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25 Houses Under 1500 Square Feet

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Manufacturer: Collins Design

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Following up on the successful book 25 Houses under 2500 Square Feet, this title will continue to explore, though case studies, the joys of living in compact, well designed homes. The 25 houses presented in the book offer an extraordinary range of architectural solutions for designing functional yet exciting, dramatic living spaces within a small envelope. The houses will range in size from a few hundred square feet up to 1500 square feet of heated space. As with 25 Houses, projects will be located throughout the United States with some coming from Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.

Readers interested in building a primary residence, a weekend getaway, or a guest house will discover how architects, through the innovative use of common building materials and careful attention to space and light, are able to create dwellings that belie their small size.

The projects were selected for their excellence in design, innovative use of materials and methods of construction, each house comprises a case study that includes interior and exterior photography by some of the finest architectural photographers working today; drawings including site plans, details, and floor plans; and concise, informative text that highlights the design and technical aspects of the house.

Architects and architectural firms to be featured include: Lake/Flato, Olson Sunberg Kundig Allen, Archi-Tonics, Via Architecture, Dean/Wolf, Belmont Freeman,Hanrahan and Meyers, AC2, Frank Harmon.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.37
EAN: 9780060745066
ISBN: 0060745061
Label: Collins Design
Manufacturer: Collins Design
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2004-11-01
Publisher: Collins Design
Release Date: 2004-11-09
Studio: Collins Design


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The Big Book of Small House Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Your Dream House, All 1,250 Square Feet or Less
• Compact Houses: Architecture for the Environment
• 25 Houses Under 2,500 Square Feet
• Small Houses: Contemporary Residential Architecture
• Great Houses on a Budget


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

25 Houses Under 1500 Square Feet -
Overall well done... Just a couple of houses featured that I asked myself "why? They did not fit the pacing of the book" Others I'd like to have seen more pictures of. Overall well done though.

Great Residential Architecture series -
There are a million residential architecture/design books out there, but in terms of quality of pictures and examples, James Grayson Trulove is the best. Makes a great coffee table book for any designer. Its mostly valuable as a visual resource (not alot of text). I love Trulove's message of quality over quanity - its better to have a small beautifully designed house than a mcmansion monstrosity.

big disappointment -
I'm an architect and was very much looking forward to this book as I am a fervent believer that bigger is not better. I am always searching for good examples of how to do things as efficiently as possible, which produces a better design and ultimately costs less. People do not need 3000 square feet houses.

I got this book for christmas and am very disappointed.
First, the editing is terrible. There are literally pages that are marked "lower floor plan" & "upper floor plan" which are blank.

Secondly, the majority of these houses are architectural follies. They are not "houses" in the meaning that most of us mean when we say house. They are playhouses - art lofts, guest houses, vacation houses, etc. How we live in a structure for a few hours of pleasurable work each day and how we live in our actual house varies greatly. How many of us recreate our same lives while we are on vacation? That is the whole problem with this book. It should rightly be called "Expensive architectural follies under 1500 square feet."

In reviewing this book there is nothing that will inform you how to live in a smaller space. There is nothing that will redefine the idea of house.

That being said there are some very nice pavillions.

disappointing, but better than no book at all -
I'm glad that the book exists - if James Grayson Truelove hadn't bothered to slap together this flawed survey, you'd not get to see these houses in any detail. But I enjoyed "Gwathmey Siegel: Houses" more, and even preferred other JGT archi-photo books to this one. Only 4 houses (of 25) had enough drawings and varied enough photos to see and make sense of the whole. Plan drawings are present for most of the houses, which is a step up from photos-only glossy books. Alas, they're small & unlabeled. In addition to the swap mentioned by other reviewers, p.30 is missing all its plans (typo/print-o), and p.128 has the 2nd/3rd floor plans upside-down from the first floor. "How," you might ask, "could this idiot reviewer possibly complain about so simple a transform, which he obviously ought to be able to figure out?" Therein lies the problem with this book: In fact, it *wasn't* obvious how the house was arranged, because the accompanying photos were not comprehensive, nor documentary! Such is the case for most of the structures in this book: either multiple photos show the same angle, or they only really document one room in an entire design. To be fair, perhaps I should have realized this from the product description: 25 houses in 181pp. means only 7 pp. each. But with such a low page count, "white-spacey" layout, and largish photos, duplication is inexcusable. (N.B. Of 25 houses, 21 are modern-style. Just in case you were looking for -- or trying to avoid -- contemporary.)

Was the editor on vacation? -
This book has some interesting small houses, and does include floor plans, sections, elevations, and lots of photos (of varying quality). But the book is full of typos that anyone giving the book a last once-over should have caught: "and and", using "compliments" instead of "complements", and in one case (The Methow Cabin) the floor plan of one building was listed for both itself AND another, totally different structure (The Cavehill Residence). If you're looking for ideas, this isn't a bad book, but its size is unwieldy, its photographs in many cases just clearly enlarged from photos provided by the builders or architects, and there are more than a few errors throughout the book. I'd check this one out from the library rather than buying it.

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