Houses and Cars is a must-have for car enthusiasts and lovers of spectacular architecture. Featuring around 44 innovative projects, this book showcases how to present your four-wheeled companion – or even an entire collection – with the attention it deserves. Here, cars aren’t simply parked. Instead, they are housed in architecturally striking spaces designed to give them a dedicated place within the fabric of everyday life. Each project is presented with breathtaking photography and clear architectural plans. Interviews with passionate car collectors and fascinating facts complete this exceptional volume.

The Tracy diary offers us the unique opportunity to accompany 27 nineteenth century travellers on an adventure of a lifetime, exploring Mount Desert Island, Maine, in August of 1855. This first group of summer visitors was a distinguished company and hailed primarily from New York, Hartford and Boston.

In addition to Charles Tracy, a prominent New York lawyer, whose descendants through his son, Charles, daughter, Francis, and son-in-law, J. Pierpont Morgan, continue to summer on the island. The travelling party also included Frederic Edwin Church, a leading Hudson River School artist, and his friend, Theodore Winthrop, who died gallantly in the opening battle of the Civil War and then became posthumously famous as a novelist.

After more than 170 years, Church’s playful sketches have been reunited with the first-hand account penned by Tracy, whose words strike a familiar chord in the memory of all who return again and again to the beauty and variety of Mount Desert Island.

Includes a folded, full-colour map of Mount Desert Island in 1855, created for this new edition by famed illustrator Pete Gergely.

The lure of a home by the ocean resonates with us all, bringing to mind the beauty and changing moods of the water, the intoxicating salty scent and the sound of waves against the shore. But what makes a beach house, and how does the idea of a home by the coast differ across the world? This stunning edition showcases a global snapshot of beautifully designed coastal homes, with a diverse mix of types, from Hamptons style to more minimalist residences, reflecting the different landscapes and locations. Lavishly illustrated with full-colour images of award-winning architecture combined with spectacular views, this curated list brings together the most recent designs from highly regarded architects to produce the best examples of contemporary beach house residential design. This book is a captivating glimpse into the irresistible world of modern and stylish contemporary living in homes that take full advantage of their beachside settings.

What sort of home would you create for yourself if you could build whatever you wanted—if money, as they say, were no object?

Over the course of his firm’s 30-year history, American architect Mark P. Finlay has been in the privileged position of helping clients answer that very question. This first reprint and revised edition of Country Houses: The Architecture of Mark P. Finlay, originally published in 2018, showcases the dream homes Finlay has designed for some of America’s wealthiest and most sophisticated families.

The renowned architect and interior designer works in the United States’ most storied pastoral locations, including the South Carolina lowlands, Virginia horse country, coastal New England, and the Rocky Mountains. Whether historic restorations or ground-up builds, Finlay’s attention to detail and focus on fine craftsmanship make the magnificent homes look and feel as if they’ve lived on their sites for centuries.

This beautifully presented monograph offers gorgeous photography of 12 superbly designed country residences. Each home is accompanied by an intimate, detailed architectural account that conveys Finlay’s skill and passion for creating residences that telegraph a distinct sense of place and a unique appreciation for their owners’ aspirations.

Here, passion and architecture merge into a total work of art: 45 spectacular international projects show how cars, collections and living spaces are being reimagined and staged. Large-format photography, precise plans and inspiring interviews with collectors and designers offer exclusive insights into a world where the car forms an integral part of the living environment. Whether a one-off piece, curated collection or bespoke solution – every example links design and passion in a fascinating way. Tips and ideas round off the volume, making this the ultimate book for everyone who loves architecture and automobiles – and wants to know where dreams are parked.

Inverness is a coastal village on Tomales Bay about 40 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. For more than a century, Inverness has been where many Berkeley families vacationed for the summer. Its residential architecture—rustic, simple wood-clad houses set in a hillside landscape—echoed Berkeley’s. These summer families shaped Inverness and its surroundings.

