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US Green Building Council LEED New Construction Reference Guide 2.2
US Green Building Council LEED New Construction Reference Guide 2.2
Some Architecture Books for the Do-It-Yourself-er
If you're thinking about building your own house, you can use all the help you can get. Here are some classic texts you may find useful.
The biggest, oldest, longest, heaviest, priciest, most comprehensive volume in my office is one almost every architect has. Architectural Graphic Standards (9" by 11 1/2" by 2 1/2", 6 lbs, 854 pages, originally published in 1932) could be titled "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Buildings, But Didn't Know Enough To Ask, And Then Some." It has much of the technical information you'll need for the average house project. There are diagrams on foundation layout, wood framing, waterproofing and roofing. It exhaustively catalogs types of wood mouldings, concrete blocks, bricks, furniture and trees. And if you're building something really unusual, "Graphic Standards" can give you the dimensions of a bowling alley (11'-3" by 98'-11 1/4" for two lanes with a center ball return), or a railroad caboose (20'-6" long by 9'-3" wide by 11'-9" high".) This book is expensive. Get it at the library, where you can find the information you need in the current edition and study the old editions for their curiosity value.
My father's copy - the 1951 Fourth Edition - contains my favorite page. "Kitchen Equipment and Utensils" shows painstakingly hand-done line drawings dimensioning everything from your granny's wooden potato masher (8 1/2" - 10" X 4") to two kinds of toasters, automatic and manual. The better to design your kitchen storage, my dear. By the time my father bought me the updated Sixth Edition for architecture school this page had, sadly, gone the way of the masher and the manual toaster it depicted.
For some clear narrative instruction on the house-building process, take a look at The Well Built House. by Jim Locke. If you can tolerate some of the strongly stated biases - "...the spiral stair...I hate them. They are hard to walk up or down..." - this book will guide you through house-building in a logical, straightforward way. Mr. Locke emphasizes care in the process and quality in the product. He is full of downright sound advice: "...bathroom decisions: Don't wait until the hammers are poised to figure out what you want..." Its organized to mimic the actual sequence of events, correctly starting with a chapter called "Planning and Paperwork" and then going through the steps of construction. The illustrations are helpful, and there could be more of them, but you can always refer to "Graphic Standards" for such details.
Author-contractor Jim Locke first appeared in Tracy Kidders book, House. I didn't read House while I was building my house. But, I heard a lot of it in the evenings of the months prior. "Hey, listen to this," my wife would say, seeking confirmation of one or another passage. The book is the true-life account of a Massachusetts couple, their architect, their contractor (Mr. Locke) and their new house. It's full of the diversions and asides that make for absorbing reading: the derivation of the client's surname; a comparison with the cost of Henry David Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond; Jim Locke's love affair; and long sections of dialogue.)
In his recounting of the human relationships and events that are central to any construction project, Mr. Kidder prepares you for the excitement and the setbacks of life amidst the unfolding process. The contractors "...set up...a small factory beside the foundation: generator, extension cords, ladders, sawhorses,... they buckle on belts and make themselves into roving hardware displays...framing is the art of thinking ahead with clarity, of seeing the end in the beginning..."
There is nothing more important to the success of a house than "seeing the end in the beginning." The Place of Houses can help you do this. I am told it is out of print, but get it if you can. One of my former employers actually required prospective clients to read this book - written by practicing, competing colleagues! - before beginning a project. It is a literate guide to helping you, through enlightening historical example, to think about what you want in your house. The authors cite Vermeer paintings to illustrate points about natural light, and quote Henry James about the embodiment in houses of "ideas, a will, a purpose, a patience, an intelligence, a store of knowledge, ..." They use their own work and that of others as examples. The book ends with a most useful 26 page chapter called "Yours" which consists mostly of a "kind of check list to identify the choices which you must make..." With questions phrased to encourage an open minded approach, the authors encourage you to address practical considerations that may seem obvious but sometimes get overlooked. For example: "How will the water from the sky get off the roof?"; and "What will people wash their bodies in?"
