Customer Reviews

The Mooresville Collection

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This spiral bound book contains 35 house plans, 17 of which are available at the Southern Living website, although they are renamed in this book. Some of the remaining plans, while not shown at the SL website, are based on those plans, but with different facades. The balance of the plans shown in this book range in size from just over 1,000 square feet to over 6,000. There is also the strange insertion of "Chapter 14" which is entitled *Mansions*. The opening paragraph tells us that the firm likes to design homes around courtyards so ..."there will always be very few designs in our Mansions chapter." Then again goes on to say..."So unless the design idea is strong like those designs in this chapter, in our opinion, we do not develop House, Large House or Mansion designs." Well, I was expecting to find something special when I turned the page. A firm that limits itself to designing large homes unless they see some extraordinary value in the design, well that must be something really special. And then....nothing. The next page was entitled Chapter 15 *Thin Houses*. ???? The pages of this book are not numbered so I don't know if the copy I received is missing pages or if the lecture from Chapter 14 was meant to indicate that no large house or mansion is worth building, therefore, there are no plans.

Aside from the absent Chapter 14, there is good reading here about how to build a house that will stand the test of time both in design and materials. You know the Golden Mean, the square root of 2 and all that. Mouzon also promotes the outdoor room in his courtyard plans and goes about telling you how to achieve an inviting space that you will use and not just observe. Mouzon also belongs to the New Urbanist movement and has been involved in the planning and design of many "new traditional" towns. Think Seaside, FL. Many of the plans in this book would be right at home in the more densely packed planned communities that seem to be popping up around the country. There are a few monster plans, some over 6,000 square feet, that may appeal to the gated community crowd, and while large, they evoke the same good design that attracts many people to Mouzon. I have been looking at house plans long enough to know that this architect has all the qualities in his designs that I am looking for, and maybe that is why I was somewhat disappointed with the quantity of new designs in this book. Had I know that I had already seen half of these plans on the SL website perhaps I wouldn't have been so disappointed.