The warmth of the tropics allows 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 permeate 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 travelling through Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Belize and Jamaica. This book’s stunning photographs, supported by fascinating and informed commentary, capture the appeal of the enviable dwellings he found on his journeys.

These wonderful expressions of vernacular architecture – many the products of the world’s finest architects and designers 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 elemental and dreamlike.