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In addition to this book -- What Not To Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design -- Indonesia Home Interiors also has diverse books on interior design, home furnishing, and outdoor decoration. This is a free service provided by Indonesia Home Interiors, an Indonesian exporter of Indonesia fine handmade crafts for home interior & home furnishings. Indonesia Home Interiors is an official associate of Amazon.com.

The story is all too common in today’s housing market: the basic principles of scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, and consistent architectural styles are often misapplied in new residential construction. Walk around almost any new development, and you’ll find dormers that are bigger than the front door; windows that are out of scale; too few or too many columns; and more. What Not to Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design shows these problems and more to the reader. Focusing on the exteriors of houses, the authors--who are architects and designers--have identified a number of "problem"designs. Through photographs and illustrations, they show how the problems can be solved by applying easy-to-understand design principles. Anyone reading the book will be able to avoid the problems when designing their own house or fix problems that appear in the house they’re already living in.



PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.37
EAN: 9781580112932
ISBN: 1580112935
Label: Creative Homeowner
Manufacturer: Creative Homeowner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
Publisher: Creative Homeowner
Release Date: 2006-08-01
Studio: Creative Homeowner


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid
• Traditional Construction Patterns: Design and Detail Rules-of-Thumb
• Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design
• How to Work With an Architect
• Design Ideas for Curb Appeal (Design Ideas Series)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Very well done & exceptionally educational book -
I've done a fair amount of reading in architecture over the years, mostly on historical topics, and building and designing your typical family home wasn't something I knew as much about. As I was in the process of building my own house for the first time, I decided to look at this book to see what I could learn.

I was a little bit nervous, actually, since I was afraid I'd found that I'd made so many mistakes. But I was pleased to find out that overall we'd done all right, and hadn't made any horrible blunders. There were a couple of minor errors, but nothing terrible. So overall I was pretty pleased, or at least, relieved. :-)

If you've never studied architecture before, this book is an easy way to get your feet wet, especially if you're planning a home yourself. The authors cover the most important topics, such as entry ways, porches, columns and open spaces; the proportions and ratios of structural elements such as that of columns to supported beams; correct design, proportion, and placement of dormer windows (the window should take up 75% of the space, otherwise it looks too small); the use and misuse of building materials; problems with walls, windows, and rooflines; and other topics.

The book is liberally illustrated with many examples of correct houses, and incorrect ones on the same page so you can easily compare. Some of these well-intentioned but faulty houses were almost comical. Several houses had high, arched, entry ways that were way-oversized and would have looked fine on a Gothic cathedral, but on a family home, they looked wildly out of place. The massive entry way dominated the whole facade and just detracted from the rest of the elevation (or front of the house).

Some of the other errors were more subtle, and weren't quite as obvious, but as you learn the canons of true architecture, as oppposed to merely winging it, which is what the authors say happens more and more with builders, you begin to appreciate the correct way of doing it. For example, one problem you run into is a too-complex roof line that's broken up and takes away from the facade and other structural and design aspects of the house, or a too complex facade that's just too busy. When first looking at these houses, they looked fine to me, but when I saw the corrected house illustration, I could see what the authors were saying. In other words, sometimes less is truly more. Or a better way to phrase it might be to say that good design is more about the harmonious combination and integration of all elements, which complement and flow smoothly into each other, rather than ostentation and needless complexity, which causes disruption and interrupts that flow and harmony.

The book is well written, profusely illustrated, and contains a huge amount of practical advice on what to do, and what not to do, in building a house. If your average builder just read this book they'd learn a lot, as I did, about good design and how to go about achieving it. The rules really aren't that hard to learn, and you can read the whole book in just a few hours, since it's mostly illustrations with some explanatory text. This is money well spent considering how much you'll probably save if you ever decide to build your own house.

worth the $$ -
As a novice looking to renovate my house, it has been a good crash course for me which made me aware of things that I found wrong in houses I saw but couldn't quite put a finger on. In the big scheme of $$ spent on a house renovation, cranking out $25 for this book is small fish and a good start .. but yes, it is limited in what it teaches, mainly what not to build. Four *s regardless, because of the value of the book as a crash course. I saw immediately afterwards what my neighbors should have done to get their renovation right. One may say that the examples in the book of what not to build are obvious, .. but that it the achievement of the book, to highlight them so clearly that they seem obvious.

brilliant insight -
This book brilliantly details what is wrong with american architecture. Too often builders build what clients come up with-no matter it is a monstrosity simply because the bills are paid. Hopefully home owners will read this book and put thought into their homes, rather than going on a wing and a prayer. The before and then the photo shopped afters are masterful. bravo!!!

Essential For Planning Your New Home -
Starting the late 1930's, Architecture schools have been teaching a steady stream of "modernism" to young architects. The rules of architecture that were developed over the course of 2,500 years were tossed out in favor of a new design agenda. However, most new home buyers have never bought into the modernist agenda. They prefer more traditional styles of homes. The result of this mismatch is that many architects were never taught to design traditional styles of homes. One only needs to drive the streets of America's suburbs to see the monstrous results of this failure to educate the nation's architects.

"What Not To Build" is a visual survey of all that has gone wrong in the past half century. Using photographs of actual buildings, the authors show what not to do when building a new house. Then using computer technology, they create new images of the same building that are done correctly. There are over 50 before and after examples and over 300 photos that show how homes can be improved through good design.

The target market for this book are people who are thinking about building a new home. Ideally, this book will help a person working with an architect to see if the proposed design even makes visual sense. Beware, hiring a licensed architect is no guarantee that the architect has any idea how to design a traditional home. This is the largest investment that most home buyers will ever make. It is essential for new home buyers to educate themselves on the basics of good home design. "What Not To Build" is an inexpensive book and the little time spent reading it, can spare a home buyer a real architectural disaster. This book is highly recommended.

Not worth the money -
Ok, it is a fun book to look through, but honestly I can't see how it could help us select house plans which is why we bought it. The house picture on the book cover is obviously made up from many different houses and not what one would see a sane person build. We know what looks good and what we like and wouldn't make the blunders this book warns about.

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