The Small House Book

Provides a review of social trends and their effect on architecture and design.

75 unique designs for attractive, efficient, environmentally friendly homes. Now available in paperback, this collection of 75 plans for small homes offers more than 500 usable blueprints and other illustrations for a variety of living spaces suitable for every environment and style, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated townhouse in the city to a Santa Fe ranch. The designs include site drawings, floor plans, elevation drawings, section drawings, perspective drawings, and exploded views. A brief introduction to each home describes its setting, the philosophy behind the design and its intended use, materials used, recommended landscaping, and more. Many of the homes come with money-saving and environmentally sound features such as solar panels and water heaters, wood stoves, ceiling fans, airlock entries, wind power alternatives, and natural gas heaters.

Small houses are the big news in home design these days. Discover delightful small houses and retreats from across North America. Hutchinson has organized the houses by the nature of their location (beach, rural, village, in-town/city) and includes both new construction and renovations/additions.

Small, simple, sustainable: Tips and tricks for living the tiny house lifestyle! Tiny houses are skyrocketing in popularity, and in this book campers, off roaders, and tiny house living experts Shelley and Joshua Engberg show how you can join the revolution. Learn to downsize without giving up everything you hold dear—with tips on how your life can still be comfortable and entertaining in a tiny house living environment. You’ll learn about: How to maintain a good relationship in a small spacePractical downsizing for everyoneSmall space living with petsThe pros and cons of off grid living and on grid livingHow to make your small space feel bigKeeping your small space feeling fresh with practical storage solutions and design tipsEquipping your space for entertainingAccordion/bi-fold style windowsHow downsizing and simplifying your life will allow you more freedom and time

What are the challenges architects face when designing dwelling spaces of a limited size? And what can these projects tell us about architecture – and architectural principles – in general? In BIG little house, award-winning architect Donna Kacmar introduces twenty real-life examples of small houses. Each project is under 1,000 square feet (100 square meters) in size and, brought together, the designs reveal an attitude towards materiality, light, enclosure and accommodation which is unique to minimal dwellings. While part of a trend to address growing concerns about minimising consumption and lack of affordable housing, the book demonstrates that small dwellings are not always simply the result of budget constraints but constitute a deliberate design strategy in their own right. Highly illustrated and in full-colour throughout, each example is based on interviews with the original architect and accompanied by detailed floor plans. This ground-breaking, beautifully designed text offers practical guidance to any professional architect or homeowner interested in small scale projects.

From the founder of the Instagram feed @TinyHouse, comes a small, chunky inspiration book filled with photographs of the smallest abodes—from vans and boats to tree houses and cabins. A die-cut cover acts as a window onto a simpler world of lighter living and sustainability that never sacrifices function or design. Imagine living debt-free in an environmentally-friendly home. No mortgage, no clutter, and boundless freedom. This is the reality and dream of people all over the world thanks to the widespread momentum of the tiny house movement in recent years. Designed to fit on the tiniest of coffee tables, this book features 250 full-color photographs of the smallest, most efficient homes around the world, with interviews, features, and smart tips straight from the homeowners. From tiny mobile homes in California, Nashville, and Minnesota to a surfer-built tree house in Washington to a school bus that has been converted to a camper in Oregon, this lookbook is packed with big inspiration.

Small House Living Australia features 21 small, inspiring Australian homes. Some are clever additions onto tight urban sites: others are tranquil weekenders in deep countryside - what all have in common is a shared belief that good architectural design principles make even the smallest of architectural and ecological footprints possible. With land ever more expensive, growing environmental pressures and an increasing number of small households, architects and designers are responding with great ingenuity to produce both practical and cost-effective buildings, and all the while never sacrificing the most essential of human needs - a beautiful home. The houses you will discover in Small House Living Australia are celebrations in built form of lives lived well, with less.