A #1 best seller for years, Bill Hirsch's Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect has been called an essential read for Homeowners as well as Professionals. Bill's flowing style of writing makes you feel like you are sitting with him having a chat about your project. The philosophy behind design decisions is explained with stories, photos, sketches, and checklists. The book is divided into Twelve Lessons, with an additional Bonus Lesson ," Building Green, Naturally". You will learn how to evaluate your needs and work towards creating a suitable design, perfect for you and your family. The experience of home design and construction should be controllable, gratifying and enjoyable. With the valuable advice that Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect provides, it can be.

Even as oversized McMansions continue to elbow their way into tiny lots nationwide, a much different trend has taken shape. This return to traditional architectural principles venerates qualities that once were taken for granted in home design: structural common sense, aesthetics of form, appropriateness to a neighborhood, and even sustainability. Marianne Cusato, creator of the award-winning Katrina Cottages, has authored and illustrated this definitive guide to what makes houses look and feel right--to the eye and to the soul. She teaches us the language and grammar of classical architecture, revealing how balance, harmony, and detail all contribute to creating a home that will be loved rather than tolerated. And she takes us through the do’s and don’ts of every element of home design, from dormers to doorways to columns. Integral to the book are its hundreds of elegant line drawings--clearly rendering the varieties of lintels and cornices, arches and eaves, and displaying "avoid” and "use” versions of the same elements side by side.

"Guides lay readers through the design of a custom residential house that emphasizes energy efficiency, comfort, environmental health, structural strength, fire safety, and beauty. Economy is achieved with conventional materials and building practices. Also intended for home renovations and repairs. Includes a section on alternative energy technologies. Fully illustrated"--

"Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book

American architect Hank Schubart was regarded as a genius for finding the perfect site for a house and for integrating its design into the natural setting, so that his houses appear to be as native to the forest around them as the trees and rocks. Salt Spring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada, offered him a place to create the kind of architecture that responded to its surroundings, and Schubart-designed homes populate the island. Built of wood and glass, suffused with light, and oriented to views, they display characteristic features: random-width cedar siding, exposed beams, rusticated stonework. Over time, Schubart’s homes on Salt Spring Island came to be considered uniquely Gulf Islands homes. This inviting book offers the first introduction to the life and architecture of West Coast modernist Henry A. Schubart, Jr. (1916–1998). While still in his teens, Schubart persuaded Frank Lloyd Wright to accept him as a Taliesin Fellow, and his year’s apprenticeship in the master’s workshop taught him principles of designing in harmony with nature that he explored throughout the rest of his life. Michele Dunkerley traces Schubart’s career from his early practice in San Francisco at the noted firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, to his successful firm with Howard Friedman, to his most lasting professional achievements on Salt Spring Island, where he became the de facto community architect, designing more than 230 residential, commercial, educational, and religious projects. Drawing lessons from his mentors over his decades on the island, he forged an everyday architecture with his mastery of detail and inventiveness. In doing so, he helped define how the island could grow without losing its soul. Color photographs and site plans display Schubart’s remarkable homes and other commissions.

Gaia's husband Charles was an architect. Having discovered love letters after Charles's sudden death, Gaia is knocked back hard. She sets about organising a competition to design her perfect home, choosing the competitors from among her husband's former adversaries. The process gains her new friends and hard but rewarding lessons on the nature of erotic and artistic obsession.