Excerpt
Americas leading residential architect goes beyond
The Not So Big House
Home by Design is the book Ive always wanted to write. About 10 years ago, I started work on a book about principles of design that I hoped would enable homeowners, builders, interior designers, and architects to start talking with one another about what makes a house a home. But along the way, I became fascinated with the state of residential architecture in this country, and out of this fascination was born my first book, The Not So Big House.
The Not So Big House offered a different vision of home, one that values quality over quantity, and the book produced a groundswell of enthusiastic believers. Not So Big was even dubbed a movement. Creating the Not So Big House and Not So Big Solutions for Your Home followed, fleshing out the message and helping to explain how to tailor a house to fit the lives lived within its walls.
And now, finally, its time for the book whose principles are embedded in each of the previous three. Its time for the book I dreamed of all those years ago -- Home by Design. Organized into three sections, Space, Light, and Order, the chapters of the book take on one design principle at a time, explaining what it is, how and why it works, and how it can be incorporated into your home. So, for example, in the chapter on Alignments, the applications are Perfect Symmetry; Partial Symmetry; Asymmetry; Right or Left Justified; When in Doubt, Line It Up; Half a Bubble Off; and View along a Main Axis. All of these terms are part of the architects toolbox, but no one has ever illustrated them, explained them in jargon-free language, and made them accessible to a wide audience.
Good architectural design is every bit as important as good nutrition. Both are good medicine for our physical and spiritual well-being, and a lack of either one can cause myriad unnecessary maladies. Youll find that there is a rhyme and a reason to what you feel about the place you call home, and this book will help you understand how to craft your own surroundings into a better place to live.