The story of how Berkeley families shaped Inverness and its surroundings runs counter to the prevailing narrative about California coastal living. Inverness avoids the California feeling of restless change. It remains purposefully underdeveloped at a time when stretches of California’s coastline are overdeveloped. Its houses generally present as a unified whole, not a bunch of expressions of conflicting individual tastes, as we often see today in California when affluence meets coastal landscapes. Inverness’s simple rustic cottages, and its siting along a calm, unspoiled bay, share more in common with Martha’s Vineyard on Cape Cod than with any Southern California beach community running from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

Inverness is a frosted window through which to glimpse Berkeley’s Arts and Crafts past. More generally, it provides a backwards view into what Lewis Mumford termed the “usable past.”

Indonesia fosters many noteworthy architects who have amassed a remarkable collection of works. Tropical Houses showcases a compilation of house designs by an outstanding group of Indonesian architects. Highly illustrated and providing a wide scope in terms of design integrity, architectural sophistication and style, this book follows closely in the wake of its incredibly successful first volume, published in 2013, disclosing each architect’s distinctive approach to the contemporary residential design realm. Featuring a wide range of design philosophies, projects are presented with full-colour photographs, visualising the detailed environment of every project and fully immersing the reader into every part of the house. Complete with detailed plans, sections, and elevation drawings, this book is an inspiring source for people in the architecture and design domains.

This publication, which features 220 large-format photographs, offers us a visual tour of the houses that belong to the Duchess of Alba in Madrid (The Liria Palace), Seville (The Palace of Las Dueñas), Salamanca (The Palace of Monterrey), Ibiza and San Sebastián.

The images were taken by the renowned interior photographer, Ricardo Labougle, whilst the architectural notes were written by the architect and university professor, Rafael Manzano. The whole project was coordinated by Naty Abascal.

Born in 1926, the goddaughter of Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain, the Duchess of Alba holds the world record for the most aristocratic titles. Indeed, her full name is Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva and she is a duchess seven times over, a countess 19 times and a marquesa 23 times.

The 86-year-old noble, who is internationally famous for holding more titles than anyone else in the world (and for having fabulously eccentric style) is head of the 530-year-old House of Alba, and as such is entitled to ride her horse into Seville Cathedral, and according to protocol does not have to kneel before the Pope. It is said she could walk from the northern tip of Spain to the southernmost point without leaving her native lands. In 1947, the Duchess married Don Pedro Luis Martinez de Irujo y Artacoz, son of the Duke of Sotomayor. The wedding was considered to be the last great feudal wedding in Spain and attracted the attention of the international media.

The Duchess has been the subject of much media attention in her native Spain, and is admired for her eccentric and bohemian fashion sense. A famed beauty in her youth, she once famously declared that her style icon was “myself”.

“… Photos of jaw-dropping houses will tide keen cottagers over until spring.” —  Canadian House & Home
We are all drawn to water, whether for relaxation or recreation. So it is little surprise that many homes are designed especially for a gorgeous waterfront location. Beautiful Houses by the Water beautifully illustrates examples from around the globe that make the most of their stunning location by the water, creating a relaxed abode with a strong connection to nature. Take an inspiring journey with this gorgeous edition, crammed full of evocative images, through some of the world’s best contemporary and stylish residences that truly showcase their idyllic watery settings, whether it is a river, pond, lake, ocean, or a bay. Enjoy the beauty of a home that is perfectly designed for its location by the water.

“… In fact, my entire journey through Amsterdam’s vibrant house museums was one great historical sensation in a variety of contexts. I followed in the footsteps of Dutch East India Company directors, workers, orphans, writers, artists, architects, and many others, seeing how they lived and worked. How they ate in poverty-stricken 19th-century slums or at lavishly laid tables in canal-side mansions of Van Loon or Bartolotti. How they prayed in secret with Father Parmentier in a clandestine attic church. I am not longer just an Amsterdammer: now I’m an Amsterdammer with a past.” – Froukje Wattel.

Text in English and Dutch.

