The 20th century has produced some of the most innovative and memorable designs for private houses, which have become architectural icons worldwide. In the 1920s and 1930s, the private house was the means by which architects established the early Modern Movement, and clients looked favourably on commissioning the avant garde. Today, the house is enjoying an architectural renaissance, as private clients have returned to architects to express their wealth and status. The result is a collection of innovative projects that reveal some of the real concerns of world-famous architects, and display the talents of younger designers eager to establish their reputations. The 30 houses from around the world included in this book were completed in the 1990s, revealing developments in house design by notable contemporary architects, and demonstrating continuing links with the work of the early 20th-century masters.

The latter part of the 20th century was a fertile time for residential architecture, with a great variety of approaches in operation and no real sign of a ruling orthodoxy or a canonical style. As an editor at three British architectural magazines, John Welsh has had a good vantage point to observe this pluralistic parade, and he gathers a rich and provocative assortment of examples between the covers of Modern House. Welsh first provides a historic overview of residential modernism and then groups his more recent main examples into four types: model villas, structural essays, organic houses, and urban buildings. Big names such as Meier, Gehry, Botta, Koolhaas, and Ando rub elbows with lesser known but worthy practitioners. The houses themselves run a gamut from Allies and Morrison's seemingly ordinary Oakyard in London to Shinichi Ogawa's breathtakingly purist (and nearly unlivable) glass cube in Yamaguchi, Japan.

Welsh's text is solid and helpful, and the visual presentation is exemplary. Copious plans and photos (mostly in color) fill the 240 large-format pages, but we've come to expect that in big architectural books today. What distinguishes this one visually is a deft layout that does not call attention to itself, yet presents the material intelligibly and with grace. If only all book designers were as capable and attuned to their subject matter as the uncredited graphic designer of this volume. Highly recommended for both content and presentation. --John Pastier