By Stephen Leet
Princeton Architectural Press: 176 pp.
Pay dirt. That would be a box donated to Washington University’s school of architecture containing 150 letters between famed architect Richard Neutra and his enlightened client Grace Lewis Miller. Their extensive correspondence regarding the design and construction of Miller’s winter residence in Palm Springs, California, lends personality to Stephen Leet’s accessible narrative about the house, completed in 1937. Though Neutra’s idyllic example of desert modernism is not a “masterwork,” the partially glazed L required an exacting discussion of concepts and details, and the letters chart their evolution. Leet also highlights Neutra’s meticulousness. Redwood strips in patio ceiling joints line up with window modules, which line up with built-in shelving units. But the storylike text carefully avoids portraying architectural genius as immune from the ravages of time: Miller couldn’t afford to keep her gem, and the book closes with a recent color photo showing the house neglected and Palm Springs’ pristine landscape ruined by overdevelopment.

By Fernando Pagés Ruiz
The Taunton Press: 208 pp.
Written by a contractor, this book offers advice for the bottom line. Professional builders or subcontractors may have an easier time navigating the book’s complexities—the author even envisions construction crews reading pertinent chapters—but the text isn’t so dense that a homeowner can’t learn to shepherd the construction process with an eye to thrift. Two overarching themes: (1) Assemble your subcontractors to discuss costly mistakes before they happen and design them out of existence; and (2) little savings add up, so grab them when you can. The book has relatively few examples of inspired design on the cheap, so be sure to supplement this reference with Johnston’s, for your conscience, and a few of the stunning projects from MyHouse, to nourish your aesthetic side.

By Jane Powell
photography by Linda Svendsen
Gibbs Smith: 286 pp.
It seems natural to credit Richard Neutra’s generation for introducing new principles about industrial materials and fabrication methods, cleanliness, climate, and family life to the practice of architecture. But predecessor movements were not merely exercises in ornamentation, according to Jane Powell. In fact, the bungalow may be considered modernism’s first expression: Exterior space, designed much like interior rooms, fostered connection between indoors and out; and kitchens and baths included the hygienic fixtures and industrial equipment we expect today. Bungalow is really two books in one: The first is an admittedly “not very scholarly” historical survey that touches upon the bungalow’s Bengali roots, British colonialism, William Morris, and the Prairie Style designers. The second takes place within the captions of Linda Svendsen’s large-format photos, where Powell points out individual houses’ global influences, regional quirks, construction details, and interior flourishes. Look past the featherweight prose and the author is quite a scholar. The captions of the book feature a Birds of America-type identification guide for bungalow watchers.

By Peter Lemos
The Taunton Press: 192 pp.
For every ultra-glamorous showcase kitchen there are dozens more renovated for the common person. Peter Lemos chooses to feature these spaces, which were made with middle-class budgets and average square-footage counts. Short before-and-after profiles of each project are accompanied by breakout pieces that highlight, say, a great storage trick or an interesting play of shapes and materials, making the pages more dynamic. Special mini-chapters are devoted to such topics as the ins and outs of cabinetry styles and countertop choices, helpful for those of us starting from scratch. Kudos to Lemos, too, for acknowledging professional designers’ involvement with these kitchens: Kitchens for the Rest of Us is not DIY. This book’s everyman examples don’t revolutionize the way we think about kitchens, or even foresee the next big style craze. They’re just good and smart transformations that will spawn a few ideas of your own. In other words, classics.

By Dennis Wedlick, with Philip Langdon
Harper Design: 160 pp.
Your house is probably the biggest purchase you will make in your life. Architect Dennis Wedlick sees houses as opportunities to make dream homes (although the prospect of renovating might scare the average consumer). Fortunately, Good House Hunting offers a methodical approach to taking the plunge. In the first chapter you’ll find out how to plan for your ideal home. The most important bit of advice here is to make a list of what you need and desire. Next are the promised 20 steps to finding your nest and sweating out the transformations. The information is common sense, but in the emotionally fraught moments of emptying your savings into a little patch of earth, arming yourself with a little logic may make dreams come true.

By Andrew Weaving
Photography by Andrew Wood
Harper Design: 191 pp.
Andrew Weaving doesn’t choose any old renovated homes for this visually stunning book, but rather spaces that are fresh and modern. Brief profiles of these showcases are categorized by the scope of work completed: decoration, updating features, reorganization, and extensions. Shorter sections are devoted to individual design elements—floors, staircases, windows, lighting—that update the look and feel of a home, as well as so-called zones for sleeping, eating, relaxing, etc., suggesting that modern living means occupying a series of flowing, multitasking spaces, not rooms.

Weaving clearly prefers certain principles for a redo, such as avoiding completely open floor plans (yes to zones, no to lofts, in other words) and respecting a home’s original features, but he doesn’t hold your hand through the renovation process. The examples inspire, and Wood’s photography is a luxurious counterpoint to Weaving’s straightforward descriptions. The biggest complaint is with breathing room: No project has more than six pages devoted to it, and many chapters don’t include floor plans, so it’s difficult to imagine yourself moving through a space.

