The Big Book of Small Home Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Houses 1,250 Square Feet or Less

Rating:
Summary: A wealth of environmentally aware plans
Review: The Big Book Of Small House Designs assembles over 500 black-and-white drawings displaying all aspects of 75 small homes of a wide variety of styles. Drawn from several competitions held among architects and designers to create the best, most liveable and affordable home possible within a limited amount of space, The Big Book Of Small House Designs expands its idea into a wealth of environmentally aware plans that involve such tactics as vaulted ceilings, vertical space, single-story or split-level format, and much more. Designs ranging from traditional to avant-garde make The Big Book Of Small House Designs a superb catalogue of ideas for anyone considering building an economically sized dwelling whether for personal use or as part of a continuing desire to improve one's skills and awareness in the architectural professions.

Rating:
Summary: Too easy
Review: While containing a number of intersting plans for small homes, this book falls short on several accounds. First, there is almost no text save what is on the inside of the jacket. That's right: no introduction, no methodology. There is no explanation of which competitions the plans were taken from or what awards they won. (Amusingly, I went to show my neighbor one of the plans that I liked. He said he liked it too but that it was an old plan from a competition in the early 90's. And would you believe that he happened to have a copy of the competition from which the plan was taken!)
Secondly, as to the plans themselves, dimensions are rarely marked and often unclearly. In the case of two or three of the plans this makes them nearly unintelligable.
The lack of wall sections or descriptions of materials used for the majority of the plans makes it impossible to understand the particulars of what makes the houses energy effecient.
In short, the book far from lives up to its description and isn't worth spending the money for a handful of plans since a person can look at plans all day long for free online.