The Distinctive Home: A Vision of Timeless Design

by Jeremiah Eck

Book Overview

Jeremiah Eck believes that a distinctive home is the result of a balance between site, floor plan, exterior elements, and interior details. In The Distinctive Home, he describes the significance of each of the four elements and provides numerous examples of good design for each. Included are images and descriptions of 50 houses (ten of them the author's own designs) that cover a wide range of styles, regions, and budgets. A final chapter unifies the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561585289
• ISBN13: 9781561585281
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Taunton Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.3" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

Educational & Interesting

Well done. I loved it. Great insights into building. Knowledgeable & yes, Timeless. Worth the price and worth the read for those who wish to build that are from "all walks of life".

Great planning tool and resource guide

Would highly recommend this book to all! Covers many sound Design ideas, a must have for any designer or architect!

Beautiful !

Another high-quality, gorgeous book from Taunton Press, a company that I remember from its inception when I lived in Newtown, Connecticut!This book is full of countless beautiful color photos and drawings that add immensely to the author's viewpoints and to his descriptions of the components of a distinctive home.Eck discusses every aspect of a home: siting the house; the roof; the landscaping, and everything in between. He overlooks no detail that will aid homeowners in deriving a sense of satisfaction from their homes. The homes he describes are livable and comfortable.I especially liked reading Eck's four elements of a "pleasing" house and the significance and importance he attaches to each element.

Don't buy it if you suffer from serious house-envy...

...if you are the sort of person who dreams of building your perfect house some day, this book will give you conniption fits, and leave you absent-mindedly drawing little floor plans on napkins in restaurants. Eck's framework for the book cites four sources of great design: siting the house on the property, floor plans, exterior (elevation) and final details. This makes the book more balanced than those that just focus on, say, the floor plan and finish. I found his discussion of the 'massing' of the house to be fascinating. It went a long way towards explaining why the too-large floor plans of the usual suburban house today--although in many cases just traditional layouts blown up by 50%--just don't look quite right. That said, the book is predominantly oriented towards relatively empty-nester second homes in relatively rural locations. With some pleasant exceptions, these are not houses for people who have to, say , wonder where to store the dirty soccer equipment or the snow blower, or where their kid's model collection is going to go. They ARE beautiful, though - I swear that some day I'm going live on p.107!!

Top notch design book

This is far and away the best book I've seen for people contemplating building or remodeling a home. Truly innovative designs that fall somewhere outside the traditional box of thinking in terms of floor plans and details create truly distinctive homes. A great place to start if you're considering major changes in your home.