Rating: 
Summary: Limiting
Review: The problem with this book and Susanka's first is that the range of styles isn't a range at all. One architectural look runs through her books. I personally found the first NOT SO BIG HOUSE book depressing because the interiors tended to be so dark, woody, grim, and filled with dated furnishings that looked like 1970s rejects. I like the idea behind these books, which is getting away from builder junk and creating a home that has architectural integrity and greater function. The book I highly recommend in that vein is called SMALL HOUSE BIG STYLE, because it shows a true range of home styles and approaches.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Helpful
Review: This book and the author's earlier work "The Not So Big House" were instrumental in helping me to develop a vision for the renovation of my home. The book spelled out concepts about what makes a home comfortable and allowed me to communicate better what I wanted in a home design. Many great ideas and pictures to stimulate ideas! I feel very thankful that I discovered it before my house was in process....
Rating: 
Summary: Very practical guide to combining form with function
Review: This book builds nicely upon the author's earlier book which showed how very comfortable, very personal houses could be built that did not have a lot of unused and uncomfortable space. No McMansions with cathederal ceilings and formal dining rooms that never get used! This book focuses on how to install specific features in a home, that can make it more useable without having to build an entire new home (though in building/renovating a home, there are a lot of good ideas here). This is a very pretty book, with lots of illustrations of how houses can be built, renovated, and decorated to make the best use of space while still being very appealing to the eye. It is more practical than the first book (which really focused on builiding a whole new home) and can help you think about new ways of setting up a place to live.
Rating:
Summary: Build it and you will like it.
Review: This book has been borrowed and lent out by some many of our friends who are building or thinking of building that I am thinking of getting a second copy. Innovative and original ideas that make sense for how most of us live. The designs are fresh and the innovations are clearly explained so you can figure out how to adapt them to your context. I love this book!
Rating:
Summary: One of the most valuable books i own
Review: This book is amazing! I bought both books (the not so big house and this one) and they were incredibly valuable in designing my own home. I would recommend reading the first book as a primer of sorts for this one. It introduces the main ideas in building "not so big" and allows the reader to get a feel for what Susanka is trying to achieve. This book allows the reader to see real-life examples of the principles of "not so big". We started out in a 5000 sq. foot home. We ended up building a 600 square foot home with two bedrooms (and it wasn't because of budget). People are always amazed when we tell them the size of the house. They always guess it to be 1000 sq. feet or more! I would recommend this book to anyone looking to build a home. It demonstrates rather effectively that less is, in fact, more.
Rating:
Summary: Not exactly affordable.....
Review: This book is filled with wonderful ideas and beautiful pictures. I fell in love with the concepts and some of the designs. But brace yourself - these designs are not cheap. 'Small' definitely does not mean inexpensive. I am planning on building a house and fell in love with one plan entitled 'Affordable <something>' (don't have the book in front of me). Well, if you consider 'affordable' to be more-than-double the square foot cost of a 'normal' house, then this is for you. (This was not just one quote, it was the average quote from four different recommended general contractors. I was in shock. I can't imagine what the cost might be for some of the 'non-affordable' houses <grin>)
Rating:
Summary: Not so big book...
Review: This is a beautifully illustrated book that seeks to demonstrate, that when it comes to homes, smaller may be better. The book is well organized and thoughtful, presenting key concepts for creating the 'not so big house.' If I have any regrets, its that the book doesn't go far enough--all but two of the featured houses are over 1,000 square feet, and the majority of the concepts still require large budgets to execute. I was hoping to see more affordable concepts and solutions illustrated. Still, for anyone looking for ideas for implementing the concepts of smallness, this book is worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: An OK book, but WAY below the par of "The Not So Big House"
Review: This is a good book. Unfortunately, it's a follow-on to an EXCELLENT book ("The Not So Big House"), and fares poorly by comparison. As this later volume is sold as a companion book in collection with the original, it's entirely fair to take this comparison into account. So what's wrong with "Creating the Not So Big House"? It comes down to the writing, the photos, the editing, and the content. To be clear, none of these four areas are terrible -- but the first book hit high marks in all respects. So I'll go through each in turn. Sarah Susanka is by training an architect rather than an author. The text shows the lack of a professional writer, for example, in excessive use of commas, separating both dependent and independent clauses, resulting in choppy sentences, just like this one. (A real quote: "By adding the new area as a separate structure, connected to the old house by a flat-roofed section, the existing roof could remain untouched, which was a major money saver.") It is clear that freelance writer Kira Obolensky made valuable contributions to the original "The Not So Big House". This volume and "The Not So Big House" have the same format: 10" x 10" square, with photographs pushing to all four page edges at times. Most photos in the first book are at least 1/4 page in size (25 square inches); about 20% (or over 40 of the 200+) in "Creating the Not So Big House" are under 6 square inches, and in many cases they're just too small to be worthwhile. An example from page 129: "A spacious pantry serves the same function as cupboards" -- but the size of the photo renders this "spacious" pantry only 5/32" across. Their size apart, the photographs by Grey Crawford are well composed, with excellent contrast and color depth. It's unfortunate that Susanka had to rely on photos from other architects for some projects. "Photo courtesy Jacobson Silverstein Winslow" generally labels the disappointments. Moving along to the editing: I REALLY miss the first book's use of orientation arrows matching the photos to the plans. With the frequent small size, as noted above, it's often difficult to match the two. Also, the layout editing is weak. The book features numerous oversized box quotes in the margins. These sentences are all in the text anyway, and repeating them just takes away from space that would be MUCH better used for larger photographs. This technique of spotlighting key sentences is an editorial gimmick to get people to read an article as they're flipping through a magazine. In a book rather than a periodical it's purely annoying. Naturally, the original "The Not So Big House" doesn't have this fault; it reserves large margin text for quotes from the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright. It's gospel that you sell houses at daytime, with all the interior lights turned on. This theme is carried to extreme in "Creating the Not So Big House". Only 5 (out of well over 200) interior photographs are shot without daylight. (The first book had 13 nighttime photos out of a smaller total.) Doesn't Susanka realize that many of us see our houses primarily at night? If she's serious about DESIGNING for the way we really live, how about SHOWING it the way we live? Finally, there are relatively few new design concepts compared to the first book. In "The Not So Big House" Susanka discussed the value of substantial trim around doors and windows, built-ins, an "away" room, double-duty spaces, varying ceiling heights, acoustical privacy, and at least a dozen other design thoughts that aren't commonly preached to the home-buying public. "Creating the Not So Big House" only adds a smattering of new ideas: a pod of space, themes and variations, spatial layering, and golden mean proportioning. Now that I've finished with the complaints I'll depart on an upbeat note. Its refreshing breadth of architectural designs adds utility to "Creating the Not So Big House" over the first book's emphasis on Craftsman style. In a book that attempts to teach by illustration it's very helpful to show a variety of forms in the hope that one of them may resonate with the dreams of potential home builders.
