The biggest mistake in building a house is ending up with interior space made of separate boxes, each with a window and a door — just like an apartment, only bigger. Life in these boxes is dull and joyless in itself, not much different from a tract house in the city.

Inside these "containers," designers build drywall niches, hang "beams" and multilevel ceilings, play with mirrors, and do everything they can to break up the confined space. But finishes and furnishings never fully solve the problem of a boring, walled-off rectangular space.

The simple rectangle and the cube are the most artificial, man-made forms, yet people want a natural environment. Nature is blurry, complex, multifaceted, changeable, and imperfect.

There's no need to chase geometric logic or symmetry (unless you have a compulsion for it). What looks beautiful on the plan will grate on the soul. Just recall the Soviet housing districts built on a geometric principle. I remember how dreary it was, despite the grandeur of the architects' designs. It's better when a home's architecture doesn't dominate but dissolves.

When you build a house, try to make the space interesting: connected room volumes, lots of different windows, visual bridges, corners, turns, nooks, rises and dips (keeping ergonomics in mind), double-height spaces, breaks, visible rooflines. Don't be afraid of quirks and irregularities — they'll become dear to you, and your children and grandchildren will love them.