Hot off the presses is the The Complete Idiot's Guide to Designing your Own Home.
The guide just hit shelves in May of this year and could be just the help needed for those of you who have embarked on the road of designing for yourselves.
A little about the design expert authors:
Author/architect Oreste Drapaca brings over 15 years of expertise to the writing of this book, explaining the methods and techniques he has used to design homes and apartments for all budgets. Drapaca is also an experienced teacher and project architect at the internationally renowned architectural firm, I.M. Pei and Partners.
Abigail R. Esman writes for such art, design, and real estate publications as Town & Country, Elle Living, House & Garden, and Vogue.
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Comments (6)
You know who you use this book? That couple from Dream House Diary Blog on nytimes.com. Anyone else read that? They are starting to seem to me to be Complete Idiots. I'm really starting to understand why all my architect friends are so miserable. Working with client like this must be a total drag.
Um, yeah. There's a reason that architects have to spend years in school, usually have a Master's degree, and also have to pass an exam and be registered by the state to practice architecture -designing a building is a technical and complicated process, even a house. People who think they can be their own architect because the have a "flair" for design really frustrate me. Would they be willing to represent themselves in court or treat their own illness after reading a book...Probably not. Architects, engineers, lawyers and doctors are all professionals. You can't learn it from reading a "How To" book.
I'm with bklynarch. Anyone who designs their own home after reading a book deserves to have to live in that home for the rest of their days.
My architect wrote this book. :) Buy it buy it!
Maybe you can't learn the entire profession of architecture from reading a book, but certainly a book like this can help "common" people better understand and articulate the options available to them. Heaven forbid someone without a Masters Degree in architecture have an opinion about their own home's design.
A clever architect might recommend something like this book to clients, as a tactful way of sending the message that staircases really do take up that much volume, building codes are laws rather than suggestions, and making the place bigger will cost more when you go to build.
I suspect that some architect pains come from dealing with people who work all day in high-powered jobs where (a) you can negotiate anything and (b) changes can be made late in the project without disaster. The client doesn't necessarily grok that building departments (and the laws of physics) are surprisingly intransigent, nor that once the foundation is poured, certain decisions are literally set in stone.