Five Houses on the Wild Side is a visual feast showcasing the wildly imaginative, rules-free, cozy and sumptuous interiors Elena Agostinis has created for her family’s homes in New York, Montana, and Mexico.

Bold and courageous choices of colours and patterns, elements from the wildlife and fauna of her South African childhood, mixed and matched with the best of local artisanry, textiles purchased from souks and markets all around the world, giant papier-mâché’ animal garden sculptures, and wall art that spans from the elevated to the quirky and amusing, are Elena’s traits that will inspire readers to free-styling their own homes.

Elena’s irresistible style, originality, and use of wild colours has not only been restricted to her family homes, but inspired a quiet town in Upstate New York, Tannersville, to repaint its own Main Street store fronts, contributing to the town being selected in 2021 for the $10-million-dollars New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative award.

Elena shares the inspiration from her childhood, travels, heritage, and family needs, encouraging readers to find their free spirit and apply it to their own interiors.

2025 marks the centenary of Kazuo Shinohara (1925–2006), one of the most distinguished and influential Japanese architects of the 20th century. In homage, this stunning book, first published by Quart Verlag in 2019 and winner of one of the 2020 Most Beautiful Swiss Books awards, becomes available again in a new edition.

Kazuo Shinohara—3 Houses analyses three of the architect’s key designs: the House in White (1966), the House in Uehara (1976), and the House in Yokohama (1984). The large-sized volume features floor plans, sections, and elevations, all newly redrawn in true scale from Shinohara’s originals, as well as reproductions of his hand drawings and archival photographs. Contributions by architects David B. Stewart (1928–2015), who taught alongside Shinohara as professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Shin-ichi Okuyama (born 1961) place the three private homes within his oeuvre and offer insights into his particular working methods. A foreword by Ryue Nishizawa, cofounder of SANAA and 2010 Pritzker Prize laureate, highlights Shinohara’s lasting significance and influence on contemporary architecture in Japan.

Text in English and Japanese.

Peter Ivens is a buzzing and respected name in interior design. The Belgian interior architect is praised for his talent, his timeless style and impeccable realisations. His designs often come about in close collaboration with his partner in crime Bea Mombaers. The two of them have been working together intensively for over a decade, without really dividing their roles in the classic way, blurring the lines between architecture and decoration. For Ivens each house tells its own personal story. ‘Custom-made’ is a core value in his oeuvre: he tailors each home to the specific needs and personality of its residents. No bells and whistles, no loud, showy signature, but silent luxury stemming from a special, sophisticated choice of materials and a unique sense of space. Ivens’ portfolio is prestigious and diverse, yet his style is recognisable. This beautiful coffee-table book, in which each chapter is dedicated to a different house, is the perfect proof. Except for a brief introduction by design journalist Sisse Bro, the photos by Eefje De Coninck and Senne Van der Ven do all the talking, showcasing Ivens’ universe in the most classy and inspiring way.

Between 1924 and 1936, Austrian-born architect Josef Frank built five holiday homes on the Falsterbo Peninsula in southern Sweden. Conceived as summer houses for friends and relatives of Frank’s Swedish wife, the Falsterbo Villas constitute a key part of Frank’s architectural work and demonstrate the principles at the core of his housing designs. In 2016, Villa Carlsten, the smallest of the Falsterbo houses, underwent an extensive restoration.

Published on the occasion of its completion, Josef Frank: Villa Carlsten is the first book to comprehensively document the building. As with all of Frank’s housing designs, Villa Carlsten sees the architect paying special attention to the connection between interior and exterior, to the availability of daylight, and to inhabitants’ movements through the building. A particular part of Villa Carlsten’s charm is its scale, as everything is of slightly smaller dimensions than one would expect. Despite its intricate layout, however, Villa Carlsten is also one of Frank’s most accessible homes, and the design is full of wit, combining comfort with modern refinement.

