Wooden Houses

Wooden Houses places the wooden house into a historical and decorative context, explores the decorative potential of wood in our homes and provides inspiration for anyone who appreciates the beauty of this wonderful natural material. Wooden Houses places the wooden house into a historical, social and decorative context, explores the decorative potential of wood in our homes and provides inspiration for anyone who appreciates the beauty and soul of this wonderful natural material. Wooden houses range from rustic log cabins and timbered country cottages to traditional alpine chalets and elegant clapboard houses with shaded verandas. Wood has always played an invaluable part in construction, architecture, and interior decoration and has long been valued for its practical benefits. Indoors, wood surrounds us in so many different ways. Structural elements such as beams and vaulted ceilings become features in their own right. Wood can be used as further embellishment in the form of beautiful panellng or carved and turned banisters and staircases, and in original furniture designs. Whether it is left in its natural state to show the variety of grains and depths of colors, or used as a bare canvas for paint techniques, wood is a beautiful and timeless resource.

Looks at hand-hewn wooden houses, barns, chalets, and storehouses in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia.

American architect Hank Schubart was regarded as a genius for finding the perfect site for a house and for integrating its design into the natural setting, so that his houses appear to be as native to the forest around them as the trees and rocks. Salt Spring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada, offered him a place to create the kind of architecture that responded to its surroundings, and Schubart-designed homes populate the island. Built of wood and glass, suffused with light, and oriented to views, they display characteristic features: random-width cedar siding, exposed beams, rusticated stonework. Over time, Schubart’s homes on Salt Spring Island came to be considered uniquely Gulf Islands homes. This inviting book offers the first introduction to the life and architecture of West Coast modernist Henry A. Schubart, Jr. (1916–1998). While still in his teens, Schubart persuaded Frank Lloyd Wright to accept him as a Taliesin Fellow, and his year’s apprenticeship in the master’s workshop taught him principles of designing in harmony with nature that he explored throughout the rest of his life. Michele Dunkerley traces Schubart’s career from his early practice in San Francisco at the noted firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, to his successful firm with Howard Friedman, to his most lasting professional achievements on Salt Spring Island, where he became the de facto community architect, designing more than 230 residential, commercial, educational, and religious projects. Drawing lessons from his mentors over his decades on the island, he forged an everyday architecture with his mastery of detail and inventiveness. In doing so, he helped define how the island could grow without losing its soul. Color photographs and site plans display Schubart’s remarkable homes and other commissions.

Wood presents a comprehensive survey of international wood architecture highlighting the incredible versatility of this building material and the environmentally friendly possibilities of using it in residential construction and design. Wood as a material evokes alternate images of warm comfort or sleek cool modern design, and its many special characteristics are explored through the selected projects, interiors, and furniture detailed in this book.Wood provides a unique opportunity to examine contemporary wooden architecture as a global phenomenon rich in cross-cultural influences and universality. It also illustrates the diversity in the use of this material in different climates, cultures, and countries.The book is divided into four main chapters: a short historical introduction; a compilation of different projects shown as a whole, and typologically catalogued according to the use of wood; a compilation of interior designs, arranged like the different spaces of a house and combined with wood furniture; and a catalogue of the most commonly used woods and their properties.

This innovative new series documents, through the use of stunning colour photographs, 100 of the very best designs and projects relating to a specific room or feature. Each title displays a variety of different interior design and architectural styles, ensuring that every reader finds inspiration to utilise in his or her own home. The 100 Best Interiors and Houses in Wood showcases a compilation of the most beautiful and inspirational wooden architecture and interior design from the past ten years, with most projects never published before in an English version. Wim Pauwels, founder and managing director of Beta-Plus Publishing, began putting out a series of books in 1997 about architecture and interior design. So far the company has published more than 250 titles dedicated to certain themes (such as living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, children's rooms, antique building materials, restoration, renovation, gardens and swimming pools), plus monographs of architects and interior designers, manuals and yearbooks about timeless and contemporary architecture and interiors. For each book he enlists the assistance of authoritative specialists for the introductory texts and photograph captions.