The leading style of the century

The book is a remarkable visual record of over four hundred houses that accurately convey the feel and scope of mid-century modern around the globe. Predictably the US has the most examples, one hundred and fifty (Canada has ten) and the mid-century style could be said to have originated there, especially in California where creative architects, including several Europeans, designed houses that took advantage of the pleasant climate and featured open-plan living like the well known Case Study Houses, several are included. The next largest collection is the UK with forty-one houses.

The book divides the world into nine regions with Europe in two sections and 151 homes, Africa and the Middle East have fourteen and the Far East thirteen, Central and South America fifty-one. Australia and New Zealand twenty. Each house has one exterior photo and sometimes the addition of one or more interiors. The captions include the structures name, architect, location and date followed by the author's very comprehensive background detail about the property and designer. The back pages have a Timeline, Glossary, Bibliography and Index.

I thought the Timeline (1945 to 1974) over twenty pages, was quite fascinating. Each page has twenty largish thumbnails and it's possible to see and compare how architects created individual homes with the mid-century chracteristics of a horizontal look and large windows. There are nine or more circular houses, a style favoured by John Lautner, several architects broke away from the format and designed roofs that curved over a property or looked like wings. A couple of oddities are included, Finnish designer Matti Suuronen and his 1968 Futuro House looking remarkably like a science fiction space ship and Charles Deaton's 1965 Sculptured House near Denver, Colorado. (The caption says the design was vaguely based on a clam shell with a final coating of synthetic rubber mixed with crushed walnut shells and white pigment.)

This is a lavishly produced book with seven hundred large photos and printed on a good matt art paper. It could well became the standard reference for this important and influencial house style.