The Best House Of All

Big, small, round, square, heavy, light... homes can be of many kinds! Find out why each home is different, and build your own home. Our little architect shows you how! Story Attribution: ‘The Best House of All’ is written by Natasha Sharma. © Pratham Books, 2017. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/) Other Credits: This book was first published on StoryWeaver by Pratham Books. The development of this book has been supported by Oracle.

Discover the best of the best in house design with this comprehensive guide in the highly successful 150 Best series, featuring hundreds of inspiring color and black-and-white photographs. 150 New Best of the Best House Ideas is a stunning visual feast that explores the latest in innovative home construction, decoration, and design. This outstanding volume showcases an extensive collection of single-family houses from all over the world, created by distinguished international architects and designers who have worked to achieve practical and functional solutions adapted to the specific needs and particular tastes of their clients. Each of the 150 houses profiled demonstrate the newest trends and various influences on home design, from cottage-type houses to minimalist geometric constructions. Using technological advances in construction and material use, these homes are energy-efficient, have a low environmental impact, and are stunningly attractive, appealing to all tastes and styles. This essential reference encompasses the diversity of current trends in house design and is an inspirational creative resource for builders, architects, designers, stylists, interior decorators, and students.

Packed with hundreds of pages of beautiful and inspirational color photographs of homes from around the world, a visually stunning resource and guide—part of the successful 150 Best series—featuring the latest in modern home construction and design. A comprehensive collection of single-family houses created by some of the most distinguished international architects and designers, 150 Best of the Best House Ideas showcase the latest trends and various influences on home design. Incorporating the most up-to-date technological advances in construction and material use, these beautiful dwellings, from cottage-style designs to minimalist geometric constructions, are visually appealing, energy-efficient, and have a low environmental impact. This beautiful compilation expresses the diversity of current building trends and provides an inspirational source of ideas for artists, designers, architects, home buyers and owners, and anyone interested in keeping-up-to-date with contemporary residential architecture.

In this indispensable manual for tiny house living, award-winning tiny home builder Chris Schapdick offers first-hand information to help tiny home aspirants realize their dream, with advice on design, construction, legalities of living in a tiny home, and how to deal with some of the inevitable challenges of living tiny.

From the highly successful 150 Best series, the ultimate resource for single home buyers and owners, architects, developers, and designers, filled with contemporary, fresh ideas for sustainable construction and gorgeous interiors, vividly captured in hundreds of stunning four-color photographs. 150 Best All New House Ideas is a visually stunning look at the latest in innovative home construction and interior design. It brings together an extensive collection of single-family houses from all over the world, created by distinguished international architects and designers who have worked to achieve practical and functional solutions adapted to the specific needs and particular tastes of their clients. Each of the 150 houses profiled showcases the latest trends and up-to-date influences from around the world. The houses displayed come in all sizes, from mini cottages to multi-room manors. Taking advantage of technological advances in building and materials, all of these homes are beautiful and inviting as well as energy efficient and environmentally friendly. This beautiful compilation brings together the diversity of current trends in house design and is an inspirational source of ideas for homeowners and those considering buying, interior designers, builders, architects, lighting, textile, and furniture makers, and students.

Introduction We all have the need to nurture and care for other living things. Maybe you aren’t ready for a cat, dog, or fish, but bringing home a houseplant can fulfill that need. Place a plant on the windowsill and it will add living beauty to your home. Wake up every day and it will greet you as it cleans the air and improves your mood. Houseplants ask for so little but add so much life to a home. The care of that green friend falls solely on the owner. Being successful in that undertaking is important, so our hope is this book can help you keep your green roommate alive, healthy, and vibrant. There is no such thing as a natural green thumb. Many believe either you are born with one or not. The claim of having a brown or black thumb has had many dead plants placed at its doorstep. Yet having a green thumb is just a matter of paying attention to the needs of your plants and noticing when they are trying to tell you something. Killing a plant or two (or more) is not a crime, and can be a good learning experience. Don’t be discouraged, as growing beautiful plants is easy if you have the time and pay attention to their specific needs, and this book will show you how to do that. Time restraints are another popular excuse as to why someone has no plants in their home. One easy plant can take less than five minutes a week to care for, and the benefits it brings will lead to a desire for more greenery in your life. Having plants continually die leads to frustration and possibly plastic plants. Not acceptable. When a few key components such as lighting preference, water, and placement are understood and correctly executed, your plants will thrive. Liking and being successful with plants has more rewards than are always apparent. Plants have been proven to clean the air around us. B. C. Wolverton, a NASA scientist, conducted many experiments in the 1980s and found that plants remove VOCs—volatile organic chemicals—from our indoor environments. These chemicals can come from carpet, paint, manufactured furniture, household cleaning products, and more. One plant can remove most of the VOCs from a 100-square-foot area. An important aspect of owning houseplants is the undeniable therapy that caring for plants affords us. In this uncertain, sometimes scary, fast-paced world, slowing down to care for something that is dependent on us can be therapeutic. Pick up a plant, remove dead leaves, check the growing medium for water, and wash the leaves with a soft cloth or sponge. Move quietly from plant to plant, or maybe you prefer to sing, hum, or talk to your plants. No judgment here. One plant may become many more when the time it takes to care for one plant isn’t enough to untangle the knots from the day. Many professional people own large collections of plants for just this reason. Working with their plants takes them away from the enormous stress of their jobs. As Elvin McDonald wrote in his book Plants as Therapy, “I believe that plants have enormous potential for maintaining emotional stability and . . . improving the lives of human beings.” Nothing truer can be said. Quite often, if you have a problem with a houseplant, you search online for information and help. But not every piece of information floating around on the Internet is true or pertinent to the specific plant for which you are caring. The information in this book will dispel the myths and misinformation about successfully raising houseplants. Plant societies are another good source of information. If you wish to learn as much as you can about a family of plants, such as cacti and other succulents, orchids, or African violets, join a plant society in your area. The people in these clubs have usually been growing those plants for a long time. Nothing beats the hands-on knowledge of people who have successfully grown a family of plants. Because they love their plants, they are more than willing to share their expertise. They want you to succeed with your plants. Besides, it is a wonderful way to interact with people. Joining a plant group can help you find like-minded people who don’t tune out when you talk nonstop about your plants. I hope the information in this book will give you the confidence you need to bring a plant or two home to improve your environment and give it a warmer, more comfortable feeling that will bring joy to those who enter. You may find that almost before you know it, people entering your home will comment, “It’s like a jungle in here!” Is that a bad thing? I think not. It is a good thing!

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.