A Pattern Language provides patterns - as in sewing patterns, almost, but in words as well as pictures - for your consideration. The book is organized in a clear, easy to reference format. But it's friendlier than a standard reference like Architectural Graphic Standards, and it has a different purpose. It's a book of ideas, and you can hold it in one hand, and flip through it with your fingers, browsing a text that is accessible and familiar in its tone. Here is a passage typical for its practicality from the section called "Six Foot Balcony #167": "Balconies and porches which are less than six feet deep are hardly ever used... often made very small to save money... A balcony is first used properly when there is enough room for two or three people to sit in a small group with room to stretch their legs... No balcony works if it is so narrow that people have to sit in a row facing outward... we have noticed that... it is those with ... columns, wooden slats, rose covered trellises-which are used most. Therefore: Whenever you build a balcony...always make it at least six feet deep..."
Some of my other favorites include: Windows overlooking life #192 ("When people are in a place for any length of time they need to be able to refresh themselves by looking at a world different from the one they are in"; Two Sides Light #159 ("Rooms lit on two sides...create less glare around people and objects..."); Car Connection #113 ("...the place where car and house meet is almost never treated seriously as a beautiful place..."); The Fire #181(Television often gives a focus to a room, but it is nothing but a feeble substitute...)
This is a book that will have you constantly nodding in agreement, muttering to yourself "Why didn't I think of that?".
That's what you really want in a book about building your house. It's what each of these books provides in its own unique and complimentary way: information that educates and prepares you in a way that will allow you to look around you and say, once you've moved in, "Whew! I'm glad I thought of that!"
Books Discussed:
Charles George Ramsey, AIA, and Harold Reeve Sleeper, AIA, Architectural Graphic Standards.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY.
Jim Locke, The Well Built House.
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, NY 1988.
Tracy Kidder, House.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA 1985.
Charles Moore, Gerald Allen, and Donlyn Lyndon, The Place of Houses.
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, NY 1974.
Christopher Alexander et. al., A Pattern Language.
Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1977.
The biggest, oldest, longest, heaviest, priciest, most comprehensive volume in my office is one almost every architect has. Architectural Graphic Standards (9" by 11 1/2" by 2 1/2", 6 lbs, 854 pages, originally published in 1932) could be titled "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Buildings, But Didn't Know Enough To Ask, And Then Some." It has much of the technical information you'll need for the average house project. There are diagrams on foundation layout, wood framing, waterproofing and roofing. It exhaustively catalogs types of wood mouldings, concrete blocks, bricks, furniture and trees. And if you're building something really unusual, "Graphic Standards" can give you the dimensions of a bowling alley (11'-3" by 98'-11 1/4" for two lanes with a center ball return), or a railroad caboose (20'-6" long by 9'-3" wide by 11'-9" high".) This book is expensive. Get it at the library, where you can find the information you need in the current edition and study the old editions for their curiosity value.
My father's copy - the 1951 Fourth Edition - contains my favorite page. "Kitchen Equipment and Utensils" shows painstakingly hand-done line drawings dimensioning everything from your granny's wooden potato masher (8 1/2" - 10" X 4") to two kinds of toasters, automatic and manual. The better to design your kitchen storage, my dear. By the time my father bought me the updated Sixth Edition for architecture school this page had, sadly, gone the way of the masher and the manual toaster it depicted.
For some clear narrative instruction on the house-building process, take a look at The Well Built House. by Jim Locke. If you can tolerate some of the strongly stated biases - "...the spiral stair...I hate them. They are hard to walk up or down..." - this book will guide you through house-building in a logical, straightforward way. Mr. Locke emphasizes care in the process and quality in the product. He is full of downright sound advice: "...bathroom decisions: Don't wait until the hammers are poised to figure out what you want..." Its organized to mimic the actual sequence of events, correctly starting with a chapter called "Planning and Paperwork" and then going through the steps of construction. The illustrations are helpful, and there could be more of them, but you can always refer to "Graphic Standards" for such details.
