Product Description

In Detail: Single Family Housing presents fifteen international examples, reviewing the most important aspects of construction including the use of wood, steel, brickwork and concrete which have all become established materials for this type of building. All plans and details from the base to the roof have been painstakingly researched and the uniform presentation makes the information immediately accessible, inviting comparison and analysis. The authors provide explanatory introductions to the fundamental aspects of planning, from the design of the floorplans to the realization, and they set this type of building within the context of the 20th century, pointing towards the potential developments of the single family house.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #513479 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-01
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Customer Reviews

Expand Yourself
In itself this is a beautiful book. The book contains sixteen, excellently crafted homes with superb photography. The houses are organized into 4 categories: Timber, Steel, Concrete, and Masonry. The drawings (building/wall sections, plan details) are very clear and reveal some hidden truths. The book also contains three short essays (Single family house: Myth and Reality; A Small House with a Garden; The Image of the House) that are equally as inspiring.

Yes, these are high-end, avant-garde, mostly European homes as the previous reviewer has pointed out. But, Isn't this the type of book us more conventional architects should be getting our inspiration from? Perhaps some of these elegant details and constructs could trickle down into conventional residential practice, even speculative housing. If every residential architect were to study these types of details and enlighten their clients, I'm sure the quality of the built environment would improve. Let's broaden our horizons.

Order carefully
Amazon's listing's for these fine books is a little screwy. There are 2 versions of "Single Family Housing", which are substantially the same but have different covers. Had I ordered the one published in 2006 without noticing this first in person, I'd have been disappointed.

At any rate, each volume features a few worthwhile essays and a collection of exquisitely presented photos and drawings. Despite the fact that all dimensions are metric, and many of the materials are not common to construction in the United States, there is a lot of inspiration to be had in these pages.

Avant garde European houses
The drawings are exactly like the ones in Detail magazine, which means Americans might have occasional trouble translating some of the terminology, but the presentation is top quality. Features cutting-edge designs that are the stuff of architectural journalism: shed roofs, floor-to-ceiling windows, natural wood slat siding, and, my favorite, a house built with two-foot-thick sand-lime brick cavity walls. Not your average homes; then again, no reason to compile them into a book if they were.