Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid

Sick of McMansions? Marianne Cusato, creator of the award-winning Katrina Cottages, is a champion of traditional architectural principles: structural common sense, aesthetics of form, appropriateness to a neighborhood, and sustainability. She presents the definitive guide to what makes houses look and feel right, revealing the dos and donts of livable home design. Hundreds of elegant line drawings--rendering the varieties of architectural features and displaying “avoid” and “use” versions of the same elements side by side--make this an indispensable resource for designing and building a timelessly beautiful home.

Marianne Cusato has received international attention for her design of the Katrina Cottages: affordable, durable home kits created as an alternative to FEMA trailer housing to help the Gulf Coast rebuild. The cottage won the Cooper-Hewitt Peoples Design Award and has been written up in magazines and newspapers across the country, from Architectural Record and Cottage Living to Time and Forbes. She is the principal of Cusato Cottages, LLC, a New York-based firm specializing in traditional architectural design.