224 Ideabooks by John Hill

The Parrish Art Museum has moved into a new building in Water Mill, New York, roughly triple the space of its previous home nearby. The new building, which opened in November 2012 and was designed by Swiss architects...

Trendwise, architecture is notoriously slow, given the cumulative pace of design and construction. Many trends arise from events in the recent past and changes that evolve over time. To make some predictions as to what trends will shape architecture in...

The Houses at Sagaponac, a community of 32 modern homes, was planned for 70 acres in the Hamptons, New York. It railed against the bloated pseudohistorical architecture of much of the Hamptons, with the idea of offering compact houses on small sites for...

The Villages, near Orlando, may bill itself as "Florida's friendliest retirement hometown," but it's hardly friendly in terms of personal and architectural expression. Residents are limited to picking one of a...

The Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood is often considered the greatest example of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie-style homes. In the first decade of the 20th century, Wright developed his own approach to architecture that responded...

In Praise of Shadows is a classic book on traditional Japanese architecture and design, written by Junichiro Tanizaki and published in 1933, then translated...

The blocks of Orchard and Howe streets just south of Armitage Avenue in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood are two of the most desirable residential stretches in the city. Yet as this ideabook will show, the historical fabric of the area is being annihilated...

Brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, 40 and 35, were given a midcareer exhibition in France at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, from October 2011 to July 2012. After the show's run in their home country,...

Wood. If one word comes to mind when considering the houses of brothers Charles and Henry Greene, it is "wood." They used lots of it, from the structure (beams and columns) to surfaces (walls, ceilings, floors) and even the furniture they designed. Yet...

Some homes have exteriors that are light and layered, looking lantern-like at certain times of day. The obverse of this idea is houses with heavy...

Previously I've looked at louvers and wood slats...

A glowing lantern symbolizes a place that is welcoming and warm, and a building that models itself on a lantern can express the same characteristics. The following three projects — a cabin, a barn house and a reclaimed barn — give off a strong presence...

On some days it seems that modern architecture has 10 times as many detractors as proponents, even though the movement has influenced a great deal of residential architecture — from open floor plans to means of construction. Some of the dislike for...

Many of the subjects for the ideabooks that I write come about by browsing through photos on Houzz. Regardless of what sorts of filters I'm using (exterior vs. living room, modern vs. contemporary, metropolitan area, search terms, etc.), I always find...

In Caroline Rob Zaleski's book Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 (W. W. Norton, September 2012), the preservationist documents significant modern buildings — many of them residences — designed by 25 architects. The book is part of a larger project...