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SEATTLE MARTHA CHOE'S ideal working space is not her private office, nice though it is, but rather a long, narrow table in the vast atrium of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IT was an unusual commission, unlike anything that Stuart Silk, a Seattle architect, had been offered in his quarter-century of practice: design three high-end custom homes for clients he would never meet. Although there were some specifications for functions and dimensions -- total square feet, for example, and the number of bedrooms and baths -- there wasn't a clue as to style or a construction budget. ''A lot of emotions went through my head,'' Mr. Silk says. ''Disbelief was one of them. Then the anxiety that comes along with the responsibility to do something without direction. But ultimately it was very freeing and intellectually exciting.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SEATTLE THE wooden kitchen bar in the suburban home of Richard and Donna Majer has a canyonlike crack ripping right down its middle, which is exactly what the couple cherish most about it. It's not just furniture -- it's a story, complete with a moral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE digital revolution recently snuffed the life out of the print version of the 146-year-old Seattle newspaper for which I wrote a column, and the recession has neatly disposed of most of the rest of my income-producing work. This has not been entirely bad, as it has liberated considerable time for work on the 19-foot sailboat taking shape in my shop. I'm turning to the boat earlier and earlier every day, like a growing drinking problem, and I'm now suffering work-ethic guilt hangovers: the nagging feeling that I ought to be doing more productive things with my time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]