Fascinating and unique, Wonderful Houses Around the World gives children a welcome entrée into other places and other lives throughout the world. Glorious two-page photographic spreads capture families outside their homes, be they simple or imposing. Detailed cutaway illustrations reveal the inside of each house, showing the various family members engaged in typical daily activities. Captions explain where each house is located, the environmental conditions that affect the house design, how the family lives in the home, and their possessions -- all providing interesting glimpses of life in other cultures. The ten houses profiled include a red mud dwelling with thatched towers in Togo, a yurt in Mongolia, a steep-roofed, shake-covered house in Transylvania, and a large donut-shaped communal building for 300 in China. This book increases children's wonder about and cultural awareness of the many different people and ways of life around the world.
As an innovative thinker about building and planning, Christopher Alexander has attracted a devoted following. His seminal books--The Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language, and The Oregon Experiment--defined a radical and fundamently new process of environmental design. Alexander now gives us the latest book in his series--a book that puts his theories to the test and shows what sort of production system can create the kind of environment he has envisioned. The Production of Houses centers around a group of buildings which Alexander and his associates built in 1976 in northern Mexico. Each house is different and the book explains how each family helped to lay out and construct its own home according to the family's own needs and in the framework of the pattern language. Numerous diagrams and tables as well as a variety of anecdotes make the day-today process clear. The Mexican project, however, is only the starting point for a comprehensive theory of housing production. The Production of Houses describes seven principles which apply to any system of production in any part of the world for housing of any cost in any climate or culture or at any density. In the last part of the book, "The Shift of Paradigm," Alexander describes, in detail, the devastating nature of the revolution in world view which is contained in his proposal for housing construction, and its overall implications for deep-seated cultural change.
In this new collection of small houses from Fine Homebuilding magazine, the authors look at houses both new and remodeled, traditional and modern, urban and rural, by the water and in the mountains. The houses exude as much style as homes many times their square footage, and all are as big as they need to be to fit the lifestyles and aspirations of the people who live in them. Houses include: bungalow on a budget magnificent mountain cabin family-friendly remodel garden cottage for low-impact living design/build delight in the desert little house on an urban infill modern Victorian in a mountain resort With the growing popularity of small, micro, and tiny houses, it's no surprise that the average house size is actually trending smaller in recent years.
The fascinating history of the twentieth century's most successful experiment in mass housing While the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and their contemporaries frequently influences our ideas about house design at the midcentury, most Americans during this period lived in homes built by little-known builders who also served as developers of the communities. Often dismissed as "little boxes, made of ticky-tacky," the tract houses of America's postwar suburbs represent the twentieth century’s most successful experiment in mass housing. Houses for a New World is the first comprehensive history of this uniquely American form of domestic architecture and urbanism. Between 1945 and 1965, more than thirteen million houses—most of them in new ranch and split-level styles—were constructed on large expanses of land outside city centers, providing homes for the country’s rapidly expanding population. Focusing on twelve developments in the suburbs of Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Barbara Miller Lane tells the story of the collaborations between builders and buyers, showing how both wanted houses and communities that espoused a modern way of life—informal, democratic, multiethnic, and devoted to improving the lives of their children. The resulting houses differed dramatically from both the European International Style and older forms of American domestic architecture. Based on a decade of original research, and accompanied by hundreds of historical images, plans, and maps, this book presents an entirely new interpretation of the American suburb. The result is a fascinating history of houses and developments that continue to shape how tens of millions of Americans live. Featured housing developments in Houses for a New World: Boston area: Governor Francis Farms (Warwick, RI) Wethersfield (Natick, MA) Brookfield (Brockton, MA) Chicago area: Greenview Estates (Arlington Heights, IL) Elk Grove Village Rolling Meadows Weathersfield at Schaumburg Los Angeles and Orange County area: Cinderella Homes (Anaheim, CA) Panorama City (Los Angeles) Rossmoor (Los Alamitos, CA) Philadelphia area: Lawrence Park (Broomall, PA) Rose Tree Woods (Broomall, PA)
This no-fluff book contains detailed, step-by-step training perfect for both the complete newbie or seasoned pro looking to build a killer house-flipping business. In this book you'll discover: --How to get financing for your deals, even with no cash and poor credit! --How to evaluate a potential market or "farm" area! --What types of properties you should buy, where and from whom! --How to find great deals from motivated sellers! --How to evaluate deals quickly and accurately! --How to make competitive offers and complete your due diligence efficiently and effectively! --How to create a Scope of Work, a Budget and a Schedule! --How to hire the best contractors and manage your rehab to completion! --How to get your properties under contract for top dollar! --How to get your property to the closing table as efficiently as possible so you can collect your check!
What does an architect's dream house look like? Explore the homes of thirty of the world's most talented architects. Inventive and imaginative homes in 17 different countries. Spacious or frugal, ambitious or modest, refined or rough-edged, daring or reductive, the inspiring buildings in Architects' Houses are unique in design concepts, details, and materials, and how they interact with their landscape. A treasure trove of ideas for homeowners, practitioners, and interior designers. Architects' Houses is richly illustrated with photographs, sketches, and plans. Learn how established architects design their own homes' design. Explore the creative process and influence of architects' houses over the past two hundred years. From Jefferson's Monticello to the creations of Charles and Ray Eames, Toyo Ito to Frank Gehry. This generously illustrated book brims with ideas and inspiration as these architects' houses show different answers to the question: how can a house enrich lives and its natural surroundings?
Today, there is a tremendous mismatch between the available housing stock in the US and the housing options that people want and need. The post-WWII, auto-centric, single-family-development model no longer meets the needs of residents. Urban areas in the US are experiencing dramatically shifting household and cultural demographics and a growing demand for walkable urban living. Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek, describes the walkable, desirable, yet attainable housing that many people across the country are struggling to find. Missing Middle Housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts—can provide options along a spectrum of affordability. In Missing Middle Housing, Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of these housing types to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing. The book demonstrates why more developers should be building Missing Middle Housing and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable it to be built. Case studies of built projects show what is possible, from the Prairie Queen Neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska to the Sonoma Wildfire Cottages, in California. A chapter from urban scholar Arthur C. Nelson uses data analysis to highlight the urgency to deliver Missing Middle Housing. Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Complete industries and systems will have to be rethought to help deliver the broad range of Missing Middle Housing needed to meet the demand, as this book shows. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.
Discover the huge possibilities of a small house! Whether you’re building from scratch or retrofitting an existing structure, these 50 innovative floor plans will show you how to make the most of houses measuring 1,400 square feet or less. Gerald Rowan presents creative and efficient layouts that use every inch of space, with tips on fully maximizing closets, porches, bathrooms, attics, and basements. From reorganizing a small storage area to building a brand-new home, you’ll find a detailed design to fit your family’s needs.
Essential Colonial Revival–style stone houses in bucolic settings—on hillsides, beside streams—and their inviting interiors, by the architect who popularized the beloved form. Stone Houses showcases a beloved kind of home that many of us aspire to own and live in—a place of warmth and security, of charm and romance. The stone house speaks to a very basic dream of stability and comfort, and the houses featured here represent the epitome of this dream. Built in traditional styles with artful construction and considered design between 1904 and 1943, these gems display the hallmarks we associate with the stone house, here polished and beautifully presented: deep fireplaces, thick beamed ceilings, wide plank floors, and country kitchens. Focusing on the work of the eminent architect R. Brognard Okie, who is credited with having greatly contributed to a popular appreciation and understanding of early American domestic architecture and who has had a lasting impact on American residential design, this book will both enchant the reader and serve as an unprecedented resource.
