Amazon.com
It takes only a drive through any typical American subdivision to confirm that in recent decades the average house has grown in size, narrowed in style, and shrunk in vision. Jim Tolpin's The New Cottage Home represents a return to a previous school of thought about living space: that it should be no larger than is needed, conservative of resources, rich in detail-- in short, that it should pay homage to honest architecture and fine craftsmanship, not to conspicuous consumption. The 30 cottage homes pictured, all recently built, have the slightly unfair advantage of almost magically beautiful locations, but each has a unique character and many cottage-style nooks and crannies: the converted island pump house with sod roof, the 600-square-foot woodland temple, the salvage-built house on the Kansas prairie, the off-the-grid shingled hilltop house built to take advantage of natural light. Tolpin does an excellent job of pulling together the elements of each that make it a cottage and make it appealing. In his own words, "These houses seem to call as much to the heart as to the head, enriching us more with the highs of nature than with the highs of technology. These are the new American cottages that embody the ancient storybook dream, and the kind of homes that many of us have always dreamed of living in."
Book Description
The New Cottage Home taps into today's move toward lifestyle simplicity and the idea that living space should be rich in details, conservative of resources, and no larger than necessary. Jim Tolpin celebrates the diversity and charm of 30 sample cottages, from a Pacific Northwest cottage modeled after a French hunting lodge to a "salvage yard vernacular cottage" built with junkyard materials. Each featured home reflects individual personality, priorities, and lifestyle. Whether by the water, on a mountain, or in a forest, field, or town, these homes emphasize quality of place over quantity of space.
Customer Reviews:
straight into the garage sale.......2007-09-17
the used bookstore wouldn't even want this rubbish- about 5 pages of decent information. it's all coffee table fluff and I don't drink coffee- Boo
Cottages.......2007-07-12
This book is great if you want gables and a structure with more character but more expensive. I am looking for simple structures. I do like the book a lot.
Worth the price...........2006-02-23
As an avid cottage fan, and living in one while designing a new one to build for myself which is even more zen and simple, I found this book to be one of the best books on cottages around. Although I also admit what was considered a cottage when my place was built someone hundred years ago and what is considered a cottage in 2006 is around five square feet more in size.
Of course I am a purest and go by what my dictionary says a cottage is which is 1 : the dwelling of a farm laborer or small farmer 2 : a usually small frame one-family house. Small being reduced in size. So I was surprised that on page 112 they show a French Hunting Lodge from the Pacific Northwest. Not a cottage at all.
What does make this good sized book useful for anyone looking for ideas on cottage styles is the vast array of examples given. From the coastline of Maine to the San Juan Island of Washington State, to rural Kansas to Massachusetts to favorite areas here in California.
And wonderful examples of simple to elaborate. One of my favorites because of its really simple zen style is the Pumphouse on pages 52-59 on San Juan Island in Washington State that was made into a smooth lined, all in one cottage which I and other minimalists would love to own. Or the wonderful Salvage Yard cottage in Franklin County, Kansas on page 156-161 that would fit in just about anywhere where clean lines and environmental desires are important.
There is even an off the grid cottage and some communities of nothing but cottages like those on Lopez Island in Washington State beginning on page 196, where the cottages are part of a land trust that was set up to allow people on moderate incomes to build small abodes with common greenbelt areas in and area where expensive homes were/are the norm. Heck, this made the book worth the price in itself.
Each cottage is shown inside and out complete with basic blueprints of each cottage so one can see how the space sits and works. The photography and text meld well and makes this a book that is hard to put down.
More than just another coffee table book!.......2001-12-07
You WILL find inspiration here.
Get Cozy!.......2001-11-17
This book hails a return to the smaller house. We have overlooked the value of coziness for too long.
Delightful! I must confess, my copy is quite dog-earred.
Book Description
From days of Mexican viceroys photographs, measured drawings, floor plans inspire designers.
Average customer rating:
- encyclopedia of alternative to plastic suburbs
- Very cool
- HANDBUILT HOUSES, BY FREE THINKING PEOPLE. WAY COOL YES.
- I can't make up my mind
- ! Very inspiring, a must-have reference. I never get tired of pursuing this book.
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Shelter
Manufacturer: Shelter Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0936070110 |
Amazon.com
Lloyd Kahn has managed to pull together a stunning catalog of the phenomenon of human shelter through history, across cultures and climates from around the world. Yurts and huts and tree houses and cathedrals of stone. This is an eye-opener for anyone considering building their own home, or anyone just interested in human inventiveness and creativity. With over 1000 photos and drawings of cave houses, communal huts, wooden shacks, tents, domes, towers and holes in the ground, you'll be amazed at all the different ways people have tried to keep the rain off their heads and the wolves outside!
