The Homes We Build

Adapting themselves to all kinds of landscapes and climates, humans have used their architectural ingeniousness to build amazing dwellings: find them here, from houses on stilts and igloos to tree houses and skyscrapers.

We Build Our Homes is a beautifully illustrated picture book exploring the incredible structures built by animals and the reasons why they build them. Each spread looks at a different animal, told as though from their viewpoint.

Self-Build Homes connects the burgeoning interdisciplinary research on self-build with commentary from leading international figures in the self-build and wider housing sector. Through their focus on community, dwelling, home and identity, the chapters explore the various meanings of self-build housing, encouraging new directions for discussions about self-building and calling for the recognition of the social dimensions of this process, from consideration of the structures, policies and practices that shape it, through to the lived experience of individuals and households.Divided into four parts – Discourse, Rationale, Meaning; Values, Lifestyles, Imaginaries; Community and Identity; and Perspectives from Practice – the volume comes at a time of renewed focus from policy managers and practitioners, as well as prospective builders themselves, on self-build as a means for producing homes that are more stylised, affordable and appropriate for the specific needs of households. It responds to recent advances in housing and planning policy, while also bringing this into conversation with interdisciplinary perspectives from across the social sciences on housing, home and homemaking. In this way, the book seeks to update understandings of self-build and to account for housing as a distinctly social process.

The House That She Built is inspired by and dedicated to the REAL women behind the home built exclusively by a team of women in construction, skilled tradeswomen, and women-owned companies. The House That She Built educates young readers about the people and skills that go into building a home. One by one, children learn about the architect, framer, roofer and many more as they contribute their individual skills needed to complete the collective project -- a new home. With illustrations that connect and empower and words that build upon each other with each page, this book will leave all kids (she, he, and they) excited about their own skills and interested in learning new ones.

The much-anticipated follow-up to the E. B. White Award-winning picture book If I Built a Car In If I Built a Car, imaginative Jack dreamed up a whimsical fantasy ride that could do just about anything. Now he's back and ready to build the house of his dreams, complete with a racetrack, flying room, and gigantic slide. Jack's limitless creativity and infectious enthusiasm will inspire budding young inventors to imagine their own fantastical designs. Chris Van Dusen's vibrant illustrations marry retro appeal with futuristic style as he, once again, gives readers a delightfully rhyming text that absolutely begs to be read aloud.

Pretty Good House provides a framework and set of guidelines for building or renovating a high-performance home that focus on its inhabitants and the environment--but keeps in mind that few people have pockets deep enough to achieve a "perfect" solution. The essential idea is for homeowners to work within their financial and practical constraints both to meet their own needs and do as much for the planet as possible. A Pretty Good House is: * A house that's as small as possible * Simple and durable, but also well designed * Insulated and air-sealed * Above all, it is affordable, healthy, responsible, and resilient.

A family of four builds a house, back, away from the road, down a dirt lane, in the middle of an old, weedy field.

This work follows the evolution of the pattern book houses and how they represented the notion of home and community in American historical memory. The book also includes illustrations of such communities.

Who Built That? Modern Houses takes readers on a fun-filled tour through ten of the most important houses by the greatest architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch of each architect, illustrator Didier Cornille uses a light touch to depict the various stages of construction, paying special attention to key design innovations and signature details. Cornille's charming drawings and accessible text unlock the secrets of modern classic houses, ranging from Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1931) and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater (1939) to Shigeru Ban's Cardboard House (1995) and Rem Koolhaas's Bordeaux House (1998). Readers of all ages will delight in this colorful introduction to modern architecture's most extraordinary homes.

This book introduces young readers to the environmental impact of housing and building construction, the appliances we use, and the energy we consume. Through full-color photographs, dynamic spotlight facts, and "Solve It!" activities, students are exposed to the current problems with housing construction and are then encouraged to consider sustainable changes that can be made in the future. This volume will not only inform readers but ignite their curiosity about sustainability and employ their critical-thinking skills and creativity.