Homes For Our Time. Contemporary Houses around the World

ISBN 978-3-8365-8191-2
Edition: German, English, French (multilingual)

There's No Place Like Home

Enter the most beautiful contemporary homes in the world

From rustic cottages to futuristic villas, from artists' studios on the beach to secluded retreats in the forest: this global selection of innovative, extraordinary individual architect-designed houses presents the works of well-known greats such as Shigeru Ban and Marcio Kogan as well as up-and-coming talents such as Aires Mateus, Xu Fu-Min, Võ Trọng Nghĩa, Desai Chia and Shunri Nishizawa. Houses can be seen in Australia and New Zealand, China, Vietnam, the USA, Mexico, Ecuador and Costa Rica, among others.

In western India, Kamal Malik from Malik Architecture, Mumbai, has built an unconventional, spacious house for himself and his family, which is perched on six levels on a ridge above two gorges and - because it seems to manage without walls - is in constant dialog with the landscape. The House of the Three Streams owes its name to the streams that foam through the complex, designed as a multi-generational house, during the heavy rainfall of the monsoon season and are cleverly integrated into the overall plan by means of stairs, external corridors and walkways.

The Casa de la Encina by Aranguren + Gallegos, an elegant, open and clearly structured concrete building framed by pine trees, is located on the southern slope of Monte Abantos to the north of Madrid and is reminiscent of a large, modern viewing pavilion. The lower level, where the bedrooms are located, is embedded in rock and, like the upper level, into which a holm oak found on the building site has been integrated, offers a fantastic view of the plain stretching from the Sierra de Guadarrama to Madrid through panoramic windows and verandas.

Shinichi Ogawa's house by the sea is a white, two-storey minimalist marvel in Kanagawa overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with no openings to the street side, neither windows nor doors. The living area with its south-facing glass front merges into a free-floating terrace and an infinity pool that seems to merge seamlessly with the sea.

These homes - and over 50 others - are remarkably individual in their design language, but they are all united by the intention of developing a modern vision of living in and with nature, appreciating the topography of their surroundings and linking inside and outside. All the projects presented are documented with brilliant architectural photos, floor plans and detailed descriptions.

The author

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard and was editor-in-chief of the French art magazine Connaissance des Arts for over two decades. His publications with TASCHEN include the Architecture Now! series and his monographs on Tadao Ando, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid and, soon, Norman Foster.