21st Century House

This richly illustrated survey, bound in an elegant portable format, profiles the most architecturally distinguished new houses from around the globe. Features 300 color photographs and 150 black-and-white architectural drawings.

The diversity of the fifty-five houses featured in this photo-packed volume, by architects like Alvaro Siza, Tony Fretton, Hild und K, Jim Jennings Architecture, and Souto Moura Architects, demonstrates that the single-family home continues to play a pivotal role as a means of architectural expression and experimentation in the new millennium. These structures, all designed, commenced, or completed in the past four years, range from Tucson’s Campbell Cliffs, a 25,000-square-foot mansion that reimagines Frank Lloyd Wright’s classic prairie style on a massive scale, to the Living Room in Gelnhausen, Germany, a house-cum-artwork whose living room can slide from the facade like a drawer to become a balcony!

Author Jonathan Bell, an experienced architecture journalist, divides the book into four chapters that correspond to the main trends he discerns in the featured buildings: “The House in the Landscape” presents houses that stand alone in the landscape as architectural statements in the grand Modernist tradition; “New Urban Sites” highlights homes that fit into a larger architectural fabric; “Pragmatic Solutions” focuses on designs for livable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable housing; and “The Future” surveys architects’ varying visions of tomorrow’s house. The case studies of individual houses within these chapters include not only the architects’ own plans and elevations but also a generous number of full-color interior and exterior photographs—some 300 in all. Useful supplementary features, including an introduction that illuminates the present state of residential architecture and project credits that include contact information for the featured architects, ensure that this handily-sized volume will be welcomed by all practitioners, students, and enthusiasts of architecture.