William J. Hirsch Jr. AIA

This book covers the whole process of home design. It would be a good first book on the topic of building a custom home. It is arranged into 12 lessons, each of which covers a different aspect of the design process.

The first four lessons cover principles of design. These will be familiar to those who have read other books on home design. Lesson five covers some of the practical aspects of building a home (e.g., choosing an architect). Lessons 7 through 11 go through the design process including analyzing how you really live, choosing a site, determining the program for the home, laying out the different spaces in the home, filling in the details that turn sketches into plans, and thinking about the details of individual rooms. Lesson 12 has a brief discussion of budgeting.

In one of the lessons on design, lesson 2, Hirsch introduces the concept of "peopling" spaces.

To 'people' a space, [Hirsch's teacher] said, is to make a space comfortable for human habitation. His thesis was that we all perceive cues in spaces that let us know the space is meant for people.

This includes techniques such as giving architecture a physical scale that is related to the size of people and create places for interaction (both planned and unplanned).

Lesson 9 is the gem of the book. It details the process of getting from the house program (the list of things you want) to a floor plan. Hirsch's approach starts with bubbles representing different spaces and their relative sizes. He then adds links to express the relationship between these rooms. The bubbles are rearranged subject to the links (on a site plan) until they start to resemble a room layout. Once this point has been reached, you have something that can be turned into a floor plan.

I have two main criticisms of this book. First, the pictures did not strike my fancy -- too traditional for my taste. Second, the book sometimes feels padded. Many of the images add nothing to the nearby text. I almost feel as if Hirsch had written a good book and then his editor came along and told him that a book on home design needs to have at least one picture per page.… (mehr)

Architect Hirsch has written a handy guidebook for designing a house that will fit your needs, both now and in the future. Of course, being an architect, he strongly advises hiring one to do the actual design work. But he admits that today the majority of houses are built without an architect, and that makes the book even more valuable than if you had one. He points out the things to be considered, from the feel of a home to energy efficiency to the long term savings that can be had by spending more at building stage.

He goes over the psychology of architecture- how if a room is too large, people don’t want to sit and talk in it unless you make tight groupings of furniture, how the position of the driveway affects if you feel like you’ve arrived at a home, why high ceilings can be a waste of materials (and energy to heat it) because people always end up trying to make them look lower anyway. He goes over balance and symmetry, and why the home owner shouldn’t tell the subcontractors to do things (because you should go through the general contractor, as one change can affect the whole project and end up costing you a fortune). He tells you to decide how you want to use the house before you ever put a line on paper. What is important to you in the house? Being green? Having a lot of family space? Having spaces to be alone? Entertaining? Hobbies? Decide those things first. He gives hints on site selection. There is a section of what needs to be designed in to make a house accessible if one needs a wheelchair.

It’s a very thorough book, and includes a lot of things that most people just wouldn’t think of on their own. It encourages the owner to ask questions of the architect and/or builder rather than just being led- not just design questions, either, but ones about prices, insurance and subcontractors. This would be a good book for anyone building a house, even if you’re starting with off-the-rack plans.… (mehr)