Every adult can recall the serene kind of safety they felt in their childhood "special place"-a platform in a backyard tree, a secret corner of a garden, or a well-hidden fort in the woods. Hideaways demonstrates how adults recreate those hidden retreats in the form of fishing cabins, garden huts, weekend studios, and other intimately-designed spaces where the owners are often more "at home" than they are at home. Sometimes completely spontaneous, sometimes planned to a purpose, these personal architectures offer a fantastic range of building styles - but each is clearly driven by the urge to create a place where one can be utterly relaxed.

Sonya Faure presents over 200 fabulous, fanciful, and freeform models - as well as more practical, but never quite conventional designs, each meant to inspire: from a place where Huck Finn would hide out to highly designed small houses by Le Corbusier. There are vacation retreats in exotic locations on three continents, and backyard kingdoms to be visited-all in one book.

Illustrated with photographs of nearly 200 retreats, this book explains how the stress of daily life and the quest for privacy have rendered hideaways so popular with grownup city-dwellers, architects, and designers who just need a little space.