Beautifully designed with seventy-five full-colour photographs by Mikael Olsson, who adeptly highlights the home’s qualities and relationship with its surroundings, the book also includes an essay by Mikael Bergquist, who realised the renovation and places Villa Carlsten in context with the other Falsterbo Villas and Frank’s broader work.

By 2030, 79 million baby boomers will have turned 65 at a rate of 10,000 per day. While more than 85 percent will age in place, a tsunami of challenges and opportunities will compel this cohort to embrace more cooperative structures of living, given their explosive increase in single-person households. The nation’s housing stock and neighbourhoods are not equipped to serve the common mobility, access, and social needs of seniors. Many who now age in place experience greater social isolation and loss of purpose than residents of nursing homes. What is the shape of housing that accommodates retirement lifestyles for the 85 percent who do not live in the nation’s top 50 urban cores, yet desire greater cooperative structures of living in low-density housing?

This book reworks components of the familiar single-family home to promote new levels of connectivity in neighbourhoods once resistant to sharing. The traditional individual porch is rescaled to serve multiple units as a hyper-porch; garage galleries hybridize car parking to become mixed-use neighbourhood workspaces; and patio mats offer live-work venues within a compact footprint. All three strategies revitalise neighborhoods through the return of informal economies and social networks.

McInturff Architects are renowned for their innovative and creative zeal and have been awarded hundreds of awards for their beautiful, stylish houses plus other projects. For this book, McInturff’s fourth with IMAGES, this award-winning firm takes us on a journey through nearly 50 works, which include dozens of stunning new homes and interiors, incredible renovations of residences, and innovative and modern commercial and cultural centres, hotels, stores, and much more. Complete with beautiful photographs and detailed plans and diagrams, the architects walk us through this significant selection of works, celebrating craft, light, and site. Looking back and looking forward, this book summarises many lessons learned over more than 35 years of a very successful architectural journey.

Josef Frank, born 1885 in Baden near Vienna, ranks among Europe’s most significant architects of the twentieth century. His designs for furniture and textiles also make him one of the eminent figures of modernist interior design. Born into a Jewish family, growing anti-Semitism forced him to emigrate in 1933. He first went to Sweden and in 1939 to the USA, returning to Sweden again in 1947, where he lived and worked until his death in 1967.

Josef Frank – Spaces is the first comprehensive book on Frank’s single-family houses. It explores the evolution of his designs over the years and investigates the influences that shaped his work: Adolf Loos’s spatial plan concept, Le Corbusier’s ideas, and Hermann Muthesius’s seminal book The English House. It also looks at Frank’s own architectural concepts of movement and stairs in residential buildings. The second part features six of Frank’s houses in greater detail, including images and plans, and in descriptive texts that also interpret their characteristics. The selection comprises the villas Claëson and Wehtje in Falsterbo, Sweden, the villas Wien XIII and Beer in Vienna, the House MS in Los Angeles, and the unrealised Fantasy House 9 (Accidental House). A complete catalogue of Frank’s single-family houses rounds out the book.

House for All Regions: CRAN Residential Collection is the first in a series on international residential architecture produced by IMAGES Publishing in partnership with the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The projects are divided into four climate zones: Arid & Semi-arid, Temperate, Arctic and Sub-tropical & Tropical, and each illustrates how architects adapt their designs to accommodate the challenges posed by the local topography and variations in climate. Containing cutting-edge residential designs by leading architects from across the world, including North America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe, and featuring rarely seen images, this collection underlines the sensitivity of today’s architects to the natural environment, as well as the care and attention paid to interior design and everyday living.

Pure Luxury: World’s Best Houses is a celebration of residential living at its finest, and best. Satisfying our natural and abiding curiosity about how other people live, and our endless quest to add a special something to our own homes, this latest volume in IMAGES’ 100 Houses series showcases contemporary architectural trends. The beauty of residential architecture lies in its infinite scope for innovation and the comfort of it inhabitants, be they at rest, at play, or hosting guests. Among the awe-inspiring projects in this book are an opulent villa set in the Hollywood Hills with an infinity pool projecting over LA, an idyllic rural retreat set in luxurious valleys and stunning beach houses around the coast. The diversity of the locations extend from Mexico and Brazil to Thailand and Italy. Featured architects include: Damien Murtagh, Lockyer Architects, ISJ Architects, Saucier + Perrotte, SAOTA, Okada Architects, Original Vision, Koutsoftides Architects, Drozdov Partners and Carlos Bratke Architect.

