This book appropriately divides into 5 categories: environmental awareness, changing patterns of living, urban interaction, the rural retreat, concept houses of the future. With that, we are bombarded with ideas, many of them innovative ideas that are willing to be embraced by the architects' clients & in some instances, by the architects themselves. Some houses here blend in with their surroundings, & some stand out from the crowd, some that look & work more like a machine, some that facilitate the lifestyle of the occupants, some are meant to be poetic, & so forth, but overall, they all convey the thinkings & the personalities of the people who are willing to embrace the ideas behind the buildings. As St. Patrick of Assisi said before that stones don't build a city, but people do, & ultimately, the erection of spectacular buildings conveyed in this book is all done to serve the people, which in turn are fabricated into a bigger urban picture of where they are living in. Highly enjoyable to read & browse thru, & a well presented coffee book it is. We don't expect a lesser quality book from Phaidon, to put it simply. The book is finished by relevant chapters such as credits, further reading, index, & acknowledgments. One downside of this book, however is the usage of works of architects already covered in the first offering such as Thom Craig of Christchurch, Mathias Klotz of Chile, & others that I wouldn't remember. Then, there is the usage of small grey fonts over the white background, & in many instances, the statements are simply too vague to read.
