Imagine tree houses in upstate New York, cavernous Sardinian villas with sculpted white cement walls, and a fairy-tale mushroom cottage in Charlevoix, Michigan, bedecked with rainbow-colored mosaics.

A tribute to the genius of a Renaissance mind, a positively fishy story of coastal design and more well-built selections.

Architecture has always been more than bricks and mortar. It is equally constructed through words, ideas, and narratives. From ancient treatises to radical manifestos, from technical manuals to poetic ...