Author-contractor Jim Locke first appeared in Tracy Kidders book, House. I didn't read House while I was building my house. But, I heard a lot of it in the evenings of the months prior. "Hey, listen to this," my wife would say, seeking confirmation of one or another passage. The book is the true-life account of a Massachusetts couple, their architect, their contractor (Mr. Locke) and their new house. It's full of the diversions and asides that make for absorbing reading: the derivation of the client's surname; a comparison with the cost of Henry David Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond; Jim Locke's love affair; and long sections of dialogue.)
In his recounting of the human relationships and events that are central to any construction project, Mr. Kidder prepares you for the excitement and the setbacks of life amidst the unfolding process. The contractors "...set up...a small factory beside the foundation: generator, extension cords, ladders, sawhorses,... they buckle on belts and make themselves into roving hardware displays...framing is the art of thinking ahead with clarity, of seeing the end in the beginning..."
There is nothing more important to the success of a house than "seeing the end in the beginning." The Place of Houses can help you do this. I am told it is out of print, but get it if you can. One of my former employers actually required prospective clients to read this book - written by practicing, competing colleagues! - before beginning a project. It is a literate guide to helping you, through enlightening historical example, to think about what you want in your house. The authors cite Vermeer paintings to illustrate points about natural light, and quote Henry James about the embodiment in houses of "ideas, a will, a purpose, a patience, an intelligence, a store of knowledge, ..." They use their own work and that of others as examples. The book ends with a most useful 26 page chapter called "Yours" which consists mostly of a "kind of check list to identify the choices which you must make..." With questions phrased to encourage an open minded approach, the authors encourage you to address practical considerations that may seem obvious but sometimes get overlooked. For example: "How will the water from the sky get off the roof?"; and "What will people wash their bodies in?"
A Pattern Language provides patterns - as in sewing patterns, almost, but in words as well as pictures - for your consideration. The book is organized in a clear, easy to reference format. But it's friendlier than a standard reference like Architectural Graphic Standards, and it has a different purpose. It's a book of ideas, and you can hold it in one hand, and flip through it with your fingers, browsing a text that is accessible and familiar in its tone. Here is a passage typical for its practicality from the section called "Six Foot Balcony #167": "Balconies and porches which are less than six feet deep are hardly ever used... often made very small to save money... A balcony is first used properly when there is enough room for two or three people to sit in a small group with room to stretch their legs... No balcony works if it is so narrow that people have to sit in a row facing outward... we have noticed that... it is those with ... columns, wooden slats, rose covered trellises-which are used most. Therefore: Whenever you build a balcony...always make it at least six feet deep..."
Some of my other favorites include: Windows overlooking life #192 ("When people are in a place for any length of time they need to be able to refresh themselves by looking at a world different from the one they are in"; Two Sides Light #159 ("Rooms lit on two sides...create less glare around people and objects..."); Car Connection #113 ("...the place where car and house meet is almost never treated seriously as a beautiful place..."); The Fire #181(Television often gives a focus to a room, but it is nothing but a feeble substitute...)
This is a book that will have you constantly nodding in agreement, muttering to yourself "Why didn't I think of that?".
That's what you really want in a book about building your house. It's what each of these books provides in its own unique and complimentary way: information that educates and prepares you in a way that will allow you to look around you and say, once you've moved in, "Whew! I'm glad I thought of that!"
Books Discussed:
Charles George Ramsey, AIA, and Harold Reeve Sleeper, AIA, Architectural Graphic Standards.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY.
Jim Locke, The Well Built House.
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, NY 1988.
Tracy Kidder, House.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA 1985.
Charles Moore, Gerald Allen, and Donlyn Lyndon, The Place of Houses.
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, NY 1974.
Christopher Alexander et. al., A Pattern Language.
Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1977.