Manifesto houses reflect new visions for how we can live. Often extreme and uncompromising
they are vehicles for innovation new ideas and new ways of doing things. Most houses are
the product of multiple layers of norms and expectations built up over time whether methods
materials and technologies or social cultural economic and political pressures. Yet at
various moments houses have been built that break with the past and do something
different—houses that stand outside of these expectations and instead are conceived to embody
whole new theories or agendas. We call these “manifesto houses.” For the first time this
compelling thread in the history of architecture is surveyed by Owen Hopkins. He brings
together a collection of twenty-one such manifesto houses exploring the visions for
architecture conjured by Andrea Palladio Eileen Gray Frank Lloyd Wright Harry Seidler Lina
Bo Bardi Anupama Kundoo and Sou Fujimoto among others. The Manifesto House looks in detail
at the ideas and ambitions embodied in each house the contexts that shaped them and their
impact and influence on the future of architecture.
