Product Description

The Big Book of Small House Designs is a collection of more than 500 drawings illustrating all aspects of 75 small homes of various styles, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated steel frame to a Santa Fe ranch. Each design includes detailed floor plans, section drawings, elevations, and perspectives, as well as a description of the materials used and landscaping around the home. Keeping in mind that a chief priority for a small home is often energy efficiency, most of the plans incorporate some energy-efficient element. There are dozens of plans suitable for every environment and climate in the country. The designs are all a direct result of several international competitions that solicited from architects the best homes of 1,250 square feet or less. Contact information for the architects is provided in the back of the book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24552 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781579123659
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Editor and professional architect Don Metz is a partner in the architectural firm of Metz and Thornton. He started his career in the energy-efficient house design business in 1972 with his award-winning Winston House. He was the consultant for the book The Underground House Book by fellow Storey author Stu Campbell. Don also wrote Superhouse and edited Storey's New Compact House Designs, and edited The Compact House Book. Metz has also written two novels, Catamount Bridge and King of the Mountain. He lives with his wife in Lyme, New Hampshire.

Owner of the architectural firm BarnOwl Designs, Catherine Tredway is an award-winning designer who has been helping clients create their dream cottages and leisure-time homes for 15 years. She teaches courses in landscape design and architectural preservation.

Kenneth R. Tremblay, Jr. is a professor at Colorado State University. He has also written the book, Social Aspects of Housing and Beyond the American Housing Dream. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Lawrence Von Bamford is a professor at Colorado State University. A resident of Loveland, Colorado, he is also the author of Design Resources and A History of Contemporary Architecture and Design.

Customer Reviews

Too easy
While containing a number of intersting plans for small homes, this book falls short on several accounds. First, there is almost no text save what is on the inside of the jacket. That's right: no introduction, no methodology. There is no explanation of which competitions the plans were taken from or what awards they won. (Amusingly, I went to show my neighbor one of the plans that I liked. He said he liked it too but that it was an old plan from a competition in the early 90's. And would you believe that he happened to have a copy of the competition from which the plan was taken!)
Secondly, as to the plans themselves, dimensions are rarely marked and often unclearly. In the case of two or three of the plans this makes them nearly unintelligable.
The lack of wall sections or descriptions of materials used for the majority of the plans makes it impossible to understand the particulars of what makes the houses energy effecient.
In short, the book far from lives up to its description and isn't worth spending the money for a handful of plans since a person can look at plans all day long for free online.

Short on information and poor layout
The layout looks as if the home plans themselves were photocopied from elsewhere, often too small and without accompanying information about materials, why and how certain layouts work in the context, labels, etc; thus even as a catalogue of disparate houses that happen to win an architectural contest, this is not very useful. Further, despite being plans of 1250 sq ft or less, there was little in the way of explanation of how this space is designed to accomodate living. Because of the topic, I expected to see a variety of houses designed to fit various contexts (urban, rural, etc) and living situations within the 1250 sq ft. I'm sure there are better books out there on this topic; not being an architect I don't know if this book would be useful to help brainstorming ideas or whatnot.

Be aware that the sizes may not be accurate.
This is an exact copy of a letter I received from Don Metz when I complained about one of the sub-1250 sq. ft. plans (from a different book) not being under 1250.

Dear Mr. Measuring Things Very Carefully,

Your letter was surely the most self-righteous, missing-the-point piece of work I've ever recieved. Frankly, it would please me no end if you did indeed become "very skeptical of any books that you or the other judges publish in the future because of what I perceive as incompetence." That way, I won't have to read another of your whiny little responses ever again. If you are so obsessed with measuring things, I suggest you try measuring your capacity to understand that the book is meant to feature and promote compact house design. What defines a compact house? Size, mostly. What size? Take your pick, Mr. Measuring Man. Small? Not big? Modest? Efficient? I couldn't care less if the houses featureed are a bit under or over the 1250 advertised -- and if your so-called "architectural background" had anything to do with anything other than the nit-picky measuring of things, (as if that were somehow crucial to the importance of architecture) -- you wouldn't either.
As for owing you an apology, I owe you nothing but my bemused contempt.
Sincerely,
Don Metz

P.S. Any response to this letter will be deleted, unread.

While I admit that I did use the term incompetence, I should also point out that the inability to accurately measure a house in a competition with a square footage limit is, in my opinion, incompetent. So I feel it was justified. If curious, here is the letter I wrote.

I would prefer if Mr. Metz would contact me, because this comment is very specifically directed at him and therefore he can most accurately respond.
I own the title New Compact House Designs and have a major complaint.
I have an architecture background and am currently designing a house that when finished will be sub-1250 square feet. I purchased the book to give me some ideas about what I might do to squeeze the most out of the space. I was pleasantly surprised to see the winning design was very full featured. It was only when I attempted to apply some of the concepts in the house that I realized that it is not even close to 1250 square feet. The back cover of the book states that these houses had the following guideline: "design a single-family house with a minimum of two bedrooms whose gross floor area does not exceed 1250 square feet." Gross floor area is the covered area within the exterior edge of the exterior walls of a minimum ceiling height of 7'6" (typ.) not including areas that are open to the elements such as porches. I suspect that the winning house would not even qualify if you measured based on the interior of the exterior walls. The only way I think it can come close is if you subtract all the interior and exterior walls. I have not checked all of the other house plans, but I will be very curious to discover how many followed the requirements of the competition.
My questions are the following. 1) Why did you not check the designs to make sure they fit the size limit? 2) Do you plan on doing a second printing retracting those designs that failed to meet the size limits and ask that the ineligible winners return any sort of award they received? 3) Does this fiasco not shoot your whole small house attitude in the foot if you yourselves prefer larger houses and award larger houses instead of small houses in your own competition?
I will be very skeptical of any books that you or the other judges publish in the future because of what I perceive as incompetence. I think that you owe an apology to anybody who purchased this book and especially to the architects who submitted designs that followed the rules and lost.
I will be very curious to hear your response, and in the meantime I will very carefully measure the designs.


Just thought I would share my experiences with this editor.