New Compact House Designs

by Don Metz

Book Overview

Houses of the future will be smaller, more energy-efficient, and better suited to their environments. And intelligent design solutions can help expand the scope and livability of a compact house, making it elegant as well as practical. In 1990, Storey Communications sponsored the Compact House Design Competition, a juried contest open to architects, designers, and architecture students. From the numerous entries that were received from all over North...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0882666665
• ISBN13: 9780882666662
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Storey Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.6" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Unique collection of small homes

I like this book, and have had it in my home plan collection library for years. I still refer to the designs in this book because they are still fresh today, as compared to other similar books on the market. The layouts are livable, given the tight quarters imposed by the square footage limitation, and the floor plans are easy to read. A few of the houses are economical to build as well as graceful, unique, and stylish. Several of the houses have modern facades. If you need someting small, but have no interest in the average ranch/saltbox/Mediterranian, this could be your book. I would not recommend it to those who want a typical small suburban tract house, or to those using Sunset plans, Home Planners, or Garlington House as a bench mark for modern style house plans.

Need more books like this!

If you are looking for some creative ideas for small homes then this is a great book. If you are looking for the typical traditional home, then there a lot of other plan books or online plan stores that you may prefer. This book has a variety of home styles with a lot of great ideas. Some are pretty simple and some are a bit outlandish, but you'll see some designs that you don't see in the regular plan books, which is what makes this book so good.

Creative, sophisticated, and SMALL!

If you are tired of McMansions (and are comfortable reading floor plans), you will enjoy these clever and imaginative house plans. Many are designed for a specific area of the country - Florida, the urban south, the Colorado mountains, New England - which gives a flavor lacking in most generic designs. All feature the creative use of space and an emphasis on low-cost heating and cooling. I find these plans more interesting than those in Small House Designs (ed. Tremblay), also based on a competition. I am considering asking one of the architects to modify a plan for my site, as a vacation home now and a retirement home in a few years.