The ambient warmth of the tropics causes architectural distinctions between indoors and out to evaporate, along with the walls that divide them. Houses expand into the landscape, while the sights, sounds, and scents of nature waft through living spaces. Indeed, one of the pleasures of living in the tropics is an awakening of the senses that brings us closer to nature.

Internationally renowned photographer and writer Tim Street-Porter has spent more than ten years traveling through Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Belize, and Jamaica. This book's 272 stunning photographs, supported by Street-Porter's fascinating and informed commentary, capture the appeal and the meaning of the enviable dwellings he found in his journeys. It may be the outdoor bath, a sybarite's delight, with sun filtering through a frangipani tree . . . the deep-eaved verandah, where one sips coffee while contemplating the neighboring valley shrouded in early morning mist . . . or the thatch-roofed palapa, its main supports local tree trunks wrapped in strangler vine.

These wonderful expressions of vernacular architecture -- many the products of the world's finest architects and designers--nest in jungles, perch over volcanic cliffs, stand placidly beside lagoons, and exist always in harmony with the nature that envelops them. These are real places where people really live, but each seems suspended in a setting that is at once dreamlike and elemental.