Product Description

This book is a survey of small houses from early settler cabins to the tiny house movement of today. The houses include frontier shelters, squatter houses, Cracker houses, farmhouses, bandboxes, shotguns, bungalows, and tiny houses. The book shows how these houses were built and served the special needs of their owner-builders. Each chapter starts by showing the house in the context of its construction, the kind of resources that were available to its owners, and how their construction was shaped by both their purpose and historical situation. Many of the insights of these home-builders can be used in small house construction today. These insights include the use of decks and outdoor spaces, separation of spaces, and simple framing techniques that are visible in the construction models. These models help readers get a feel for what it might be like to live in a small space and ways traditional builders maximized the efficiency and comfort of their homes. The book s CD includes a model of every house in the book as well as contextual plans and elevations, three-dimensional details of the structure, and the layout of each house. Readers can explore the house s construction, deconstruct its pieces, modify the spaces, and adapt them to test their own ideas. All our books are written as graphic narratives in a comic style. Every book mixes layers of visual information with construction models, short video tours, and tutorials on how the models were built and organized.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #297267 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-13
• Binding: Paperback
• 151 pages

Review
Graphic narratives and interactive computer models illustrate the evolution of small houses in a highly accessible approach to enjoyable reading. -- Ravi Srinivasan, Board Member, Delaware Valley Green Building Council, December 21, 2005

Great book! Readers can learn a lot about small house design and construction from just the illustrations in this book. -- Charles Kibert, Director, Powell Center for Construction and Environment, January 6, 2006

Love the book! A wonderful way to use SketchUp to present a lot of information in a very visual format. -- Brad Schell, SketchUp Inventor, Founder, @Last Software, December 17, 2005

About the Author
Dennis Fukai is a licensed architect and construction manager with more than thirty years experience as a professional construction administrator, researcher, and university professor. He is a Fulbright Scholar and PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Dennis is dedicated to the design and construction of small houses and has been recognized internationally for his work with construction modeling, building information modeling, and graphic communications.

Customer Reviews

"Excellent Resource" - Gregory Johnson of The Small House Society
As a founding member of the Small House Society, much of my volunteer time serving the group involves reviewing books, websites, and other resources that are significant contributions to the small house movement.

I recently had an opportunity to review "Living Small - The Life of Small Houses" by Dennis Fukai of Insite Builders.

During the review, as I took the time to enjoy the book at a slower pace, I was really impressed with the attention to detail and the thoughtfulness that went into it. I've spent time working with AutoCAD and similar 3D modeling programs. I know that it takes a lot of work and attention to detail to put together the kinds of models used in the book. So, I could appreciate the time that went into that.

I also appreciated the humor, sometimes sarcastic and dry, that was sprinkled throughout the book. At one point, Dr. Fukai describes the Mini McMansion as being less expensive yet "the same waste and efficiency are included" as with the larger McMansions (page 13).

This book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning more about small housing. Anyone considering building or purchasing a home of any size should seriously consider buying this book. In addition to offering a thorough look at small housing today, this text guides the reader throughout the history and development of housing in North America. An overview of larger homes is also provided to offer the reader a contrasting backdrop. The cost of building and maintaining larger inefficient homes is evaluated. By pointing out specific design techniques, the reader is made aware of what to look for in their next home and what to avoid. The book includes the following unique features:

* richly illustrated with 3D wire-frame and finished visual models

* valuable footnotes are included on almost every page providing additional information, book titles, and/or internet web pages for more details

* information about small housing is presented in a holistic and historically contextual framework allowing the reader to understand the cultural conditions and sociology that fostered various housing designs

* the entire text is offered in black and white sketches and text allowing the reader to focus their attention on the construction and design of various home designs

* included with the book is a CD ROM that contains 3D models for viewing on a Windows or Apple computer - these models can be rotated and viewed from different perspectives

More about Dennis Fukai and Insight Builders can be found by doing a Google search for Insite Builders (remember to spell it as it is here).

More about the Small House Society can be found by doing a Google search for the Small House Society.

Regards,
Gregory Johnson, Founding Member of the Small House Society

Seemingly very simple, but very deep
I have had Living SMALL: The Life of SMall Houses for a few weeks and have been pondering what to write about it. Dennis and Babs did a great job of getting this one out and the models are great. There really are 20 SketchUP V5 models on the CD and you can alter them. They even have furnishings and extra bits, like vehicles, for completeness. Just like the tutorials in Construction Modeling, the models themselves teach you something about how SketchUp works and how to properly use the program.



Living Small: The Life of Small Houses is a narration of how houses have developed over time with models to show how and why they have changed in changing environments. They also show that when a house is built for a specific purpose it can be highly optimized, to provide an efficient and comfortable dwelling with a minimum of materials and land. The Granny is my favorite, showing that by using sight lines effectively, a small house can feel much bigger than it really is.



With the redevelopment of Eastern Louisiana and Western Mississippi taking place the urban planners should be reading this book and looking at the Building Information Models (BIMs) to provide a better space and material utilization balance, read inexpensive, as well as being durable and functional. At first glance the book and models seem to be somewhat simplistic, but as you think about the information Dennis presents and the models he has provided it is like a short history of how and why to build a house. I find the book and CD to be very well done and full of examples that I can think about. Seemingly very simple but very deep.

Probably a good book, but for a limited audience
Let me start off by explaining that my rating of this book is based on its value for me vs. the cost of the book. It might be a good book for the right audience, but I think that audience is quite limited. If you are very interested in architectural modelling (especially using SketchUp) or are training to be an architect, this book may well be an excellent resource. Also, I did not read the entire book; I decided to return it as soon as I realized its value to me was limited. (This is, by the way, the first book I have ever returned to Amazon - out of over 100).

I was hoping the book would have more details on how to get the most "value" out of a small house. The book, however, is more of a primer on historically small houses and how they were efficient because they were purpose built/remodelled. This is certainly a valuable observation, but the book lacks any real analysis what makes these houses models for efficient modern houses, nor does it provide many principles that the reader might apply. For example, one chapter explains that farm/ranch houses originated as single room buildings that were added onto over time to accommodate additional residents, new technologies, and so forth. This is interesting, but it's not much help to someone trying to design a complete, modern house that already has a bathroom and a kitchen planned into it.

Some of the other reviewers have glowed about this book's illustrations; indeed the vector illustrations (from SketchUp) are nice, but the bitmap illustrations are very pixelated and in several cases are nearly unintelligible. Potential buyers must keep in mind that this book is a graphic novel. It is 95% illustration and 5% text (estimate).

My harshest criticism of this book is that as I read it I kept finding myself asking what the purpose of the book was. Is it truly to educate the reader about small houses? Frankly, I'm doubtful of that. I think the content is presented in too simplistic a manner to provide any deep insight. Is the purpose to promote the use of Building Information Models (BIMs)? SketchUp? Is it a vehicle for the author to cash in on some cool SketchUp models he's created? I kept thinking there was an underlying agenda, but I don't know what it is.