Book Description
Shelter is many things - a visually dynamic, oversized compendium of organic architecture past and present; a how-to book that includes over 1,250 illustrations; and a Whole Earth Catalog-type sourcebook for living in harmony with the earth by using every conceivable material. First published in 1973, Shelter remains a source of inspiration and invention. Including the nuts-and-bolts aspects of building, the book covers such topics as dwellings from Iron Age huts to Bedouin tents to Togo's tin-and-thatch houses; nomadic shelters from tipis to "housecars"; and domes, dome cities, sod iglus, and even treehouses.
The authors recount personal stories about alternative dwellings that illustrate sensible solutions to problems associated with using materials found in the environment - with fascinating, often surprising results.
Customer Reviews:
encyclopedia of alternative to plastic suburbs.......2007-06-20
I bought this book when I was fourteen years old and it blew my tiny little mind! Now that I've lived a bunch of years in the design field, and I take it off the shelf, tattered from two decades of intense study, it still blows my (now even tinier) mind. Mr. Kahn has done us all a great service with this book that goes beyond architecture to higher values and has a spirit that leads by example. Sure it's got some crazy hippy parts, do with that what you will. But a deep devotion to what you make and why; it's all here. My hat's off!
Very cool.......2007-01-12
Throughout the 1960s and `70s, hundreds of unwashed, longhaired youth from around the world descended on the open foothills around Placitas, New Mexico, and established multiple communal hippie settlements. These youth had read of the Placitas scene in national magazines and counterculture books, or heard about it from other hippies; they were idealistic types from all around the world, and they came to the area to try to raise their own food, escape The Man, indulge in free love and mind-altering drugs, and live communally in tents, geodesic domes, adobe shacks, and experimental homes they built themselves out of plastic and scrap metal.
This book, "Shelter" documents their bizarre housing experiments in wild detail. It also documents curvaceous mud homes in Africa, riverside huts in Yugoslavia, thatched huts in Ireland, homes in busses, homes in caves, dome homes, homes made of car parts, homes carved into mountainsides, homes made of hay, tipis, barns, gypsy tents, and more.
If there's a strange kind of housing, you'll probably find it in here, and you'll probably be inspired by it.
"Building this house was more of like feeling where you went as you started working with it, you know, the material and just playing it from there," said one Placitas hippie interviewed in this book. "...It's like three dimensional sculpturing, you know, we just got into building a house out here that's like jewelry. ...OK, let me put it this way, the inspiration like as we move along through it, like I found it in [Stanley Kubrick's film] 2001, where the dude had finally split out of the satellite and was heading towards Jupiter, just as he was coming in, what they had done was they had used different types of film, infrared for one, and just taken a plane and flown over Grand Canyon at a high speed, low, what is created you know, is in some respects synonymous to what the house is, you know, and certainly our cell structure in our body is synonymous with that...."
As you can probably tell, this is not "Better Homes and Gardens" or even "MTV Cribs." It's "Shelter," and it's a trip.
HANDBUILT HOUSES, BY FREE THINKING PEOPLE. WAY COOL YES........2006-05-15
I studied architecture in Australia and dragged my feet through the course. That is until a mate suggested I check out this book.
It liberated me.
Here was a bunch of common folk who met one of the most basic needs of all humanity - shelter.
So much of what we encounter in our 'western' enlightened age is alien and regulated. The materials that we commonly use in buildings & infrastruture is devoid of any life or connection with the earth. They are not in or close to their natural state. And even if they are, there is so much regulation and stipulation on how we are to use them.
But this book gives you hope, a chance to dream. It shows buildings as art forms, useful & practical but completely expressive of the owners they serve. They are not bound by regulations and conventions. This is craftsmanship not industrialisation. They are made from from natural unrefined materials which in essence connects us to the earth, which we all belong to. From dust we came, to dust we will all return. The beauty of nature is your own home.
This book is filled with ideas and ways in which people have often 'escaped' from the life draining cities to a more peacuful and harmonious way of life. It's superb photo's, hand illustrations and even the way the book is laid out are a freedom in itself. This is one book you will not regret owning and will always find pleasure returning again and again to.
