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What Not To Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design
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| Part No: | 1580112935 |
| Manufacturer: | Creative Homeowner |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.5 / 5.0 |
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- ISBN13: 9781580112932
- Condition: USED - Very Good
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
The story is all too common in today’s housing market: the basic principles of scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, and consistent architectural styles are often misapplied in new residential construction. Walk around almost any new development, and you’ll find dormers that are bigger than the front door; windows that are out of scale; too few or too many columns; and more. What Not to Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design shows these problems and more to the reader. Focusing on the exteriors of houses, the authors--who are architects and designers--have identified a number of "problem"designs. Through photographs and illustrations, they show how the problems can be solved by applying easy-to-understand design principles. Anyone reading the book will be able to avoid the problems when designing their own house or fix problems that appear in the house they’re already living in.
The story is all too common in today's housing market: the basic principles of scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, and consistent architectural styles are often misapplied in new residential construction. Walk around almost any new development, and you will find dormers that are bigger than the front door; windows that are out of scale; too few or too many columns; and more. What Not to Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design shows these problems and more to the reader. Focusing on the exteriors of houses, the authors-who are architects and designers-have identified a number of “problem” designs. Through photographs and illustrations, the authors show how problems can be solved by applying easy-to-understand design principles. Anyone reading the book will be able to avoid the problems when designing their own house or fix problems that appear in the house they're already living in.
| Good, but geared for the South and East | 2010-01-26 | 4 / 5 |
| | There is a lot of good information here. However, please be aware that the houses in this book are unlike those you will find on most of the West Coast, so if you are building there you will need to do a lot of extrapolation. Almost all of the homes featured in this book are brick, and the vast majority are styles rarely seen on the West Coast. There are a couple of Victorians and Craftsman bungalows, but no houses with cedar siding, very little Mission-style architecture, etc. Also, there is very little here geared to making a small house look better; most of these houses are gigantic, and the vast majority are two-story. |
| Presented must-know info in an easy to visualize manner | 2009-08-21 | 5 / 5 |
| This is a very good book, and it contains a number of points that are essential to anyone interested in building, remodeling, or just understanding what does/doesn't make a home "work". I see so many high-end homes, whose owners should have read this book before making huge blunders. I learned at least a dozen "must know" points, and have utilized a number of them in my own home. EG: columns, porticos, window sizes, and roof/siding material rules. My favorite rule is that of SHUTTERS - they should be placed to look as though they close; and they should NEVER be placed next to picture windows.
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| Excellent how-not-to and how-to | 2009-06-27 | 5 / 5 |
| | "What Not to Build" is an excellent tour through the various choices in the design of houses' exteriors. The book frequently pairs a photo of what not to build with a photo of a design in which the noted flaws have been corrected. It's clear and fascinating. |
| Very well done & exceptionally educational book | 2008-04-03 | 5 / 5 |
| I've done a fair amount of reading in architecture over the years, mostly on historical topics, and building and designing your typical family home wasn't something I knew as much about. As I was in the process of building my own house for the first time, I decided to look at this book to see what I could learn.
I was a little bit nervous, actually, since I was afraid I'd found that I'd made so many mistakes. But I was pleased to find out that overall we'd done all right, and hadn't made any horrible blunders. There were a couple of minor errors, but nothing terrible. So overall I was pretty pleased, or at least, relieved. :-)
If you've never studied architecture before, this book is an easy way to get your feet wet, especially if you're planning a home yourself. The authors cover the most important topics, such as entry ways, porches, columns and open spaces; the proportions and ratios of structural elements such as that of columns to supported beams; correct design, proportion, and placement of dormer windows (the window should take up 75% of the space, otherwise it looks too small); the use and misuse of building materials; problems with walls, windows, and rooflines; and other topics.
The book is liberally illustrated with many examples of correct houses, and incorrect ones on the same page so you can easily compare. Some of these well-intentioned but faulty houses were almost comical. Several houses had high, arched, entry ways that were way-oversized and would have looked fine on a Gothic cathedral, but on a family home, they looked wildly out of place. The massive entry way dominated the whole facade and just detracted from the rest of the elevation (or front of the house).
Some of the other errors were more subtle, and weren't quite as obvious, but as you learn the canons of true architecture, as oppposed to merely winging it, which is what the authors say happens more and more with builders, you begin to appreciate the correct way of doing it. For example, one problem you run into is a too-complex roof line that's broken up and takes away from the facade and other structural and design aspects of the house, or a too complex facade that's just too busy. When first looking at these houses, they looked fine to me, but when I saw the corrected house illustration, I could see what the authors were saying. In other words, sometimes less is truly more. Or a better way to phrase it might be to say that good design is more about the harmonious combination and integration of all elements, which complement and flow smoothly into each other, rather than ostentation and needless complexity, which causes disruption and interrupts that flow and harmony.
The book is well written, profusely illustrated, and contains a huge amount of practical advice on what to do, and what not to do, in building a house. If your average builder just read this book they'd learn a lot, as I did, about good design and how to go about achieving it. The rules really aren't that hard to learn, and you can read the whole book in just a few hours, since it's mostly illustrations with some explanatory text. This is money well spent considering how much you'll probably save if you ever decide to build your own house. |
| worth the $$ | 2008-01-20 | 4 / 5 |
| | As a novice looking to renovate my house, it has been a good crash course for me which made me aware of things that I found wrong in houses I saw but couldn't quite put a finger on. In the big scheme of $$ spent on a house renovation, cranking out $25 for this book is small fish and a good start .. but yes, it is limited in what it teaches, mainly what not to build. Four *s regardless, because of the value of the book as a crash course. I saw immediately afterwards what my neighbors should have done to get their renovation right. One may say that the examples in the book of what not to build are obvious, .. but that it the achievement of the book, to highlight them so clearly that they seem obvious. |
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