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Best Sellers | | Home The Big Book of Small House Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Your Dream House, All 1,250 Square Feet or Less | |
|  | |  | | | The Big Book of Small House Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Your Dream House, All 1,250 Square Feet or Less | | | | | SKU:
mon0000108970 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1-2 business days | | Only 1 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | 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. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Don Metz | | Hardcover: | 368 pages | | Publisher: | Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers | | Publication Date: | January 04, 2004 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 1579123651 | | Product Length: | 8.32 inches | | Product Width: | 8.2 inches | | Product Height: | 1.26 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.87 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.3 inches | | Package Width: | 7.9 inches | | Package Height: | 1.4 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.9 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 23 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 23 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
128 of 131 found the following review helpful:
 Too easy Sep 18, 2004
By Gina Kruml
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.
74 of 79 found the following review helpful:
Short on information and poor layout Jun 06, 2005
By Mc1844
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.
37 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 Author's apology Aug 19, 2010
By don metz
As one of the putative "Authors" of this book, I'm dismayed at Black Dog and Leventhal's sloppy work and failure to involve -- or even notify me -- that they were publishing this thing back in 2004. They essentially scrambled houses from two books I'd previously done with Storey Publishing and presumably -- I've never met or spoken with the other four "authors" -- used their ideas as well. I recieved one modest check after the book was in production and haven't seen a cent since. Nasty business and a pretty useless book, I'd say. I'm ashamed to have my name on the cover.
Don Metz
21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Not even nice pictures Nov 20, 2006
By Laura F. Hinerfeld
"Laura H."
A compilation of few interesting ideas and very hard to see illustrations. Poor quality reproductions. No measurements at all. Furthermore the contact information in the back was not cross-referenced with the designs & listed no phone or web contact, just mailing addresses. Seems like the authors took the cheap and easy way out with a good idea.
Taunton Press's "The Cabin" is a much more inspiring & informational book.
I do not recommend this book.
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Waste of Time Apr 20, 2008
By YuppiePunk
"YuppiePunk"
I knew the book wouldn't be a great resource but I thought it might have some reason for having been published other than the author and publisher just trying to cash in on the "not so big" / "green" trend.
There is really no redeeming quality in this book. Most of the houses are severely outdated and are poorly proportioned. Except for one or two, they don't even look designed by an architect, they just look like run-of the mill cracker boxes, some with poorly planned additions. There's no useful information on how to best economize space or anything. The "design" information is useless because the illustrations are so bad they are painful to look at. Some are so muddy, it looks as if the book were published using water damaged drawings and a broken Xerox machine.
I apologize for not editing this review, but this book has already wasted enough of my time. If you're looking for something more current, try James Grayson Trulove's 25 Houses Under 1500 Square Feet. It's more design oriented, even if does have a lot of filler. It's not a 5 star by any stretch of the imagination. At least his illustrations are legible and the photos make the book look produced by professionals that actually care about design and architecture.
See all 23 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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