The Good House: Contrast As a Design Tool

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference for student architects!
Review: As an architectural student, I found this book to be excellent. Unlike other architecture books which may highlight an architect or certain buildings, this book highlights the idea of "contrast" to stimulate how one can critically think about a design whether the project happens to be residential, public or institutional. The book also shows a myriad of different types of buildings of different styles to highlight the "contrast" concept clearly. I belive, this is an excellent refence book for students and architects alike!

Rating:
Summary: too simple
Review: First, to give the author credit, he reviewed other architect's works first and described the aspects of what he believed showed good design. Then he showed his own designs, very interesting. The man is talented. His commentary on contrasts is just too basic to good design to deserve an entire book on the subject. His analysis was clever and facile, but any student of design (or anyone with taste) understands the contrasts of large and small, bright and dark. His use of patterns is mildly interesting, hardly captivating. When I was finished I hadn't book-marked a single page (unusual for me) and I threw it on a pile of design books to be consigned to the library. Good for first-year design students, perhaps.

Rating:
Summary: too simple
Review: Tells you how to create the details that make a place special, using a simple but powerful theory of linked contrasts. Highly readable, can be put to use by anyone. Few books offer such design insight, none in so few pages. I rank "The Good House" alongside Alexander's classic "A Pattern Language".

Rating:
Summary: Short and sweet -- an undiscovered gem.
Review: Tells you how to create the details that make a place special, using a simple but powerful theory of linked contrasts. Highly readable, can be put to use by anyone. Few books offer such design insight, none in so few pages. I rank "The Good House" alongside Alexander's classic "A Pattern Language".

Rating:
Summary: Transitions
Review: This is a nice, short little book with sketches and photos showing you how to properly design transitions that provide the proper contrast from inside to outside, up and down, light and dark, order and mystery, etc.

It is a very basic book, which is probably more for a first year architect student, but it may also help to remind practicing architects what makes a house a home.