Recognising that buildings are a major contributor to global warming and the critical role of embodied versus operational carbon, the book focuses on houses built from materials that either sequester carbon (plants), use materials with very low embodied carbon (earth and stone) or reuse substantial amounts of existing materials. Organised by those materials (wood, bamboo, straw, hemp, cork, earth, brick, stone and re-use), and incorporating life cycle diagrams demonstrating how the raw material is processed into building components, the book shows how the unique properties of each material can transform the ways architects conceive the sections of houses. The house was selected as the vehicle for these investigations due to its scale, its role as a site of architectural experimentation, and its ubiquity.

Building on the techniques of the Manual of Section, the book is comprised of newly generated cross-sectional drawings of 55 recent, modestly sized houses from around the world, making legible the tectonics and materials used in their construction. Each house is also shown through exploded axonometric, construction photographs and colour photographs of the exterior and interior. Introductory essays set up the importance of embodied carbon, the role of vernacular plant-based construction and the problems of contemporary house construction. Drawing connections between the architecture of the house, environmental systems and material economies, the book seeks to change how we build now and for the future.

The prototypical recipe book provides a loose framework for BLDUS’s unique farm-to-shelter architecture in Home on Earth, offering delectable suggestions for healthy modes of human habitation. Using traditional materials processed with contemporary techniques, BLDUS designs and builds sustainable houses in and around Washington D.C. that pay tribute to their contexts and gain integrity as they age. Home on Earth showcases built houses alongside material studies and models to propose a healthy building cuisine specific to the Mid-Atlantic Region. These contextual houses are advocates for simple healthy building materials that work well in the Mid-Atlantic region and have low impacts on their points of growth, manufacture, installation, inhabitation, and eventual disposal.

Excerpts:
‘Humanity’s most cherished architecture brings to mind the relationship between buildings, the four elements, and the cosmos.’
‘We don’t follow a precise rubric to value a material’s relative health; we follow our guts, and these materials taste good.’
‘These contextual houses are advocates for simple healthy building materials that work well in the MidAtlantic region and have low impacts on their points of growth, manufacture, installation, inhabitation, and eventual disposal.’

This generously illustrated survey of 80 halls from the past three centuries is a personal selection by the authors, enriched by recommendations from leading musical authorities. These auditoria combine consistently high standards of performance with architectural and acoustical excellence.

The survey focuses on three periods. Earliest, the court theatres that served rulers and the aristocracy in the 18th century, jewel boxes that now draw music lovers to summer festivals. Secondly, the explosive growth in size of theatres, orchestras, and audiences in the 19th century. Finally, the dramatic advances in design and technology over the past 30 years, as leading architects have worked with musicians and expert acousticians to create versatile and innovative auditoria that address civic and economic demands, while attracting new audiences.

The goal is to create a readable, visually alluring compendium that will appeal to lovers of music and architecture as well as cultural tourists in search of new experiences. It will satisfy a broad range of tastes, from the intimacy of chamber music and baroque opera in period settings, to the grandeur of Verdi in La Scala and Wagner in Bayreuth, and the latest advances in composition and presentation.

When you think of Ibiza, you think of sun, sea, sand, and the Mediterranean way of life. But that’s not all: you think of gorgeous design, funky interiors, scrumptious food and breath taking nature. With that in mind, it’s time for an ode to good taste, La Pura Vida. This magnificent book will bring the summer vibe into your home with the most beautiful interiors, imposing architecture and pictures that will have you imagining you are standing amidst the azure bays yourself. Two hundred and forty pages filled with joy and good taste, interiors, architecture, and scenery.