African Design Magazine May 2015 | Page 10

Book Review BOOK Big Little House – Small Houses Designed by Architects What are the challenges architects face when designing dwelling spaces of a limited size? And what can these projects tell us about architecture – and architectural principles – in general? AUTHOR: Donna Kacmar LANGUAGE: English PAGES: 190 ISBN: 978-1-13-802420-5 PUBLISHERS: Routledge Donna Kacmar is a practicing architect and an Associate Professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston, USA, where she teaches Comprehensive Design Studio and directs the Materials Research Collaborative. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE 10 africandesignmagazine.com In Big Little House, award-winning architect Donna Kacmar introduces twenty real-life examples of small houses. Each project is under 100m2 in size and, brought together, the designs reveal an attitude towards materiality, light, enclosure and accommodation which is unique to minimal dwellings. While part of a trend to address growing concerns about minimising consumption and lack of affordable housing, the book demonstrates that small dwellings are not always simply the result of budget constraints but constitute a deliberate design strategy in their own right. Highly illustrated and in full-colour throughout, each example is based on interviews with the original architect and accompanied by detailed floor plans. This ground-breaking, beautifully designed text, off