The story is all too common in today's housing market: the basic principles of scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, and consistent architectural styles are often misapplied in new residential construction. Walk around almost any new development, and you'll find dormers that are bigger than the front door; windows that are out of scale; too few or too many columns; and more. What Not to Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design shows these problems and more to the reader. Focusing on the exteriors of houses, the authors--who are architects and designers--have identified a number of "problem"designs. Through photographs and illustrations, they show how the problems can be solved by applying easy-to-understand design principles. Anyone reading the book will be able to avoid the problems when designing their own house or fix problems that appear in the house they're already living in.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Good, but geared for the South and East:
There is a lot of good information here. However, please be aware that the houses in this book are unlike those you will find on most of the West Coast, so if you are building there you will need to do a lot of extrapolation. Almost all of the homes featured in this book are brick, and the vast majority are styles rarely seen on the West Coast. There are a couple of Victorians and Craftsman bungalows, but no houses with cedar siding, very little Mission-style architecture, etc. Also, there is very little... more info
Presented must-know info in an easy to visualize manner:
This is a very good book, and it contains a number of points that are essential to anyone interested in building, remodeling, or just understanding what does/doesn't make a home "work". I see so many high-end homes, whose owners should have read this book before making huge blunders. I learned at least a dozen "must know" points, and have utilized a number of them in my own home. EG: columns, porticos, window sizes, and roof/siding material rules. My favorite rule is that of SHUTTERS - they should be placed... more info
Excellent how-not-to and how-to:
"What Not to Build" is an excellent tour through the various choices in the design of houses' exteriors. The book frequently pairs a photo of what not to build with a photo of a design in which the noted flaws have been corrected. It's clear and fascinating.
Very well done & exceptionally educational book:
I've done a fair amount of reading in architecture over the years, mostly on historical topics, and building and designing your typical family home wasn't something I knew as much about. As I was in the process of building my own house for the first time, I decided to look at this book to see what I could learn. I was a little bit nervous, actually, since I was afraid I'd found that I'd made so many mistakes. But I was pleased to find out that overall we'd done all right, and hadn't made any horrible... more info
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