The basic design conundrum every architect is faced with when designing a house in the tropics is the need to allow both air and daylight to enter and to keep out the rain and the harsh sunlight. The combination of lush, exotic surroundings and a mercurial climate, which includes wet and stormy seasons, calls for buildings that open up to embrace the outdoors while also hunkering down when required. “Living Under the Sun” portrays how modern architecture has addressed this issue, combining local design traditions, innovative technological advances and a willingness to think outside the box.

From the Santa Domingo house clad in Coralina, a marine stone harvested from local coral reefs that keeps the interiors cool, and the aptly named "House Cast in Liquid Stone" in the Indian highlands, formed out of indigenous granular basalt, to the São Paulo house enveloped in two-story, glass-fibre PVC-sheathed mosquito screens, we see that an environmental approach does not proscribe aesthetic variations. On the contrary, through employing a common spatial language of open-air corridors, courtyards and terraces, modern designers are free to opt for the style of their choice ranging from a light-weight wooden construction to a brutalist design of glass and concrete. Hopping between Latin America, Asia and Australia, “Living Under the Sun” visualizes an easy-going way of life that we have always hazily dreamed of but never in such refreshing, colourful detail.