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The Barefoot Home: Dressed-Down Design for Casual Living

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Manufacturer: Taunton

List Price: $30.00
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As our personal and professional lives become more demanding and hectic, people have reacted with a more casual, relaxed, and open way of living at home. Kitchens are no longer just for cooking but serve as entertainment hubs; barbeques on the grill have replaced formal dinners. As our lives at home have become increasingly informal, the “barefoot living” lifestyle has emerged and there is increased demand to carry this attitude over into home design.

Relaxed, open, filled with light, and intimately connected to the outdoors, barefoot houses make living at home feel like being on vacation 365 days a year. The 24 houses featured in The Barefoot Home reflect today’s barefoot times. From a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea, these homes capture the essence of barefoot living.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 728
EAN: 9781561588077
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 1561588075
Label: Taunton
Manufacturer: Taunton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2006-09-05
Publisher: Taunton
Release Date: 2006-09-05
Studio: Taunton


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough (American Institute Architects)
• Inside the Not So Big House: Discovering the Details that Bring a Home to Life (Susanka)
• Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home (Susanka)
• The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live (Susanka)
• Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

The Not So Big House with a stylish twist -
If you're familiar with Susan Susanka's Not So Big House series, you'll feel right at home here. Author Mark Vassallo co-wrote Inside the Not So Big House and like Susanka, takes a stand against overly-large houses made to impress, focusing instead, on casual, intimate houses based on the way "we really live." Vassallo's taste is less dowdy than Susanka's whose architectural choices can be mundane or smothered in wood detail. Expect cleaner, harder edges, funkier looks and a few surprises (like a house split into two small structures).

Not really barefoot per se -
Couple quick notes:
Most homes featured are new, few are retrofitted. Most done by architects in a modern style.

For a barefoot home, it seems unusual that most floors are concrete. Very few rugs, I didn't see any carpet.

I would've liked to have seen the rest of the property or at least how the house sits on the site. Driveways are not addressed. Nearly every house has a large lot and amazing views (which most of us do not have). Does not really address how to achieve a barefoot home with a nominal budget.

Surprised and delighted -
We live in temperate Australia and hesitated long before buying this book. We have shelves of excellent architecture reference books from around the world and have been owner builders. Was it going to be just glam coffee table eye candy? The architect has worked with Sarah Susanka (Not So Big House etc), so we decided to take the plunge. This is a very good book. There is so much to look at, contemplate, re-visit. Brilliant resolution of details, houses that flow, small exquisite spaces, sound materials. We have had hours of enjoyment from this book and have been happy to share it with others to extend their knowledge of good architecture. Enjoy!

Barefoot -- informal style, for an informal life. -
On first glance I agreed with many of the other reviewers: 'the book was slick', 'it was disingenuous', 'sure, if you live in a sunny climate, most, if not all, of the time'.

Then I went back and looked at the book again, and read the opening passage: he does not strive to be disingenuous, he tells us he himself doesn't live in a barefoot home, nor a barefoot neighborhood, but he is trying and the manifesto of the book is to entreat all of us to be more informal in our primary living space -- our homes.

Open the house up as soon as you can, get rid of all the stuff you don't need, make your home as casual as you can, and then enjoy it.
Think informal thoughts, and live in all the spaces available to you: the patio, the deck and never forget how good it feels to have sand between your toes!

He provides blue prints to the homes and he even lists the architects. Enjoy and live well!

Great Book! -
This book is great for conversation and ideas. I leave mine on the coffee table for periodic inspiration...that of myself..and of others!

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