Carving a finca from land his baroness grandmother left him, Javier González Sánchez-Dalp has, writes Cosmo Brockway, adroitly addressed his clan’s chattels and dashing characters

Georges Volckrick’s 1950s home in Brussels has been rescued by his daughter with Nakashima furniture and Corbusian hues. Bertrand Raison hails masterly, if modest, Modernism

The writer Gaia Servadio was never one to bow to convention. There was her haute-bohemian home for one – a former boarding house in what was still a louche part of London. And then there was her wide social circle. Francis Bacon, Philip Roth, Fleet Street hacks, Russian dissidents… They all got to savour the saloniste’s cooking and peppery conversation, not to mention her vast, idiosyncratic murals. As sometime guest Marella Caracciolo Chia recalls, anything might happen at Bloomfieldia – and often did

From antique textiles to objets and artworks, the past is ever present in the Manhattan apartment that the designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla and her husband, Aaron Aujla, share with their new child

Sitting in the dramatic shadow of a volcano in western Iceland, this former merchant’s house has triumphantly survived being dismantled, moved and rebuilt twice in the 250 years since it was first constructed. It has now been revived as a holiday home, its snug interior conjured from reclaimed materials and furnished with antique Scandinavian textiles

When Andrew Solomon and his husband decided to trade in city life for the charms of the American countryside, a down-at-heel house called Marienruh seemed the perfect blank page. But what began as a romantic exercise in formal reinvention for the couple, marrying their respective needs for grandeur and simplicity, took on an epic quality. Twelve years on, it’s become an ode to the preciousness of home and family – to ‘living beautifully’ – as the owner himself rhapsodises

Nichola Shanley wasn’t going to let anything get between her and her 19th-century future home, which she fell for before even crossing the threshold – not even an earthquake

From kinetic sculptures to whirling chairs inspired by an absurdist play, the apartment of theatre director and stage designer Fabio Cherstich has been dressed with the aim to surprise, unsettle and, above all, move whoever encounters it