America's best

The author continues his Iconic architectural series with this book of fifty houses from 1902 to 2010. The six page illustrated introduction says that America benefited from an influx of European architects in the last century with fresh concepts to mix with traditional design ideas which had developed over a couple of centuries from earlier European settlers. 

Obviously many of the truly iconic and world famous are here: Falling Water; Neutra's Desert House; Eames House; Johnson's Glass House; Farnsworth House; Gwathmey House but I was surprised to find a selection of homes that have been thoughtfully designed outside the architectural box. For example there are three circular houses, Ford House by Bruce Goff, Deaton's Sculptured House and the intriguing Round House by Richard Foster which can completely rotate (if required) in forty-eight minutes and in either direction.

 The geography of America allows for plenty of land to build on and this is reflected in a common theme of space in so many houses in the book. Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California by Quincy Jones and Saarinen's Miller House in Columbus, Indiana both have huge living rooms with a selection of seating areas. Another theme is designing houses that merge into the landscape, to the extent that the outside becomes part of the structure. Wright and Leavitt's Dragon Rock, Lautner's Elrod House and Albert Frey's home all use large and small boulders as irregular shaped walls. Frey's living room and bedroom is build round a massive boulder several feet high.

The last few houses in the book contradict the traditional house idea. Simon Unger's T-House and Thomas Gluck's Tower House are both boxes on top of oblong towers, an interesting feature of the T-House are sheets of Corten steel which is designed to rust and coats the outside of the  building. Kendrick Bangs Kellogg designed the High Desert House in Joshua Tree, California with a roof made from a series of overlapping canopies creating strips of clerestory windows.

The book's fifty houses all get three spreads, the first has a whole page exterior photo on the left and three smaller photos and text on the right, the next two spreads have various sized photos and informative captions. A thing I really liked about the book are the photos, because Richard Powers visited every house there is a uniform look to the four hundred photos in the book. The back pages have biographies, bibliography, a list of houses open for visits and an index.

The book will interest architects, students and anyone who wants to see how the American house evolved in the last hundred years or so.