A visual feast of 500 iconic houses and traditional dwellings from all over the world, The House Book presents a vibrant and fresh view of architects and designers responsible for some of the most diverse international houses of all time. From Hadrian's Villa to Palladio's Villa Rotunda and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, through to the contemporary houses of Richard Rogers and Frank Gehry, it features the widest range of both architect-designed and traditional dwellings. Following the hugely popular format of The Art Book, it presents 500 architects in A-Z order, offering an easily accessible and informative sourcebook for experts as well as readers coming to an architectural survey for the first time.

Some of the houses are celebrated for their role in architectural history, others are iconic for their individual features or structure, but all are seminal forms of dwelling. The selection ranges from the palaces of kings to the individual huts of the Hutu, but the book illustrates with magnitude that the essential qualities of the home remain greatly unchanged over the centuries.

Each architect or designer is represented by a full-page reproduction, usually in colour, of their most significant house and an accompanying text that describes the image and its designer. Each page includes meticulous cross-references to other architects working in a similar style, movement or time period. The book also includes an easy-to-use glossary of architectural terms and movements and an extensive directory of houses open to the public.