In Japan, it isn't the house but the land that is valuable; the building itself is replaceable. The result is that the Japanese house, jutaku, can take almost any form, be it a metal pylon, a jumble of blocks, a faceted gem, or an arrangement of glass and platforms that looks like an oversized knickknack shelf. In this chunky little brick of a book, Tokyo-based American architect Naomi Pollock offers a frenetic photographic tour of some 500 modern jutaku, one per page, revealing a dazzling variety of novel, experimental, whimsical, and wildly eccentric residential architecture.

"A seemingly endless procession of remarkable facades…. It is impossible not to be thrilled by their invention and sheer originality."—Financial Times