By Todd Lawson and Tom Connor
Photographs by Rob Karosis
The Taunton Press: 217 pp.
The term “empty nest” has a sad ring to it—except for those of us who spent years longing for snazzier nests. For many parents with grown kids, a good chunk of adult life was spent in a home that suited child-rearing. Now they are reimagining their spaces without two-legged obligations running underfoot, and the Florida apartment condo is no longer the path most traveled: Older homeowners are building or renovating homes without regard to geography or climate, and in communities that don’t necessarily have retirement written all over them. Simply put, baby boomers are rewriting the rules of late-in-life homeownership. The authors discover several architectural principles that still apply: The new empty nests are single-level homes with open floor plans that can flexibly accommodate visits, and sometimes boast specialty rooms for pursuing hobbies or continuing careers. These characteristics, plus, say, ADA-compliant hallways, show that boomers are concerned about accessibility as they age. Soon enough, The House to Ourselves’s featured homes will seem dated aesthetically, yet its concepts will remain timeless.

By John Carmody, Stephen Selkowitz, Dariush Arasteh, and Lisa Heschong
W.W. Norton & Company: 232 pp.
Sure, it reads like a freshman-year textbook, but how many textbooks are devoted to saving you money? This up-to-the-minute reference’s mission is just that, and it’s accomplished with profiles of the window industry’s latest innovations in energy efficiency. Homeowners will be grateful for the definitions of U-factor, solar heat gain coefficient, infiltration (air leakage), and visible light transmittance that will help them decipher the energy performance numbers listed on new window labels. Succeeding chapters discuss glazing materials, window assembly, and different energy-performance technologies on the market. Architects will appreciate the discussion of the design implications of the new energy-efficient marketplace. Fuel costs probably won’t decrease much in the near future, and energy-saving windows can be one of the few means of fighting crisis prices.

By Janice Brewster, Kevin Daum, and Peter Economy
Wiley: 364 pp.
This isn’t the first reassuring yellow cover of the “For Dummies” series to grace the stands of bookstores. This edition provides a particularly thorough overview of financing—make-or-break information. From setting up a file cabinet for paperwork, to finding a site, to putting the finishing touches on landscaping, readers will learn how to work within the context of a process of seemingly operatic proportions.

By Diane Madden
Abrams: 159 pp.
Diane Madden teases out rules of considerable economical space from the goodly number of Wright-designed houses that are a fraction of the size of today’s homes, which average 2,300-square feet. (Designing deep roof overhangs, building outdoor rooms, and stressing horizontality are just three examples.) The book would have benefited from axonometric drawings to provide a fuller sense of Wright’s use of multiple planes. Still, the interpretative text, which includes profiles of nine houses, shows that more can still be said about Wright. The challenge is to follow the rules without mimicking the master.

By Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne
Princeton Architectural Press: 196 pp.
Green is sexy. Thirty years ago, sustainable architecture was proudly fringe and looked it. Stang and Hawthorne profile homes in 15 countries that show just how far we’ve come. Homes are categorized by environment—urban, suburban, desert, and waterfront, for example—since a key component of green building is sensitivity to one’s climate, local building materials, and, in the case of suburban homes, the opinions of one’s neighbors. Rather than introduce a new green technique with each design project, chapters are individual magazine-appropriate stories, explaining how the house came to be, describing its technologies, and providing an architectural walkthrough typical of an enviable spread in a shelter publication. Since Stang and Hawthorne write intelligent narratives, not cloying how-tos, they trust the reader to Google any unfamiliar ideas. This is a rich coffee table prize as well as a reference from which you’ll find visual devices to emulate and sustainable features to pursue.

By Sarah Susanka and Marc Vasallo
The Taunton Press: 216 pp.
Sarah Susanka launched “the not so big house” movement, a response to the perceived sterility (and irresponsibility) of McMansions, in 1998 with her book of the same title. She may not have had such success, though, had she simply shown readers small but uninspired homes. In this new publication, Susanka and Vasallo map out the unique interior details of 24 design projects that elevate small homes to little gems. They may be ornamental characteristics, function-driven elements, or even spatial tricks. They don’t necessarily show how to make a space feel bigger, but rather how to lend drama and character that stamp a house as one’s own creation.

By Jennifer Roberts; photography by Linda Svendsen
Gibbs Smith, Publisher: 160 pp.
This 101 to green building welcomes rather than intimidates. Roberts doesn’t litter her text with technical jargon, and she features homes that are not aesthetically fringe or luxuriously out of reach. Such accessibility eases readers into seven principles that encapsulate design for rejuvenating, not exhausting, the earth. We are introduced to photovoltaic cells, green roofs, formaldehyde-free fiberglass and cellulose insulation, and Low-E and double-glazed windows, taught how to minimize wood consumption by using different structural framing systems, and shown the distinction between postindustrial and postconsumer recycled content.

The author also includes “why-didn’t-I-think-of-that” concepts like live closer to your workplace to reduce car pollution and commuting time, for instance. Or, take note of prevailing winds and excessive sunshine on a new building site in order to determine where walls should have windows. From the technical to the logical, Roberts is careful to explain that her principles are not mere noble acts of environmentalism, but also strategies for saving money, heightening comfort, and improving convenience. The result is a book that is more edifying than preachy.