Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #460425 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

About the Author
Chris Abel is an architectural writer and lecturer of international renown. He has taught at major universities in many parts of the world and is the author of more than 100 publications of theory and criticism. Michael Webb lives and works in Los Angeles, and is the author of more than twenty books on architecture and design.

Customer Reviews

Home to 120 lucky folk

A quick flip through this book and you could easily think that you're looking at contemporary Case Study Houses. Surely one of the criteria of those wonderful homes designed five decades ago was the skilful use of interior space. The 120 buildings in this book continue that theory.

This is a huge thick book (at about nine pounds) beautifully printed and designed with excellent architectural color photos throughout. The homes, all built, more or less, in the last ten years, come from twenty countries with the US (especially California) Australia and Europe predominant.

The first few pages dealing the concept of 'home' over the centuries I thought rather superfluous in a book about modern homes. The rest of the pages are divided into sections: In the city, Outer city, Future city, In the country, By the water and finally In your dreams. Dreams includes, for instance the Foster designed Chesa Futura, Wallace Cunningham's Crescent House and the S.A.O.T Architects Saint Leon House in Cape Town. Dream commissions by any standards. The back pages include comprehensive biographies of the architects.

All the homes in the book have several photos and some general text and captions but it is the large photos that I liked, with several stretching over a spread. The floor plans that go with the buildings are not quite so successful as they tend to look as if there have been fitted into whatever space was left on the page. They also vary in graphic style and are frequently minus text to explain what rooms are what.

Overall I thought this was a wonderful book on probably the best of contemporary homes around the world and is just the sort of title that will appear on a table in a future photo of a modern living room in an architectural magazine. Incidentally the book has been produced by an Australian book packager and as far as I can tell it does not seem to be available everywhere (least in the mainstream American book market) but don't let that put you off searching it out. I bought my copy new and at a very reduced rate from the cover price, a bargain!