I can't make up my mind.......2006-03-19
Now I don't know if I want to live in a tree, a yurt, or on a converted vehicle. This makes my 'normal' house seem quite ordinary. Drat!
! Very inspiring, a must-have reference. I never get tired of pursuing this book........2005-10-01
Shelters is a must-own classic. I treasure my copy, and I am actually came to the amazon site today to buy 3 copies of this book, one to donate to my Church library, one for a Christmas gift for a carpenter friend, and one to complement my first edition of this book. This book was first released in 1973 by Shelter Press. If this book is of interest, check out the other books from them.
This is a big, oversize paperback the size of a road atlas. Every page packed with great drawings, photos or diagrams. I never get tired of browsing through the pictures, reading some of the stories, and getting inspiration to go out and build a shelter, a home, for a planned or unplanned need to build a place to live; this book covers expedient shelters of many types.
I have yet to see a better book on this subject, it is simply a fantastic reference and a joy to read. This is not a book simply on construction methodology, this is a book about people building shelter to reflect available materials, tools, budget, and most of all culture.
Book Description
A far-reaching visual survey of farm buildings across the United States, tracing their historical and regional influences.
The first in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks series, Barns presents a broad, fresh, and newly informed visual analysis of one of America's fundamental building types. In a nation founded on agrarian principles, with a cultural and physical landscape as vast as it is diverse, the barn has long been recognized as an American icon. Drawn from the vast holdings of the Library of Congress, nearly 1,000 illustrations provide a tour of barns across the United States, from New England to the Great Lakes, the South, the Midwest, and the Far West.
Barns traces geographical and chronological continuities of type, design, and construction, and the Dutch, German, French, and Spanish influence. Captions identify each document and building, and all images are included on a CD-ROM (runs on both Windows and Macintosh platforms, requires Internet access) linked to the Library's high-resolution files. Barns is the first comprehensive visual resource of its kind, an invaluable tool for architects, historians, students-and anyone who loves barns. 1,000 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
The Best Resource on Barns.......2004-02-03
I highly recommend this book for general readers and researchers interested in relationships between architecture and history. John Vlach has a comprehensive knowledge of architecture, and he insightfully writes about the importance of barns and rural cultural landscapes as resources for studying history. This new volume is an important resource for studies of rural folk culture as it provides studies of a great variety of barns and an array of approaches for learning about vernacular architecture.
Book Description
This lavishly-illustrated volume provides an unprecedented look at twenty-eight houses (plus eleven barns and other structures) built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Dutch colonists in the north-eastern United States, primarily in upstate New York and along the Hudson River Valley, on Long Island and Staten Island, and in New Jersey. An authoritative work-- written by eminent experts in the field-- Dutch Colonial Homes in America explores the homes in their broader social context by focusing on the historical and religious forces of the times. This book is the first to investigate the meaning of the home and its aesthetics for the Dutch in America, and also the first to look at these homes as a form of art and craft and, importantly, the influence this form and these people had on the shape of the American house to come. The 200 spectacular new color photographs here are beautifully styled in a manner that recalls the paintings of Vermeer and evoke what might have been the ambiance of these homes hundreds of years ago.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful book with perfect colour photo's.......2005-09-25
This book provides an overview of a number of houses built by the Dutch colonist and their descendants in the former colony New Netherland. Beautiful photo's and an extensive historical description of eacht house and its area.
One of may favorites.......2005-05-19
This is one of may favorite books featuring authentic Dutch colonials.
The pictures are wonderful as well as the text.
I had no idea as to the contribution the Dutch had not only in architecture but to the development of the country.
There are many distinctions in their details. There are also many commonalities. I've been able to sort through and incorporate some simple but memorable treatments in one of my projects thanks to this book.
It's a great reference for ideas as well as history and I turn to it often as of late.
wonderful visuals!!.......2002-10-15
This book contains some of the best visuals I have seen in quite a long time. The useage of lateral light to bring out texture, color, and ambience is striking. The authors have succedded in isolating commonplace daily scenes found in everything from common humble surroundings to the grandest settings. All scenes are presented equally well, and ,most important, in a new manner- Thus allowing the contemporary viewer to more than glimpse into the past. The visuals are accompainied with an informative, very readable text to greatly aid the reader in interpretation of the scenes depicted. Well done!
great book on a little known subject.......2002-09-27
The material culture of the Dutch in America has always been misunderstood, mis-interrupted, and ignored. Now a book which gives visual evidence of the major contributions of the Dutch in the New World- how this culture in large part contributed to the newly emerging American culture and society.
