The Distinctive Home: A Vision of Timeless Design - Hardcover

Eck, Jeremiah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1561585289 ISBN 13: 9781561585281

Publisher: The Taunton Press, 2003

Synopsis

Jeremiah Eck believes that a distinctive home is the result of a balance between site, floor plan, exterior elements, and interior details. In The Distinctive Home, he describes the significance of each of the four elements and provides numerous examples of good design for each. Included are images and descriptions of 50 houses (ten of them the author's own designs) that cover a wide range of styles, regions, and budgets. A final chapter unifies the four elements in detailed profiles of several of these houses, examining how their components work together to attain the status of "distinctive."

About this title

About the Author

Jeremiah Eck is a contributor for Taunton Press titles including The Face of Home.

Reviews

The first volume in the joint imprint launched by Taunton Press and the American Institute of Architects, this exploration of "distinctive and timeless" homes proves that good design can be very human design. While upscale shelter magazines seem to delight in houses laid out for visual effect-the living room as graphic design more than functional interior-the homes Eck features here illustrate the enduring, comfortable qualities of the genuinely livable home. An architect and landscape painter, Eck identifies four primary tenets of a pleasing home-its site, floor-plan, exterior face and details-and demonstrates how they should balance each other and the world around them. (As Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen said, "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context-a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment.") When these four elements are carefully considered, Eck believes, they result in atmospheres of sustained pleasure and character. He roams the country for examples of the distinction he prizes, finding it in Rhode Island beach homes and California bungalows, New England farmhouses and suburban custom jobs, all of which harmonize with their surroundings and within their parts to provide their tenants with daily domestic gratification. Copiously illustrated with architectural drawings and photographs of inviting interiors and intelligent facades (and occasionally enlivened by asides lambasting the thoughtless placement and stingy finish of contemporary home architecture), this unpretentious and impressive project will provide food for thought for anyone looking to buy, renovate or build a house.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Taunton Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1561585289
• ISBN 13: 9781561585281
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240