Customer Reviews

Smart Houses

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I bought this book I was looking for a source of "options" that I could apply to the design of my own Smart House. This is more of a coffee table book, not a useful reference. For some unknown reason the editor chose to print the text as white print on a black background, which I find almost as annoying as reading text that is entirely bold-face. On top of that the author chose to showcase several houses that are starkly contemporary and amazingly ugly in my opinion. In sum: this book has nothing much to offer the prospective home builder.

I bought this book to get insight into the Smart home concept and implementation.
This book has very little of hard knowledge, as far as smart homes are concerned. It does have a lot of picture, I agree with the other critics, IT MAKES A GOOD COFFEE TABLE BOOK.
I wouldn't recommend it for anyone that actually wants to know about the smart home concept.

This book started out on a great premise, to talk about smart technology, smart materials and smart design in residential house. Examples illustrated in this book are not bad, either. Layouts are there, pictures are there. Descriptions are quite well-written. Still, this book is lacking of that wow factor that manages to captivate our interest, or perhaps, to keep us reading from beginning till end. Perhaps, it is the quality or the presentation of this book. It is printed in Hong Kong and compared with books done by Taschen and Phaidon, this book is definitely of a more inferior quality. My conclusion is simply, hmmm...I'm not sure. Keep up the good work, though.

I am in the process, prolonged process, of building a house and wanted some pointers, some good ideas. I got them in pictures but not in details. For instance one of my favorite houses, Sund Olsen's Courtyard House is here in page after page of photos. Great but not one detail about what the specs are on all that glazing, what the R value is of the roof. The books also really slants to West Coast environments and doesn't bring a lot of relevance to the South (not that the South necessarily has a lot of relevance).

As with everything else from this author, it is just a collection of pretty pictures, with absolutely no detail on materials and construction techniques.

The designs are apparently clever, but seemingly expensive and not practical. We cannot be sure, because almost no technical drawings were published. Could we believe the author in good faith? Maybe yes, maybe not. Though, it was published well as all his books.
CONTENTS:
The Smart House Examined 6
SMART TECHNOLOGY
House R128 14
Lake House 38
Courtyard House 56
SMART MATERIALS
Valley Center 72
Cabin at Elbow Coulee 88
Freund/Koopman Residence 104
Shorthand House 122
Lexton/MacCarthy Residence 140
Colorado House 160
Gosline House 176

this book is a great display of "smart" housing in the contemporary scene. if you are an architect or an architecture student who is looking to rip off other peoples designs and details this book is not for you!!