Tanner wwas directly influenced by the study of Federico da Montefeltro, which was completed in 1476 and covered in a trompe l'oeil created by thousands of pieces of wood inlay. Just like the original masterpiece, artist Rick Jordan created an illusion of cabinets lining the walls of the study. Each "cabinet"'s door is shown ajar to reveal objects inside. Notable details include a page out of a book that Tanner's father wrote, his wife's sonogram image, and countless references to illusions, including the quote that runs around the top perimeter of the room: "Appearances to the mind are of four kinds: Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, yet appear to be."

Mobile Chaplet
Fargo, North Dakota
Moorhead & Moorhead

Artist Marjorie Schlossman commissioned six architects to design "chaplets," small, movable structures meant as spaces for reflection. Granger and Robert Moorhead went with a very literal interpretation of "movable," creating a mobile structure that very closely resembles a covered wagon from the American West. The chaplet features two canopies made from black thermoplastic composite rods, which supports a horseshoe-shaped bench.

Santa Monica Parks Project
Santa Monica, California
Daly Genik Architects

The architects commissioned to design buildings for the Santa Monica parks needed to create something equally as durable as it was innovative. They decided on using masonry, but didn't want to settle on typical concrete blocks that would be time-consuming to build. Instead, they turned the ubiquitous material into something more modern and aesthetically pleasing. The buildings were constructed from pre-cast concrete panels, which were cast in a custom mold with a disappearing rib pattern that emulated flowing water.

Central Park West Apartment
New York, New York
Architecture Research Office

The sliding panels in this Central Park West apartment were influenced by an earlier art project by Architecture Research Office called Paper Wall, which explored the possibilities of laser cutting on paper. The medium-density fiberboard panels allow for flexible living spaces and more unity between the different areas. The project also focused on studying the passage of light through perforated material--the concentration of the screen openings on the panels varies at different eye levels.