Creating the Not So Big House: Insights and Ideas for the New American Home

Her ideas for interior as well as exterior views, airy stairways, diagonal views, and framed openings translate well in an array of different houses appropriate to childless couples and large families, as well as hot climes in Texas and cooler regions in Vermont. There are traditional designs to fit in with Massachusetts styling and contemporary designs to adapt to California cliffs, and they range from country spaces to suburban homes to city apartments.

Susanka selected house plans that are available for sale, because her purpose is to make affordable quality housing accessible to the general public, but they're also presented as catalysts for your own designs, because the house that worked for one person might inspire the plan that would work best for you. Whether you're in the market for a new house, want pragmatic renovation ideas, or are interested in the concept of space-saving abodes from a city-planning, philosophical perspective, Susanka's book is an eye-opener and a mind-expander, providing conceptual and practical tools to assist you in planning your own livable home. --Stephanie Gold

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

The antidote to the McMansion, 2008-02-16
Sarah Susanka, an architect orginally based in Minnesota, has written an extremely valuable book about creating comfortable living space in a small house. Until the recent housing crisis (and yes, even despite it among the super-rich) residential housing in this country was guided by the principal that "bigger is better". From an average house size of about 1,300 square feet during the housing boom that followed the Second World War, houses have been getting larger and larger. The effect of this on the environment went virtually unnoticed until it became fashionable to talk about global warming. No retired couple needs a weekend home of 8,000 square feet, yet one would be shocked by the number of such houses that were built in the 90s and were all the vogue up until about a year ago. Now that Hollywood movie stars, earning $20 million a film are driving hybrid cars and installing windmills in their backyards to power their 50-inch flat screens, the small house is somewhat in vogue.

Ms. Susanka has many interesting ideas on how to maximize the use of space, including the notion of creating "living" space, e.g., seating, a fireplace, and even a tub, on the other side of the walls of a house.

If you are thinking about building a house, read this book first. Perhaps you will scale down your plans and that would be a benefit to both you and to the world outside.

Books of this type have proliferated in the past few years but this volume, one of the first on the subject, remains as vital as it was when first published.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Not So Big House-an Idea Whose Time Has Come, 2007-11-09
Hopefully all the people who are supposed to be interested in preserving the natural world will buy into Susanka's idea and build smaller, more useful houses rather than energy and environmental guzzlers. Be nice if some of the "talking heads" would do as they say. Great ideas for all of us interested in using less and preserving more.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

The not so big house is more of a Not so inexpensive house, 2007-06-20
We have read both books and did find some things interesting, there was only one or two houses in either of the books about the Not So Big House that would have worked for us. One thing we did find that the cost of the "not so big house"; because of many of the materials used; it is really more than what a number of people might find too expensive for their budget.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

A must when designing your home, 2007-06-09
We are remodeling our house and my daughter and husband are about to build a new house. A friend of us got many great ideas from this book when they built their home, so they recommended it to me. I had purchased it as a gift for my daughter who, along with her husband, have been reading it since then word by word, and studying the pictures. They are so excited by the concept of a great home and the excellent ideas found in the book. It gave them the direction that they will definitely take when designing their new home.


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

MORE NOT SO BIG, 2007-05-04
A FURTHER EXPLORATION OF THE NOT SO BIG PHILOSOPHY, QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE, GOOD COMMON SENSE.

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