I would like to dedicate this book to the architects, builders, designers, and thinkers throughout history who understood that a home is not simply a structure.
It is a place to live.
Most people know the name Frank Lloyd Wright. My own favorite has always been Le Corbusier — Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (1887–1965), the Swiss-French architect, designer, and urban planner whose work helped define modern architecture.
Le Corbusier famously described the house as “a machine for living in.”
That idea has always stayed with me.
A home should work.
It should respond to the people who live in it, the climate around it, the land beneath it, and the life taking place inside it.
When I studied architecture in school, I was fascinated not only by modern architects but also by what came long before them.
The Greeks.
The Romans.
Middle Eastern builders and designers.
These civilizations understood heat, shade, airflow, privacy, security, courtyards, proportion, orientation, and the relationship between indoor and outdoor space at a remarkably sophisticated level.
A well-designed Roman villa had very little to envy in a modern luxury home.
In some ways, we may have gone backward.
We have better materials, better mechanical systems, better glass, better plumbing, and technology that ancient builders could never have imagined.
Yet we sometimes use all of that technology to build larger houses that function less intelligently.
Too often, the objective becomes simple:
Put the maximum possible square footage on the property so the house can theoretically sell for the maximum possible price.
That approach can create impressive numbers without creating an impressive home.
We see enormous houses filled with expensive stone, elaborate finishes, giant rooms, endless bathrooms, and walls of glass.
Then the house reaches the market at some extraordinary asking price and struggles to sell for anything close to what was expected.
Why?
Because square footage and expensive finishes do not automatically create value.
And they certainly do not create a soul.
A house can be enormous and still feel empty.
It can cost millions of dollars and still be uncomfortable.
It can photograph beautifully and still be frustrating to live in.
Architects are often asked to deliver exactly what the customer requests, and sometimes what the customer requests is simply more.
More square footage.
More bedrooms.
More bathrooms.
More marble.
More glass.
More everything.
But if you are building a house primarily because you intend to live in it, then the objective should be different.
You should be building a place with a soul.
A place that understands you.
A place that works when you wake up in the morning, when you come home with groceries, when you work for six hours in your office, when your children are growing up, when friends come over, when the weather turns bad, and when you are twenty years older than you are today.
That matters even more now.
For many people, the home is no longer simply where we sleep after work.
We may spend thirty or forty hours a week working there.
We raise our children there.
We entertain there.
We exercise there.
We learn there.
We sometimes run businesses there.
The home has once again become the center of much of our lives.
So this book is dedicated to all of the architects throughout history who understood that architecture is ultimately about people.
To those who designed for light.
For shade.
For movement.
For privacy.
For proportion.
For comfort.
For family.
For living.
And especially to those who reminded us that a great home does not need to be ostentatious.
It needs to work.
A home should not simply impress the people who visit it.
It should improve the life of the people who live there.
our dedication here.