Designing Your Perfect House Lessons From An Architect

A #1 best seller for years, Bill Hirsch's Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect has been called an essential read for Homeowners as well as Professionals. Bill's flowing style of writing makes you feel like you are sitting with him having a chat about your project. The philosophy behind design decisions is explained with stories, photos, sketches, and checklists. The book is divided into Twelve Lessons, with an additional Bonus Lesson ," Building Green, Naturally". You will learn how to evaluate your needs and work towards creating a suitable design, perfect for you and your family. The experience of home design and construction should be controllable, gratifying and enjoyable. With the valuable advice that Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect provides, it can be.

"Designing Your Perfect House, I> is ideal for navigating the often mystifying process of house design and building. It's full of sage advice from a master architect about how to design the perfect home. Presented in 12 lessons, this text moves from wonderful concepts to a finished dream home.

Gaia's husband Charles was an architect. Having discovered love letters after Charles' sudden death, Gaia is knocked back hard. She sets about organising a competition to design her perfect home, choosing the competitors from among her husband's former adversaries. The process gains her new friends and hard but rewarding lessons on the nature of erotic and artistic obsession.

In 1987 Minneapolis architect James Stageberg designed an innovative house for his wife, writer Susan Allen Toth, drawing on his thirty years of experience as an architect and on Susan's spontaneity, wit, and wholehearted love of houses. Now they have combined their talents once again in this book. In the first section, the authors address basic questions about working with an architect: how to select one, how to establish effective communication, and how to participate in planning your dream house. From the overall appearance of the house to the small but crucial decisions that make a house livable, they dispel myths and offer guidance. In the second section, they use their own experience as an example of the architectural process. From choosing a site to selecting the finishing touches, they explain the stages necessary to build a custom-designed home, recounting the problems they encountered and the solutions they discovered.--From publisher description.

Buildings have often been studies whole in space, but never before have they been studied whole in time. How Buildings Learn is a masterful new synthesis that proposes that buildings adapt best when constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and that architects can mature from being artists of space to becoming artists of time. From the connected farmhouses of New England to I.M. Pei's Media Lab, from "satisficing" to "form follows funding," from the evolution of bungalows to the invention of Santa Fe Style, from Low Road military surplus buildings to a High Road English classic like Chatsworth—this is a far-ranging survey of unexplored essential territory. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they're allowed to. How Buildings Learn shows how to work with time rather than against it.

A visual guide to building materials and specifications, covering masonry, wood, framing, roofing, wiring, heating, lighting, and other topics.

Award-winning architect and winner of "House Beautiful's" annual competition of Best Small House contest, Walker masterfully shows laymen how to design the house that fits their particular needs, relates to their site and budget, and reflects their values and personality.

"Guides lay readers through the design of a custom residential house that emphasizes energy efficiency, comfort, environmental health, structural strength, fire safety, and beauty. Economy is achieved with conventional materials and building practices. Also intended for home renovations and repairs. Includes a section on alternative energy technologies. Fully illustrated"--