Beyond the fundamental notion of shelter, what defines a house? The broad-ranging selection of extraordinary dwellings in the Architecture Now! Housesseries shows the concept to be infinitely malleable: one house seems to hover above the ground, another is embedded in it; some have stark minimal lines, others have tropical gardens; some are palatial, others monastic-all of them displaying remarkable structural and aesthetic mastery. Here is a connoisseur's choice of the world's most remarkable new houses. Architecture Now! Houses features architects and practices including:3 LHD Architects, Á balos & Herreros, Ricardo Bak Gordon, Shigeru Ban, Blank Studio, Gianni Botsford, Nancy Copley, Correia/Ragazzi Arquitectos, Durbach Block, Eastern Design Office, Fuhrimann & Hä chler, Terunobu Fujimori, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Kotaro Ide, Carlos Jimé nez, Jouin Manku, Kamayachi + Harigai, Mathias Klotz, Kengo Kuma, Leven Betts Studio, MOS, Mount Fuji Architects Studio, Plasma Studio, Antoine Predock, Laurent Savioz, Shim + Sutcliffe, Á lvaro Siza Vieira, Philippe Stuebi, Zhang Lei, René van Zuuk and many othersThe author:Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard, and editedConnaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His books include TASCHEN'sArchitecture Now! series, and monographs on Tadao Ando, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid. He is internationally renowned as one of the most popular writers on the subject of architecture.