This is a must read for anyone interested in early American history as well as the colonial era.
Customer Reviews:
A good resource.......2006-03-16
Particularly good for Santa Fe style details but has material appropriate for Territorial style as well, which makes it a good companion for "American Adobes" by Beverley Spears. Should not be criticized for lack of plans, as the title makes clear that this is a book strictly about details.
Finest research for authentic details.......2005-12-12
One of the very best photo and essay books for authentic New Mexico rural architecture details.
Contains the details, photos that creates authentic style!.......2003-06-09
Here's the major pluses of this book, one worth adding to a bookshelf on New Mexican style:
1. Photos of authentic architectural details, many of them now gone or extinct, making this a valuable resource - and one that should be even more valuable in years to come.
2. An opportunity to see the interiors of several old and historic Santa Fe homes, with close-ups of such details as the fireplaces, tin and iron fixtures , doors, gates, window treatments, corbels, etc.
3. Historical information which provides added insight and perspective
All of the above is more than enough to warrant a place on my bookshelf. Now, a few words about what this book is NOT: if you are looking for architectural layouts of homes, complete with specs, etc...this book is not what you want. But if you want a close look at the fine details that can make or break authentic New Mexican style- details such as Corbels, Portal Posts, Doors, Windows, alacenas, Railings, gates and mailboxes- this would be a wonderful addition to your library.
few plans.......2003-01-04
very beautiful photo , interior design , but no plans
carmine raimo jr italy
Average customer rating:
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Private Palm Beach: Tropical Style
Jennifer Ash
Manufacturer: Abbeville Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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Book Description
This comprehensive, well-illustrated survey of English architecture provides an evenhanded, straightforward history from Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the twentieth century. Concentrating on buildings that can still be seen today, David Watkin discusses all the styles and periods of English architecture, including Norman, early Gothic, Perpendicular, Tudor and Jacobean, Baroque, Classical, and Victorian. The emphasis is on the high points of English creative genius as expressed in the art of architecture by Edwin Lutyens, Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, John Soane, James Stirling, Richard Rogers, and a host of others. This updated edition includes a new preface, a revised bibliography, and an expanded chapter on twentieth-century architecture that brings the story up to the present. 320 b/w illustrations.
Book Description
Vernacular Drawings is a sumptuous, full-color, cloth bound coffee table book collecting the drawings of award-winning cartoonist Seth.
A broad range of subject matter is covered here, from portraits of early jazz greats and scenes of burlesque shows to an oddly intriguing gallery of successful insurance salesmen circa 1947. Nothing is out of place in Vernacular Drawings: there are portraits of R. Crumb and Django Reinhardt and an image of a glorious 1920's ballroom scene is followed by a dilapidated, circa 2000 industrial building. A bold portrait of a North American Indian is preceded by another of a Spanish matador. Seth's illustrations have been seen by millions throughout North America in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post, and he is best known as a cartoonist from his series Palooka-Ville and his award-winning book, It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken. Available exclusively in this cloth-bound edition, Vernacular Drawings is Seth's first "non-comics" collection, a lavish, full-color art book that will appeal to aesthetes everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
The best comic artist to never make a fortune........2003-08-22
It's some kind of sin that a hack like Todd MacFarlane can afford things like multi-million dollar baseballs on an empire based on his comic work when there are artists out there like Seth. MacFarlane's work is like a Harlequin novel, and Seth's is like Romeo and Juliet. There's art in every line, every detail, instead of being a force for sheer commericialism. Do yourself a favour: instead of picking up whatever garbage MacFarlane is peddling, go buy this book and Seth's trade, "It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken".
Staggeringly beautiful!.......2002-03-03
One of the most beautiful books published in recent memory.
Even before opening the book, one sees that a great deal of care was taken in the printing of this book, the embossed cover, design, etc., ...and that's just the outside. Inside is page after page of drawings and paintings of innumerable subjects, seeming to defy any categorizing. An admirer of Seth's comic art may yet be surprised by his depth and skill as an artist outside of the comic realm. His mastery of the line is rivalled by his use of color and light. He writes that the book is composed of pages from his sketchbooks, things that he created for his own pleasure. And after poring over the book, one gets a sense that there is something personal in the subject matter, that indeed they are things that he drew for his enjoyment. Lucky for us, we get to enjoy it too.
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Books Index
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The Cabin: Inspiration for the Classic American Getaway
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More Small Houses (Great Houses)
Classic Cottages
