Stone Built

Book excerpt: This volume presents twenty-seven contemporary residences, spanning the entire stylistic spectrum and thoroughly documented with color photography. The United States has always had a great number of stone houses, subject to regional and stylistic variations, as author Lee Goff writes in her comprehensive introduction. That history and variety are alive today, as houses of stone continue to appear in myriad guises - classical, modern, vernacular, postmodern - throughout the country. In fact, Goff concludes that a new renaissance of stone houses is at hand. The exceptional residences in this book, by such renowned architects as Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, Will Bruder, 1100 Architect, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Lake/Flato, and Kohn Pedersen Fox, provide ample evidence of this renaissance. Goff discusses with each architect the design of each house, focusing on the decision to use stone, the building process, and other related choices, while color photographs illustrate both exteriors and interiors.