Customer Reviews

New Compact House Designs

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

 

 

It's important to realize that the plans presented here are mostly for homes that had not been built by the time of publication. There are no color photographs, and each design only gets a few pages with a couple of views and short comments from the editors. However, the designs are all imaginative and generally make clever, stylish, and efficient use of materials and space.

If you are tired of McMansions (and are comfortable reading floor plans), you will enjoy these clever and imaginative house plans. Many are designed for a specific area of the country - Florida, the urban south, the Colorado mountains, New England - which gives a flavor lacking in most generic designs. All feature the creative use of space and an emphasis on low-cost heating and cooling. I find these plans more interesting than those in Small House Designs (ed. Tremblay), also based on a competition. I am considering asking one of the architects to modify a plan for my site, as a vacation home now and a retirement home in a few years.

Although this book contains 27 house plans, in my opinion only a very small percentage of these are innovative enough to warrant publishing. The most exciting being the design by Earth Rammed Works which could have easily taken over the whole book and I wished it had.! Some of the designs used new energy saving materials such as photovoltaics, but these were not given explanation space and left the reader feeling quite frustrated.

I bought this book because I was designing a sub-1250 square feet house for my parents, which I have since finished. I thought the book had potential until I attempted to apply some of the ideas of the "winning" plan. The winning house is not 1250 square feet and by my calculations, not even close.

This is an exact copy of a letter I received from Don Metz when I complained about the plans 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.

If you are looking for some creative ideas for small homes then this is a great book. If you are looking for the typical traditional home, then there a lot of other plan books or online plan stores that you may prefer. This book has a variety of home styles with a lot of great ideas. Some are pretty simple and some are a bit outlandish, but you'll see some designs that you don't see in the regular plan books, which is what makes this book so good.

I like this book, and have had it in my home plan collection library for years. I still refer to the designs in this book because they are still fresh today, as compared to other similar books on the market. The layouts are livable, given the tight quarters imposed by the square footage limitation, and the floor plans are easy to read. A few of the houses are economical to build as well as graceful, unique, and stylish. Several of the houses have modern facades. If you need someting small, but have no interest in the average ranch/saltbox/Mediterranian, this could be your book.
I would not recommend it to those who want a typical small suburban tract house, or to those using Sunset plans, Home Planners, or Garlington House as a bench mark for modern style house plans.

Unless you like ultra modern home designs, skip this book. The plans are impractical, especially with respect to kitchen layouts. Most of the homes have no vestibules in their entrances, which are a neccessity in colder climates.

Okay, so I'm prone to hyperbole. But this is my SECOND copy of this book that I own. My first is so worn -- and loved -- from years of use and daydreaming and planning that I decided to grab an extra copy before my first completely disintegrates.

I sketch architectural floor plans as a hobby. I have hundreds of house plans I've drawn over the course of several years. This book contains at least a half dozen brilliant, solid, useable ideas that have spawned numerous considerations as my husband and I prepare to buy a piece of land and finally build our post-kids, small home for the next phase of our lives.

Any fan of small home designs will appreciate every plan within this book, and will probably find at least a couple favorites among them. If you're planning to build small, this is a great book to jump start your process.