Customer Reviews

The Big Book of Small House Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Your Dream House, All 1,250 Square Feet or Less

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

While containing a number of intersting plans for small homes, this book falls short on several accounds. First, there is almost no text save what is on the inside of the jacket. That's right: no introduction, no methodology. There is no explanation of which competitions the plans were taken from or what awards they won. (Amusingly, I went to show my neighbor one of the plans that I liked. He said he liked it too but that it was an old plan from a competition in the early 90's. And would you believe that he happened to have a copy of the competition from which the plan was taken!)
Secondly, as to the plans themselves, dimensions are rarely marked and often unclearly. In the case of two or three of the plans this makes them nearly unintelligable.
The lack of wall sections or descriptions of materials used for the majority of the plans makes it impossible to understand the particulars of what makes the houses energy effecient.
In short, the book far from lives up to its description and isn't worth spending the money for a handful of plans since a person can look at plans all day long for free online.

The layout looks as if the home plans themselves were photocopied from elsewhere, often too small and without accompanying information about materials, why and how certain layouts work in the context, labels, etc; thus even as a catalogue of disparate houses that happen to win an architectural contest, this is not very useful. Further, despite being plans of 1250 sq ft or less, there was little in the way of explanation of how this space is designed to accomodate living. Because of the topic, I expected to see a variety of houses designed to fit various contexts (urban, rural, etc) and living situations within the 1250 sq ft. I'm sure there are better books out there on this topic; not being an architect I don't know if this book would be useful to help brainstorming ideas or whatnot.

As one of the putative "Authors" of this book, I'm dismayed at Black Dog and Leventhal's sloppy work and failure to involve -- or even notify me -- that they were publishing this thing back in 2004. They essentially scrambled houses from two books I'd previously done with Storey Publishing and presumably -- I've never met or spoken with the other four "authors" -- used their ideas as well. I recieved one modest check after the book was in production and haven't seen a cent since. Nasty business and a pretty useless book, I'd say. I'm ashamed to have my name on the cover.
Don Metz

A compilation of few interesting ideas and very hard to see illustrations. Poor quality reproductions. No measurements at all. Furthermore the contact information in the back was not cross-referenced with the designs & listed no phone or web contact, just mailing addresses. Seems like the authors took the cheap and easy way out with a good idea.

Taunton Press's "The Cabin" is a much more inspiring & informational book.

I do not recommend this book.

I knew the book wouldn't be a great resource but I thought it might have some reason for having been published other than the author and publisher just trying to cash in on the "not so big" / "green" trend.

There is really no redeeming quality in this book. Most of the houses are severely outdated and are poorly proportioned. Except for one or two, they don't even look designed by an architect, they just look like run-of the mill cracker boxes, some with poorly planned additions. There's no useful information on how to best economize space or anything. The "design" information is useless because the illustrations are so bad they are painful to look at. Some are so muddy, it looks as if the book were published using water damaged drawings and a broken Xerox machine.

I apologize for not editing this review, but this book has already wasted enough of my time. If you're looking for something more current, try James Grayson Trulove's 25 Houses Under 1500 Square Feet. It's more design oriented, even if does have a lot of filler. It's not a 5 star by any stretch of the imagination. At least his illustrations are legible and the photos make the book look produced by professionals that actually care about design and architecture.

This is an exact copy of a letter I received from Don Metz when I complained about one of the sub-1250 sq. ft. plans (from a different book) not being under 1250.

Dear Mr. Measuring Things Very Carefully,

Your letter was surely the most self-righteous, missing-the-point piece of work I've ever recieved. Frankly, it would please me no end if you did indeed become "very skeptical of any books that you or the other judges publish in the future because of what I perceive as incompetence." That way, I won't have to read another of your whiny little responses ever again. If you are so obsessed with measuring things, I suggest you try measuring your capacity to understand that the book is meant to feature and promote compact house design. What defines a compact house? Size, mostly. What size? Take your pick, Mr. Measuring Man. Small? Not big? Modest? Efficient? I couldn't care less if the houses featureed are a bit under or over the 1250 advertised -- and if your so-called "architectural background" had anything to do with anything other than the nit-picky measuring of things, (as if that were somehow crucial to the importance of architecture) -- you wouldn't either.
As for owing you an apology, I owe you nothing but my bemused contempt.
Sincerely,
Don Metz

P.S. Any response to this letter will be deleted, unread.

While I admit that I did use the term incompetence, I should also point out that the inability to accurately measure a house in a competition with a square footage limit is, in my opinion, incompetent. So I feel it was justified. If curious, here is the letter I wrote.

I would prefer if Mr. Metz would contact me, because this comment is very specifically directed at him and therefore he can most accurately respond.
I own the title New Compact House Designs and have a major complaint.
I have an architecture background and am currently designing a house that when finished will be sub-1250 square feet. I purchased the book to give me some ideas about what I might do to squeeze the most out of the space. I was pleasantly surprised to see the winning design was very full featured. It was only when I attempted to apply some of the concepts in the house that I realized that it is not even close to 1250 square feet. The back cover of the book states that these houses had the following guideline: "design a single-family house with a minimum of two bedrooms whose gross floor area does not exceed 1250 square feet." Gross floor area is the covered area within the exterior edge of the exterior walls of a minimum ceiling height of 7'6" (typ.) not including areas that are open to the elements such as porches. I suspect that the winning house would not even qualify if you measured based on the interior of the exterior walls. The only way I think it can come close is if you subtract all the interior and exterior walls. I have not checked all of the other house plans, but I will be very curious to discover how many followed the requirements of the competition.
My questions are the following. 1) Why did you not check the designs to make sure they fit the size limit? 2) Do you plan on doing a second printing retracting those designs that failed to meet the size limits and ask that the ineligible winners return any sort of award they received? 3) Does this fiasco not shoot your whole small house attitude in the foot if you yourselves prefer larger houses and award larger houses instead of small houses in your own competition?
I will be very skeptical of any books that you or the other judges publish in the future because of what I perceive as incompetence. I think that you owe an apology to anybody who purchased this book and especially to the architects who submitted designs that followed the rules and lost.
I will be very curious to hear your response, and in the meantime I will very carefully measure the designs.


Just thought I would share my experiences with this editor.

This book contains a collection of small, unique house plans and BLACK AND WHITE DRAWINGS (no photographs). Some of the homes are up to date and very creative. Others seem dated. There are a few problems including the one on page 5 where the illustration for level two is exactly like level three. I guess I could have seen it; this page is in the Amazon preview pages.

Overall, I'm glad I bought the book for the many unique floorplans, but need to buy a magnifying glass to go with it. The illustrations are fairly small.

From the Misleading cover - I surmised I would be looking at many recent designs. Instead the book is full of recycled house designs that appear to be right out of the Grocery Store "101 exciting house plans" . Many were probably "contemporary" in 1978? After carefully searching the book - I discovered the fabulous house on the cover is merely a stock image from Getty and is not in the book [ nor anything like it.] The house designs that are included lack any meaningful information - actually less than the Grocery store books. I judged the book by its cover - my bad.

This book is a great source for small house designs. Has great plans and elevations of what the house looks like from the outside. It has a nice variety of styles and ideas that you could actually use. They also use a variety of materials used on the houses..Giving you the option to use other things like metals and woods in unconventional ways.

good book, needs overall measurements in diagrams, square footage of first floor not always easy to determine