THE first thing you see when you walk into Patrick McInerney’s living room is that there’s nothing to see. The walls are bare, and ditto for the ceiling. You try to switch on the lights, but there doesn’t appear to be a switch. There’s music playing, but where is it coming from? The lamp is obviously working — the bulb is lighted, after all — but it seems to be plugged into ... the plaster?

Part interior illusionist and part aesthetic anorexic, Mr. McInerney is a practicing member of the cult of disappearing design, the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t ethos that aims to secrete away anything that needs a button, a cord or a subwoofer to work. It’s a passion that Mr. McInerney, a 44-year-old architect from San Diego, takes seriously, comparing his drive to streamline with the process of writing a novel.

“Each word is considered and refined, not only for the word’s meaning but also its relationship to other words,” he wrote in an e-mail. “And the landscape in which the words are brought together.”

Indeed, more than simply stashing your stereo in a closet or throwing a shawl over your ottoman, the all-invisible aesthetic aims for a higher-minded goal: creating unified spaces that flow from room to room and place to place.