Home by Design: Transforming Your House Into Home (Hardcover)

by Sarah Susanka (Author) "THERE'S NOTHING MORE CRITICAL to the experience of a house than the impression it sets for both visitor and homeowner..." (more)
Key Phrases: Ceiling Height Variety, Light Intensity Variation, Frank Lloyd Wright (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed architect Susanka, who spawned a virtual cottage industry of home books favoring quality over quantity (The Not So Big House; Not So Big Solutions for Your Home; etc.), now turns her eye to 30 key design principles that produce a home. Seeking to capture the "elusive quality of home," Susanka uses beautiful photographs and helpful floor plans to discuss how "the interrelationships between spaces, walls and ceilings, and windows... shape our experience." It isn't the external architecture that matters, she says, but the interior. All homes provide shelter and footage; the goal is to enhance the quality of living. To do that, Susanka employs important tricks of her trade, explaining the rationale behind everything from window positioning and reflective ceilings to achieving symmetry, keeping in mind the overarching themes of space, light and order. Blessedly free of complex jargon, the book stresses that size doesn't matter, but construction does. Susanka's philosophy is simple: good architectural design is as important as good nutrition, and a savvy understanding of your surroundings lets you craft a better place to live. To illustrate her points, the author cites 28 of the best-designed homes in the U.S., from a tiny California cottage to a lavish Minnesota manse and a remodeled Kansas City abode. Susanka's generosity with tips (e.g., a bold use of color can add depth and solidity; aligning a doorway with a window directly across brightens the area) will be a boon to readers, who will wind up getting an architectural education in the process. 60 b&w line drawings.
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Review
"Think a bigger house would make everything perfect? Don't bet on it. Sarah Susanka's re-arranging and re-imagining strategies are brilliant, simple and beautiful" (Reader's Digest)"

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Taunton; illustrated edition edition (March 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561586188
• ISBN-13: 978-1561586189
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #129,592 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

199 of 207 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars beautiful photos, fewer details, March 4, 2004

By	a small house owner (outside Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This book is divided into three parts (space, light, order) and 27 chapters. Each chapter has a two-page spread introducing the topic (e.g. Changes in Level), with one full-page and several smaller photos, followed by a two-page spread giving examples of the concepts (e.g. Stairs as Sculpture, Lowered Room, Raised Room, Platforms, Over Under), with one or two illustrating photos or sketches and a couple of paragraphs for each. Following is about 4 pages profiling how the concept is used in one house. Some chapters include a half-page feature on the concept as used in public architecture, or using doctored photos to show how a space looks with and without the concept (e.g. show a space with a lowered soffit and without).
I found Susanka's first book, The Not So Big House, a helpful reference when buying my current quite-small house 4 years ago. It's far from architecturally designed, but allows light on two sides of major rooms, and I arranged furniture and art to use diagonal views and create window-seat-like spots on the edge of the living and dining rooms. The lack of visual connection between the living room and kitchen/dining area does, as predicted, make that room less used.
Her second book, Creating the Not So Big House, I found a helpful continuation of the theme, and I expect to use concepts I learned in both in five years or so when I hope to be looking for a slightly larger house in the same school district--land prices here would preclude building new. I'm trying to train my eye to figure out what is fixable with minor remodeling, or even a paint/drapery/furniture change, and what is intractable or very costly to fix, a skill I don't yet have a natural instinct for.
So I bought this book hoping to add to my toolkit. Many themes are well-illustrated, but I miss the focus on individual houses from Creating--the featured home sections show a couple of striking highlights, but I really wanted to see how it all worked together. There's no scale on the floorplans, so you can't tell how big a huge-seeming space really is. If you have read books from the Taunton Press, or Inspired Home magazine, you've seen some of these homes before. And by and large these are million dollar homes, including a truly beautiful two-story pool-house/gymnasium. It's stunning, but since you don't need to furnish it or lay it out to work like you do a home, how useful is this example? Of course, if you're thinking of building an elaborate two-story poolhouse, buy this book...
The doctored photos are an inspired idea, useful in identifying patterns that matter to you and those that don't. I confirmed that changes in ceiling height often irritate me, while aligning views is important. The two photos of the same space are a much better comparison than two photos of different rooms, since the only difference is the ceiling height, open view, trim line, etc.
Overall, the book is useful but not as strong as the others by the author. If you have those, you may not need this. I wish I'd gotten it from the library, and perhaps bought the paperback version in a year.
I would buy a book about Estes Twombley's architecture--in this and Creating they showcase comparably modest homes, made special by attention to detail. I'd like to see more of that, and fewer mansions--even if not mcmansions, they still aren't something I ever plan to buy or build.

