Includes 36 tiny "houses" in natural settings like suburban backyards, rural acreage and the desert. Each house is presented along with multiple color photographs, a brief profile of the project's origins and history, and their square footage. Highly creative for sure (!); overall, the designs just feel too modern, extravagant and impractical for my tastes.

2.5 stars ( )

There is certainly some interesting architecture and great photography in this book, but tiny "houses" is not the whole truth.

The smaller "houses" are really little more than solid sleeping cells. Permanent tents, you might say. Room to sleep for 2 or more people, but no storage, no kitchen of any kind, no bathroom of any kind, no room to turn around while standing even. While some of these are interesting--the sleeping/playing/resting huts at a Thai orphanage, for example--they are hardly "houses".

Many are vacation homes. I am actually curious how many are lived in by a person/family most/all of the time. ( )

I must admit that I thought about Ted Kaczynski's little shack in the woods at first, but this book is a collection of delightful small houses in nature, ones that a contemporary Henry David Thoreau might enjoy using for his comtemplation and writing! The ones with lots of bookshelves were among my favorites, of course. :-) ( )

Monograph library - shelved at: 82 - Houses