The not so big house
The Not So Big House proposes clear, workable guidelines for creating homes that serve both our spiritual needs and our material requirements, whether for a couple with no children, a family, empty nesters, or one person alone. In 1938, LIFE magazine commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a dream home for America. The result was the Usonian house, an enduring model of modest-sized residential architecture. Now, Sarah Susanka, brings Wright's same commonsense, human-scale design principles to our generation. Consider which rooms in your house you use and enjoy most, and you have a sense of the essential principles of The Not So Big House. Whether you seek comfort and calm or activity and energy at home, The Not So Big House offers a place for every mood.
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What Hacker News says
- If you are building your own home, read The Not So Big House:
https://susanka.com/not-so-big-house/
It is full of good ideas and is a beautiful book in its own right.
- There's a small distillation of his principles in The Not So Big House, (bonus, it has photos). From what I remember, you want to design space so people move from dark toward light, light rooms from two sides, sleep area should be like covered nooks for feeling of security, stairs and halls should be wider, there should be views from one room to another ... A Pattern Language and The Not So Big House informed how we did renovations in our own home.
- I learned about his work through reading The Not So Big House. I've also asked Architects and Builders I've met if they are familiar with his work or the related Not So Big House movement, I haven't met a single one that have heard of either. It seems so strange to me. It would be like meeting a programmer who has never heard of functional programming. Even if you choose to use OOP instead of functional programming, surely you've at least heard of functional programming. How can you be an architect and be ignorant of Christopher Alexander??
- I’ll throw in Sarah Susanka’s “Not So Big House” as a homage to old wisdoms in more contemporary form:
https://susanka.com/not-so-big-house/
An architect who focuses on more traditional sizes in new form: https://rosschapin.com/plans/
- This book (and others in the author's series) is a beautiful exploration of that concept: https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Big-House-Blueprint/dp/1561583...
- Interesting. Looks like a more nitty-gritty complement to the Not So Big House movement that had a moment around the turn of the century. https://susanka.com/not-so-big-house/
