The Iconic House: Architectural Masterworks Since 1900

Bought it as a gift for my nephew who’s an Architect. He loved it so much I bought a copy for myself

This book is informative and educational with wonderful pictures. Although the topic suggests it will only be useful for those with architectural backgrounds, I found the book wasn't too specific with jargon and will inspire most.

This book is great. My son who is an architect was thrilled to receive this beautiful book as a Christmas gift.I want to thank you for your excellent service. I received the book less than 24 hours after I ordered it!!!!! Amazon.com is wonderful!!MAH

Returned one copy and the got a replacement and the cover print/sleeve was still badly misaligned. Beware of this set of prints, however many are in this batch. Not satisfied at all considering the warehouse probably has multiple bad batches.

Originally published in 2009 this new reprint has twenty-three more pages and three more houses. The format is based on years from Bailie Scott's 1900 Blackwell house in Bowness-on-Windermere to Tom Kundig's 2012 Studhorse house in Winthrop, Washington, USA. The author wisely avoids a building for each of the 112 years, that would mean deliberately adding some mediocre structures. The introduction describes the changes in architecture over the decades and uses sidebars with twenty photos and deep captions to illustrate the points.The first few iconic houses reflect the arts and craft movement in Europe and America with the heavy use of wood in their interiors but turn over page sixty-three to see Le Corbusier's remarkable 1931 Villa Savoye in Poissy, France followed by Arne Jacobsen's Rothenborg House, also from 1931 and the moderne style had truly arrived, though in the introduction there is a photo of Rietveld's 1924 Schroder House in Utrecht painted white with its precise right-angles and box-like shape.Readers will probably be aware of many of the houses in the book that are rightly regarded as iconic and designed by architects like Lubetkin, Chermayeff, Gropius, Aalto, Neutra, Mies van der Rohe, Saarinen or Lloyd Wright (what book could not include the stunning Fallingwater) but I found the houses from the early eighties onwards quite fascinating. Perhaps not all them could be called truly iconic because some are not that old but they all reveal a creative use of space and materials, for example, Antti Lovag's 1989 Palais Bulles in Cannes with its sensuous curving walls, circular and oval windows or Ken Shuttleworth's 1997 Crescent House in Winterbrook, Wiltshire, this amazing building takes advantage of creative engineering and CAD design. It has no straight walls and the inside edge of the crescent is a complete curving wall of glass.This is a lovely book to hold and look at, almost square with all the photos in color and it's worth saying that because Richard Powers took most of them there is a uniform feel to the pictures throughout the pages. I thought it refreshing also to see so many floor plans for these houses. The back pages have a biography of each architect (and nicely their key buildings are noted) bibliography, a gazetteer of houses open to the public. a listing of houses by type and finally an index. You can look inside the book at Westread Book Reviews, then click 2018 and September.

There is a new, 2018 revised edition of The Iconic House. Apparently Amazon doesn’t care to differentiate between the two.

A very well produced volume describing a range of architecturally influmential homes across the 20th century. Lovely photography accompanied by concise and informative discussions of the individual homes, where they fit into the careers of the responsible architects, and the niche the occupy in the history of 20th century architecture. There are also useful summary floor plans.The great majority of these homes were commissions for wealthy, often very wealthly patrons, providing an opportunity for the architects involved to treat the homes a complete artistic statements. Looking across the whole spectrum of houses presented leaves a strong impression of the transforming effect of modernist styles in modern architecture.

I love this book despite its weight (literal, not literary). My greatest problem is that I want more information which of course means that I have to get off my butt and look for it which is no bad thing in itself.As an overview of the 'iconic' or best-known houses of the 20th century it is fine; it includes most of the houses one would expect to see and some one would not have expected. The major omission to my mind is Frank Lloyd Wright - Falling Water is here of course, but none of the Usonian or Prairie houses.Given these relatively minor gripes, I have found this book to be fascinating, especially to a reader who is passionately interested in residential architecture.

Aprsent for my husband who loved it.