There are good architects here and there in this world…
Stainless lettering, mortised into flooring, attached with stainless steel phillips head screws, Milano Coffee Roasters, Gastown, Vancouver. There are also interesting tables and benches of poured concrete. Innovative architecture/design.
Our new book Small Homes: The Right Size is now available at independent bookstores, and Amazon — as well as from us: www.shelterpub.com/building/small-homes
Shameless Commerce Dept. This is, I think, the best building book we’ve ever done. (Yes, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it keeps reoccurring to me.) Shelter is everyone’s favorite; it captured the times, it inspired thousands of homes. Builders of the Pacific Coast is in some ways, my best book. It’s an odyssey of discovery where the reader rides shotgun with me over a 2-year period. Cohesive and focused.
BUT Small Homes is so useful to so many people in this era of astronomical home prices and rents, that I think it’s hugely important. It offers alternatives to people looking for rentals on Craigslist or homes on Zillow. Here are 65 very different homes, of different materials, in different parts of the world. The idea, as with all our building books is to use your hands to create your own shelter.
Two things I’ve discovered about this book (after seeing the finished product):
- There are a lot of homes out in middle America – Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, more so than in any of our other books.
- It sparkles. Largely due to Rick’s considerable Photoshop skills, a motley assortment of photos from contributors have been rendered in colorful detail. I was stunned when I saw the first book off the press. The photos draw you in.
Tags: alternative energy, architecture, books, builders, building, carpentry, communication, design, homes, homesteading, natural materials, recycling, small homes, small towns, tiny homes
Rick and I are in the final stages of preparing Small Homes for the printers. We changed the cover from an earlier version, which showed a small turn-of-the-century home in Santa Cruz (in this revised cover, it’s the middle image in the left hand column), because a single image didn’t seem to represent the diversity of images (120 or so small homes) in the book. Hence the collage.
Below are two alternatives, the same except for the background color. In the one with the red, it’s similar-looking to Home Work, Builders of the Pacific Coast, and Tiny Homes on the Move. Some of our savvy book friends think it’s too similar, and that another color would distinguish it from the other books. Hence the other with the dark green background.
Comments, please. Which do you like? Do you see any problem in this cover being similar to our other books?
Tags: architecture, art, books, builders, building, green building, homes, homesteading, masonry, natural building, natural materials, salvaged materials, Scotland, small homes, small towns, timber frame, woodwork
Jim Bahoosh is a builder in Maine who specializes in small (500-900 sq. ft.) homes. His homes look really nice, and of the right size.
This of course coincides with our next book, now almost completed: Small Homes, which highlights some 70 builders and their small homes (400-1200 sq. ft.). It’s due out in February, 2017.
Article on Jim: https://bangordailynews.com/2016/08/01/homestead/small-but-not-tiny-houses-right-size-for-many/
His website: https://www.jimbahooshbuilder.com/houses.shtml
Gabrielle Garland is a prolific New York-based artist whose main focus right now is on homes and dwelling spaces. Her little homes are whimsical and alive. Here is what The Hughes Gallery in Australia wrote about her:
“…Focusing on areas of human habitation, Garland does not seek to directly depict these spaces, but rather to communicate the ways we experience place. To that end she twists the rules of perspective to better suit the shift in focus and vantage point that occurs when we are in a room or outside a building. Memory is integral to the process. Garland takes photographs to remind her of the experience of a space and when translating them to drawings she combines alternative perspectives from different photographs to create ‘a kind of virtual collage allowing many different systems of order to exist in a single piece.…'”
https://www.rayhughesgallery.com/bio-cv/Gabrielle-Garland
There is a wonderful body of her work at https://gabriellegarland.org/ and an exhibit opening in Chicago on July 22nd (tomorrow): https://www.corbettvsdempsey.com/2016/06/24/gabrielle-garland-2/
We just finished what will probably be the middle section of the book, “Small Homes in Cities and Towns,” 67 photos on some 20 pages. When Rick showed me the finished pages, I was thrilled. Some times I’ll muddle my way through a project, starting with no concept of how it will come out, and the whole, as they say, is greater than the sum of its parts, i.e., synergy.
We’ve got 200 out of 224 pages done now. I have this great feeling, having worked for so many months, because:
1. we’re close to the end (to printers in November, out February 2017)
2. it looks so darned good!
