| | Small
Houses, by Loft
Publications.
Small, or mini, houses have grown
in popularity lately, a response to the bloated McMansions
that have become the standard for new construction not only
in suburbs but many cities, as owners group lots to create
larger sites that accommodate the beasts. Not really a type
in an of itself, small houses (in the case of this book)
tend to be less than 1,000 s.f. and must be highly efficient,
often relying on elements that can serve double-duty, such
as walls also acting as storage. With many
recent books devoted to the subject of small houses,
this one simply takes that name, offering the reader 25
built examples that vary in size from 355 s.f. (the Black
Box by Andreas Henrikson that graces the cover) to 2,010
s.f. (a size almost too big for this book). Brief descriptions
accompany each house, but for the most part the book is
imagery, with a plethora of photographs and drawings; if
it weren't so small it could easily be called a coffee table
book. One critique of the book is that it's missing photographs
that show people using the houses, something that would
help elucidate how each small house works but also to clarify
the actual scale of each relative to the others. But if
anything that's more a fault of architectural photography
in general -- which ironically banishes the user from the
built representation -- than of this book in particular.
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