As a former filmmaker, the writer Marc Kristal is a natural storyteller, which enlivens his 18 case studies about adding contemporary additions to old houses. The examples, 11 in the United States and seven in the United Kingdom, range from rustic cottages such as a stone ruin from the 1700s, on an island off Scotland, to modern classics such as a Los Angeles house designed in 1947 by Raphael Soriano for architectural photographer Julius Shulman. In each, Kristal traces how contemporary architects were able to weave together traditional and modern structures.

Kristal cites the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa as his inspiration for studying adaptive reuse of historic structures because of Scarpa’s “clearly drawn distinctions between old and new.” Scarpa’s exposure of a structure’s layers for clues to its history and his introduction of elegantly designed architectural objects that invest spaces with subtle detail are in line with the approaches on these pages.