Frequently elegant and uncluttered, these houses serve as models of smart and often exquisite design with lots of ideas for homeowners who don't necessarily live in a waterfront home, but who wish to have something of that appeal and sensitivity in their own space. A range of projects encompassing myriad geographic and cultural inspirations show some of the world's most inviting residences, built in stone and glass, in wood and steel and concrete. The houses vary in size and style, though all within the realm of the modern, from open plan homes that include terraces and rooms that flow from indoors to out, to spaces flooded with light and views. Each house is photographed comprehensively with detailed interior and exterior pictures and plans, and placed into context through the lens of widely respected editor Oscar Riera Ojeda and descriptive texts written by design critic Byron Hawes, to give readers a privileged look at the best of shore-side residential architecture. With its beautiful modernist homes set beside the golden sands of the gulf coast of Mexico or upon the romantic islands of Greece, from Finland to South Africa to New Zealand, Houses by the Shore is a paean to rooms with a view.

Since the sensuous Modernism pioneered by Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil, Latin America has become one of the most exciting locations for contemporary architecture in the world. Alejandro Aravena and Paulo Mendes da Rocha, both recent Pritzker Prize winners, are just two very different examples of the wide architectural range, set amid varied climates, social conditions and environments, that has brought international attention to a continent making a name for itself as a centre for innovation and experimentation. From the dramatic plateaux of the Andes to the lush tropics of the Amazon to the world's driest desert, the Atacama, the rich range of climates, terrains and cultural influences across Latin America offers significant opportunities to create new residential architecture. This overview showcases the most accomplished and rarely seen contemporary houses, by established names - Isay Weinfeld, Mathias Klotz and Marcio Kogan - as well as the rising talents now receiving recognition on the world stage, including Pezo von Ellrichshausen and Giancarlo Mazzanti. Following an introduction that sets out the development of Latin American architecture since Niemeyer, the book reveals how each house has gone beyond its brief in stunning and unexpected ways, resulting in buildings that transcend their time and place.

In Boyle Heights, gateway to East Los Angeles, sits the 1889 landmark "Hotel Mariachi," where musicians have lived and gathered on the adjacent plaza for more than half a century. This book is a photographic and ethnographic study of the mariachis, Mariachi Plaza de Los Angeles, and the neighborhood. The newly restored brick hotel embodies a triumphant struggle of preservation against all odds, and its origins open a portal into the Mexican pueblo's centuries-old multiethnic past.

Miguel Gandert's compelling black-and-white images document the hotel and the vibrant mariachi community of the "Garibaldi Plaza of Los Angeles." The history of Hotel Mariachi is personal to Catherine Lopez Kurland, a descendant of the entrepreneur who built it, and whose family's Californio roots will fascinate anyone interested in early Los Angeles or Mexican American history. Enrique Lamadrid explores mariachi music, poetry, and fiestas, and the part Los Angeles played in their development, delving into the origins of the music and offering a deep account of mariachi poetics. Hotel Mariachi is a unique lens through which to view the history and culture of Mexicano California, and provides touching insights into the challenging lives of mariachi musicians.

The Unite in Marseille (1945-1952) was a pioneering achievement at a time when social housing in the post WWII years posed an immense problem. Freed from restrictive regulations for the first time Le Corbusier was able to put into practice his concept of modern social housing. A milestone of modern architecture and subject of controversial debate, the Unite in Marseille continues to attract numerous visitors and students of architecture. This volume is the latest addition to Birkhauser's series of guides to Le Corbusier's most acclaimed buildings, and includes an additional chapter on his Unites in Reze-les-Nantes, Briey en Foret, Firminy and Berlin. The author, a practising architect and well known le Corbusier specialist, lives in Marseille and teaches at the Ecole d'architecture de Marseille-Luminy.

A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artifact, a material extension of its occupants' lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artifact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era.

As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally related house and family began to break down. Even where the traditional class markers surrounding the house persisted, they became vessels for new meanings, as housing was resituated in a new nexus of relations. The house as artifact and the artifacts it housed were affected in turn. The construction and ornament of houses ceased to be stable indications of their occupants' social status, the home became a means of personal expression, and the act of dwelling was reconceived in terms of consumption. Amid the breakdown of inherited meanings and the fluidity of modern society, not only did the increased diversity of commodities lead to material elaboration of dwellings, but home itself became an object of special attention, its importance emphasized in writing, invoked in politics, and articulated in architectural design. The aim of this book is to show the features of this culture of the home as it took shape in Japan.