What is a villa, and what makes it different from a house? Basically, it is a detached country house, a retreat from the urban environment, with early examples coming down to us from Roman times. After some years working abroad as an architect, Donn Wahlberg contemplated returning home and building a villa for himself, with the overall objective of creating a home that he would find desirable and which would also serve as an expression of his thinking about architecture. This is an account of that project and of those that naturally followed from it. The Ideal Villa is published by architect Donn Wahlberg as an accompaniment to an exhibition of his conceptual designs, plans, and study models for a dozen modern villa projects.