The American Home

Includes Millford Plantation and Drayton Hall as well as Mount Vernon and Monticello.

From steamy Louisiana to snowy Wisconsin, and from Brooklyn brownstones to western Marin County bungalows, Passive Houses are being created in a wide range of climate and building types across the United States. "Recreating the American Home: The Passive House Approach" by Mary James showcases 10 recently constructed Passive House projects across the country. With its mix of new construction and retrofit projects in a variety of climate types, "Recreating the American Home" provides concrete examples of elegant, energy-efficient housing solutions for architects, builders, and homeowners everywhere. As increasing numbers of Passive Houses get built, and more people experience the comfort and low energy bills that these homes deliver, the demand for Passive Houses will continue to grow. This book chronicles how architects, builders, and designers across the country can respond to their clients' requests for comfortable, greener, more energy-efficient homes-in short, for homes that help them create the future they want to live in.

Cho A.'s poetry wonders at small everyday delights. Sean Cho A.'s debut poetry chapbook directs a keen eye on everyday occurrences and how these small events shape us as individuals. This collection is filled with longing for love, understanding, and simplicity. But these poems also express great pleasure in continued desire. With exuberant energy that flows through the collection, the speaker announces: "I won't apologize for the smallness of my delights." Filled with questions and wonder, these poems revel in the unknowing and liminal spaces, and we as readers are invited to join in this revelry. Cho A.'s poetry reminds and allows us to pause, to wonder, and enjoy our many pleasures. American Home was selected by Danusha Laméris for the 2020 Autumn House Chapbook Prize.

Each house is showcased in four to six pages and shown from a variety of views, with a brief introductory text explaining what makes the house unique and color photographs illustrating the key design features. Sidebars elaborate why the architects selected each house.

- Pages are filled with full-color photography of intriguing interior spaces for a range of living environments- Features an array of interior styles: from eclectic trinket-filled sitting rooms, to expansive, minimalist open-plan living- Explores the interior design techniques, art and decorative pieces, furnishings, and materials incorporated into the homes featured throughoutInteriors: Inside the American Home is a chic, modern book that showcases the diversity in approach to interior design across the United States. Honing in on the subtleties of interior design, the book delves into the range of techniques, art and decorative pieces, furnishings, and materials used by designers to merge their own unique aesthetics with the lifestyles of their clients. From eclectic trinket-filled sitting rooms, to expansive, minimalist open-plan living, this book offers a stunning array of intriguing interior spaces for all tastes and styles.

American Homes is the classic work of American house architecture. From the Dutch colonial, to the New England Salt Box, to the 1950s prefab, this unrivaled reference and useful guide to 103 building styles pays homage to our country's housing heritage. American Homes opens the window onto the rich landscape of all the places we call home. Award-winning architect Lester Walker examines hundreds of styles of homes—more than any other survey of American domestic architecture—and helps us understand the history of each style, why it developed as it did, and the practical and historical reasons behind its shape, size, material, ornament, and plan. Hundreds of sequenced drawings illustrate the evolution of our most beloved housing styles, like the colonial English Cottage, which grows before our eyes from a simple square of posts and beams to a fully constructed home with hand-split cedar clapboards and an intricately thatched roof. There's also the Italianate, whose roof displays its intricate carved brackets and is topped with a cupola that serves to filter light to the interior of the home. Annotated floor plans offer insight into the structure of these homes, and with it, a good measure of inspiration. No wrought-iron railing, white stucco wall, or gingerbread gable goes neglected. Every idiosyncratic detail and decoration of each of these uniquely American designs is delicately drawn. American Homes is the perfect reference for enthusiasts of architecture, history, and American studies. It is also the ideal inspiration for anyone who lives in or dreams of living in a classic American home.

Between 1890 and 1930, the domestic arts, as well as the daily life of the American family, began to reflect rapid advances in technology, aesthetics, and attitudes about American culture. Pictorial, literary, musical, and decorative arts from this era all reveal a shift from clutter to clarity and from profusion to restraint as modern conveniences, ranging from pre-stamped needlework patterns to central heat, were introduced into the domestic environment. However, the household arts were also affected by an enduring strain of conservatism reflected in the popularity of historically inspired furnishing styles. In this collection of essays, ten experts in turn-of-the-century popular and material culture examine how the struggle between modernity and tradition was reflected in various facets of the household aesthetic. Their findings touch on sub-themes of gender, generation, and class to provide a fascinating commentary on what middle-class Americans were prepared to discard in the name of modernity and what they stubbornly retained for the sake of ideology. Through an examination of material culture and prescriptive literature from this period, the essayists also demonstrate how changes in artistic expression affected the psychological, social, and cultural lives of everyday Americans. This book joins a growing list of titles dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the cultural dimensions of past domestic life. Its essays shed new light on house history by tracking the transformation of a significant element of home life - its expressions of art.

The transformation of a house into a home has been in our culture a traditional task of women. The articles examine this process as they reflected the role of American middle-class women as homemakers in the years 1840-1940.