A gorgeous collection of black-and-white photographs of homes by modern masters and contemporary architects Editor's Note: This post was originally published on June 7 and has been updated with the most recent information.
?Absence of ornament has brought the other arts to unsuspected heights,? Austrian architect and theorist Adolf Loos said in a seminal 1910 lecture titled ?Ornament and Crime.? Coming out against the Art Nouveau movement, Loos called for ?the elimination of ornament from useful objects? and hailed ?smooth and precious surfaces? in the name of cultural progress.

This sentiment is the guiding principle of Ornament is Crime: Modernist Architecture, a new book that celebrates modernist architecture from its origins in the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. 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 Wright 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 movem...