In 2007, Princeton Architectural Press released author Francesca Tatarella's Natural Architecture, a book introducing artists and architects who are transforming building into a fascinating new art form through using humble elements"?ubranches, twigs, straw, bamboo. Their fantastical creations are sometimes structural, sometimes sculptural and sometimes sacred, but regardless, they resonate with a natural beauty.

Now, Tatarella widens the scope of natural architecture in a follow up book, Natural Architecture Now. The architecture and culture of the projects presented here vary from homes and shelters to skeletons for dunes and nests for bats. These all-new, site-specific installations by an international list of contributors underlines that the client, or the place, is always the first step toward a good project. It also opens up what's possible on a small budget, while being eco-friendly and sustainable.

With more than 50 projects from 25 studios, Natural Architecture Now includes a climbing structure in Joshua Tree National Park, an intricate bamboo installation on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, and a residential mud structure prototype created by Architecture for Humanity Tehran. All projects are vividly displayed in photographs, drawings, and models, each pointing the way forward for architects to engineer a new organic simplicity of structure and form.

Francesca Tatarella is an Italian architectural critic and editorial director of 22Publishing. She lives in Italy.

Natural Architecture Now: New Projects from Outside the Boundaries of Design, by Francesca Tatarella, Princeton Architectural Press, Sept. 2, $39.95, paperback, 224 pages, 250 9.4 x 6.4 color photographs. ISBN 9781616891404

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