Rating:
Summary: An OK book, but WAY below the par of "The Not So Big House"
Review: This is a good book. Unfortunately, it's a follow-on to an EXCELLENT book ("The Not So Big House"), and fares poorly by comparison. As this later volume is sold as a companion book in collection with the original, it's entirely fair to take this comparison into account. So what's wrong with "Creating the Not So Big House"? It comes down to the writing, the photos, the editing, and the content. To be clear, none of these four areas are terrible -- but the first book hit high marks in all respects. So I'll go through each in turn. Sarah Susanka is by training an architect rather than an author. The text shows the lack of a professional writer, for example, in excessive use of commas, separating both dependent and independent clauses, resulting in choppy sentences, just like this one. (A real quote: "By adding the new area as a separate structure, connected to the old house by a flat-roofed section, the existing roof could remain untouched, which was a major money saver.") It is clear that freelance writer Kira Obolensky made valuable contributions to the original "The Not So Big House". This volume and "The Not So Big House" have the same format: 10" x 10" square, with photographs pushing to all four page edges at times. Most photos in the first book are at least 1/4 page in size (25 square inches); about 20% (or over 40 of the 200+) in "Creating the Not So Big House" are under 6 square inches, and in many cases they're just too small to be worthwhile. An example from page 129: "A spacious pantry serves the same function as cupboards" -- but the size of the photo renders this "spacious" pantry only 5/32" across. Their size apart, the photographs by Grey Crawford are well composed, with excellent contrast and color depth. It's unfortunate that Susanka had to rely on photos from other architects for some projects. "Photo courtesy Jacobson Silverstein Winslow" generally labels the disappointments. Moving along to the editing: I REALLY miss the first book's use of orientation arrows matching the photos to the plans. With the frequent small size, as noted above, it's often difficult to match the two. Also, the layout editing is weak. The book features numerous oversized box quotes in the margins. These sentences are all in the text anyway, and repeating them just takes away from space that would be MUCH better used for larger photographs. This technique of spotlighting key sentences is an editorial gimmick to get people to read an article as they're flipping through a magazine. In a book rather than a periodical it's purely annoying. Naturally, the original "The Not So Big House" doesn't have this fault; it reserves large margin text for quotes from the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright. It's gospel that you sell houses at daytime, with all the interior lights turned on. This theme is carried to extreme in "Creating the Not So Big House". Only 5 (out of well over 200) interior photographs are shot without daylight. (The first book had 13 nighttime photos out of a smaller total.) Doesn't Susanka realize that many of us see our houses primarily at night? If she's serious about DESIGNING for the way we really live, how about SHOWING it the way we live? Finally, there are relatively few new design concepts compared to the first book. In "The Not So Big House" Susanka discussed the value of substantial trim around doors and windows, built-ins, an "away" room, double-duty spaces, varying ceiling heights, acoustical privacy, and at least a dozen other design thoughts that aren't commonly preached to the home-buying public. "Creating the Not So Big House" only adds a smattering of new ideas: a pod of space, themes and variations, spatial layering, and golden mean proportioning. Now that I've finished with the complaints I'll depart on an upbeat note. Its refreshing breadth of architectural designs adds utility to "Creating the Not So Big House" over the first book's emphasis on Craftsman style. In a book that attempts to teach by illustration it's very helpful to show a variety of forms in the hope that one of them may resonate with the dreams of potential home builders.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book for those looking to build.
Review: This is a great book and should be read by those still in the planning stage. There are many ideas that I could have used in building my first house in Oregon. It could have been a timeless home. It was large and spacious but I could have made it so much more efficient. Too much space just averagely planned was what I got. I had been living in a 8x33 ft trailer home but did not let it teach me anything. Builtin's, builtin's is how to describe this book. It can easily save you much money on furniture!! Buy it to aid you in your planning and save in the building phase. I have not built anoter home but had to buy prebuilt but it showed me many things we have incorported in our present home. Look before you leap my mother used to say and this book will help you see where you will land.
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