Written by Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill—co-founders of London-based luxury modern real estate agency The Modern House—the book brings together some of the world’s most architecturally significant freestanding houses in an austere yet dynamic collection of black-and-white photographs organized not by geographical location or timeline but by aesthetic.

As such, works by modernist masters like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd are presented alongside dwellings by contemporary architects like Tadao Ando, John Pawson, and David Adjaye. Interspersed among the images are quotations from architects, thinkers, and other leading figures of the modernist movement.