Architects' Houses puts thirty of the world's leading architects on the other side of the brief, revealing how Norman Foster, Thom Mayne, Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, and others have wrestled with the most personal commission of their careers: a home designed for themselves.
About This Book
When an architect designs for themselves, every decision is unmediated — no client to satisfy, no programme to second-guess. Michael Webb uses this condition as a lens through which to examine how contemporary residential architecture is actually made. Drawing on texts, sketches, plans, and images, he traces thirty houses built over the past decade alongside a two-hundred-year lineage stretching from Jefferson's Monticello through the Eames House, Toyo Ito, and Frank Gehry. The result is a sustained investigation into how spatial thinking, material choice, and site constraints are resolved when the architect is also the inhabitant — and what that means for the broader question of how domestic architecture can enrich both life and place.
Key Features
- 304 pages of photographs, sketches, plans, and project texts across thirty architect-designed houses
- Featuring Norman Foster, Thom Mayne, Tod Williams, Billie Tsien, Toyo Ito, Frank Gehry, and Charles and Ray Eames
- Published by Thames & Hudson
What You'll Discover
- How thirty leading architects translated personal constraints — site, budget, material — into distinctive domestic spaces
- The two-hundred-year lineage of the architect-designed house, from Monticello to the Eames House and beyond
- The range of typological responses: urban infills, rustic retreats, historic fusions, and experimental structures
- How the architect-as-client dynamic forces a reckoning between architectural ideology and the practicalities of everyday living
About the Author
Michael Webb is a writer specialising in architecture and design. In Architects' Houses, he combines critical essay with close examination of individual projects, situating contemporary self-built houses within a broad historical and conceptual framework.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 304
- Dimensions: 290 x 230 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780500343401
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and architectural students interested in residential design, clients commissioning bespoke houses, and anyone drawn to the intersection of creative process and domestic space.