Brave New Houses: Architectural Innovation in Southern California

Brave New Houses showcases thirty of the most exciting new houses and five daring projects from southern California, a region that has always been a crucible for experimentation in residential design. They express the needs of courageous individuals who decided to please themselves, flout conventional wisdom and collaborate with talented architects. Brave New Houses will appeal to everyone who has thought of making a fresh start by designing, or buying, a one-of-a-kind house.

These architects respond to varied sites – from the canyons of Santa Barbara south to the mountains of San Diego County. Modest or grand, expansive or tightly compressed, angular or sensuously curved, their solutions offer a cross-section of the best of contemporary design and are linked only by their openness to nature and the benign climate.

Here are the successors to Richard Neutra and R.M.Schindler, John Lautner and Frank Gehry: architects who break out of the box to create houses that express their vision for clients and, sometimes, themselves. They are sensitive to environment – there's no wasted space, no striving to impress. They speak to the present and offer an appealing alternative to claustrophobic historicism.