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent and very useful book - don't believe the negative reviews, July 10, 2005

By	Jack (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

After reading the negative reviews, I got the book from the library instead of buying it. The negative reviews are really unfounded. It is worth buying.

I was able to easily see all of the pictures, even the smallest ones, so the reviewer who complained about the small pictures needs glasses. I get more information from five small pictures on a page than one picture filling the entire page, so I appreciate the denser content.

While many of the houses are luxury houses, the design principles can definitely be adapted to more modest houses. One of the houses used granite bathroom tile on the counter - clearly they had budgetary constraints. Many of the unique design features could be added to a modest house with considerable impact.

The design principles are simplified into 27 types and illustrated better than any architecture book I have ever seen. In many cases, a second photo is modifed to remove the one isolated design feature being illustrated and it is easy to see the effect that the feature creates when it is missing.

Regarding the lack of scale in the floor plans: I am glad there *are* floor plans - most books don't have them at all. It is very easy to create a scale knowing that a kitchen or bathroom counter is 2 feet wide, or that a entry door is 3 feet wide and go from there. A trained designer does this automatically in their head.

Many projects are profusely illustrated from multiple angles and each one demonstrates several design principles. This is a very useful resource and an excellent primer on basic design principles. Although the principles explained are very basic, the examples shown are very sophisticated. This book is useful to the novice, and even more so to a trained designer who will see much more than what the text explains. The best design cannot be contained by mere words.

All of the projects illustrated are top-notch designs. If you want this kind of design quality, you can't expect to learn how to do it all yourself. Yes, an architect adds 10% to the cost of a house, but if you want expertise, you have to pay the person who spent twenty years of their lives earning it. It is the most important 10% of your budget you will pay. This book can at least help you to explain to the architect what it is you want.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely NOT Not-So-Big, and not really a "keeper.", June 23, 2004

By A Customer

In essence, this book is a checklist of new vocabulary terms that Susanka invented for the purpose of articulating design concepts. Each term is well-illustrated by a residential example,with plenty of pictures. The print quality is beautiful as usual, and the editing and book design are well done, although a little overslicked and glossy. I was very happy to see the comparative photomanipulations to illustrate how a design concept changes the feel of a room. I enjoyed and appreciated the "Public Space" feature, in which Sarah's newly-named concepts are shown in photos of familiar large public buildings such as libraries or museums.

The not-so-big books dealt with the primary design -- the floor plan. The bulk of this book is concerned with "secondary" details that could be applied to any floor plan, such as window placement, staircase railings, ceiling shape, window type, or even the way the wall covering reflected light. Sometimes this felt more like interior design than architecture. You should probably have a floor plan -- and a bursting bank account -- in hand before you try to apply what is shown here.

One major weaknes is that Susanka has chosen far too few houses for her examples. It must have be convenient for the author and photographer when a single example illustrated several design concepts (cuts down on photography time), but the book became very tedious. Must we tour Susanka's own house for the FOURTH time? And the circular kitchen lost its novelty quickly.

Although I understood this would not be a repeat of her not-so-big concepts, I was surprised at the magnitude of departure from the Not So Big books to Home By Design. Although her text has a familiar hominess, her examples here all have a look-don't-touch attitude that I found off-putting. No consideration is given to cost or even space; indeed some of the houses looked so unlivable and showy that sometimes I confused the residential houses with the museums featured in Public Space. My impression was that Susanka was relieved to cast off the limits of not-so-big and focus on the lofty ideals of pure design without distraction from the practical concerns of those pesky clients who were acutally going to live in the house. I don't believe this was her intention, but be prepared for the shift in tone.

On its own objective architectural merit, this is probably a 4-star book, but I chose to take off a star because of Susanka's choice too few residences (and they were too artsy-fartsy at that), and because I don't want readers to be misled by the author's name into thinking this is a No So Big book. DO NOT buy this book sight unseen, especially if you are a fan of Not So Big. Borrow it from the library, or at least flip through all the way through it at a real bookstore before you spend the money on it. It's not for everybody.