Explore over 40 contemporary villas by today's most creative architects. Their brilliant architectural designs integrate the built structure and natural environment in open countryside and urban spaces, realizing ideal places. Villas in deserts, mountains, and meadows, with seaside or lakeside vistas, and in urban locations are all revealed in informative text and 560 gorgeous colour photos and plans. Using modern techniques and au courant design theories, these contemporary villas invite Nature to participate in the design process, treating light, for example, as a deliberate design element. All of these highly individualistic villas deftly blend form and function. Clean-lined interiors eschew ornamentation, placing emphasis on the exhilarating response to voluminous space inside and infinite space viewed through walls of glass that erase the boundary between interior and exterior. This response cannot be experienced in traditional architecture. Homeowners, architects, interior designers, and all who are fascinated by contemporary architecture with its new regard for Nature as design partner, will treasure this book AUTHOR: David Strahan is a practicing architect and interior designer. Katharine Kaye McMillan is a research psychologist and co-author of several books on design with Patricia McMillan. Patricia Hart McMillan has long been involved with interior and product design. SELLING POINTS: .Unique collection of contemporary living spaces by leading architects .Designed for harmony between landscape and structure .Extensive coverage of interior and exterior design ILLUSTRATIONS: 560 colour photographs *