The New Family Home: Creating the Perfect Home for Today and Tomorrow [Paperback]

Jim Tolpin (Author), Mary Lathrop (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

Imagine a home designed for the family that lives in it. Author Jim Tolpin features 24 of them in The New Family Home, an innovative and inspiring look at the changing family home in America. The New Family Home takes readers on a tour of homes that meet the unique needs of families of all kinds. From flexible floor plans for blended families, to houses with a heightened sense of style for empty-nesters, this book calls to mind the essential bond between a family and the place it calls home.
-- A diverse look at a wide variety of family homes.
-- Includes floor plans, color illustrations, and more than 200 photographs.
-- Cloth edition has sold more than 40,000 copies since publication.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A house that's designed to be beautiful and house an active, energetic family may seem like a tall order for an architect, but the 24 homes featured in The New Family Home meet both needs extraordinarily well. Author Jim Tolpin takes readers through all the nooks and crannies of these well-planned homes, where every inch of space is maximized to create a family living space that's attractive as well as functional.

Many of the 24 homes share several characteristics popular with today's families, such as a great room (rather than the separate living room, dining room, and kitchen configurations of the past), so that family members can feel connected even while pursuing separate activities. A home office sometimes needs to be incorporated into the home or property, as telecommuting has become both possible and popular. Separate media rooms that house the television, video games, and stereo are also frequently requested, as they allow families to preserve the living room as a distraction-free place to spend time with each other.

Adaptability is the key to making these homes work, and Tolpin explains how this element is incorporated into each house. For instance, what is currently a guest bedroom on the first floor of a home can be converted to a bedroom for a teen who wants more privacy, and then to an accessible master bedroom for the aging parents after the child moves out. This flexibility in a home makes sense considering the current trend of families who want to live in their homes longer rather than move when a house no longer fits their lifestyle. By making a house's space adaptable and multifunctional, it can fill many roles through the years, and a family can live happily in one home for many decades.

Each family in The New Family Home required a home designed to meet their specific needs and wishes, and the book documents how the family worked with the architect who translated their requests into reality. The end result is a home that fits each family's particular lifestyle now and for the foreseeable future. --Kris Law --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In The Not-So-Big House (LJ 8/98), Sarah Susanka delineated home design for modern lifestyles. Tolpin (The New Cottage Home) cites specific examples of such design, showing homes whose common feature is a large communal room that combines cooking, dining, and gathering functions. Homes from all over the United States and Canada, designed in all types of stylesDVictorian, country, and modern, to name a fewDare depicted. In addition, Tolpin shows how architects and homeowners collaborate on a design. Good for professional, college, and large public libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Taunton Press (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561585653
• ISBN-13: 978-1561585656
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 9.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #848,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice photos, poor floor plans, August 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: New Family Home -OSI (Hardcover)

While this book contains many fine crafted houses, nicely photographed. As an architect, I was very dissapointed with the 'sketchy' floor plan presentation format. Not only do the plans lack a sense of scale (It would be nice to see proposed furniture layouts that could better indicate how people relate), but kitchens and bath rooms are shown just as boxy rooms (no fixtures or casework!)

82 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The New Family Home for Al Gore's "Richest 1%"!, March 20, 2001

By 

John C. Lynch (Chapel Hill, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New Family Home -OSI (Hardcover)

No no no. This book should be titled "The New Family Home for the New Economy", since practically all of the example homes described could only be afforded by folks who cashed in their dotcom stock options in March of 2000. I hate to bash a book with Jim Tolpin's name on it, but it's hard to believe that this was written by the same guy who brought us "The New Cottage Home" and "Built in Furniture". The idea is right on: homes should be able to adapt to our needs as our needs change. But there are more creative ways of achieving this goal than building a separate room for every activity (a media room, a game room, a home office, an exercise room, and on and on and on, all of which, presto-change-o, turn into something else when we decide little Billy needs a PlayStation room or mommy needs a yoga room), not to mention "Great Rooms" scaled to Jolly Greeen Giant proportions. I would recommend "More Small Houses" or "Building the Not So Big House" (as well as Tolpin's other books mentioned above) as better alternatives. Even if you really do need a bigger house, these books show how small spaces can accommodate more -- more stuff, more activity, more living -- and nothing could be more important in this day of starter-McMansions and astronomical building costs.

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Actually 24 family homes, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: New Family Home -OSI (Hardcover)

Great pictures. Site specific yet general in nature. Plan views. Blend of detail and elevations. Concise paragraphs describe design process as well as individual spaces. All this presented in almost coffee table like format. Good volume for builders to leaf through every once and awhile to remind themselves of what ought to be done. Equally fine book for potential clients to pour over to preview what can be done. And well done. Another hit for Taunton Press.