Modern House 3
By Raul A. Barreneche<br>Phaidon Press, $69.95 Of the piles of books out there on modern houses, only a few are worth adding to your own stacks. This handsome volume, the third in a series, is not only beautifully designed and informatively photographed but also packed with such compelling and innovative houses that even a starchy traditionalist won’t be able to resist the pull from one page to the next. Who wouldn’t be awed by a formal dining room that features retractable glass walls designed to provide a natural extension out onto a center courtyard? Whether it’s a straw bale beauty in London, a guest tree house in the mountains of Georgia, a weathering steel structure in Toronto or a picture-window house in Japan, every single one of the 33 designs included here is sympathetic to the topography and climate of its site—that’s a feat for both the author and the lucky inhabitants of forward-looking houses.
