House construction

Anybody can sit down and draw a rough floor plan. But this book tells you to think in terms of how you use space rather than rooms. That simple piece of advice makes you think differently about what you want in a house and what you need. If you are thinking of building, GET THIS BOOK. Even if you’re going to a contractor or architect, get the book and sit down with your whole family to make plans. You’ll find out about personal privacy issues, how your rooms and spaces should flow, how to make your house more efficient not from an energy standpoint, but from a “how I use my house” point of view.

Great attention to many points which must be considered for design and building a home. While the material (particularily the pictures) are dated, the overall advice is timeless. Impressed that it admits not everyone is suited to the demands of the process.

As an architect I worked for noted, this book gives you just enough information to make you dangerous. Ching provides a beautifully illustrated guide to basic concepts of building construction. It is a great introductory book filled with much useful information, but one can’t necessarily build from this book. I use it mostly to explain construction ideas, especially when it comes to wood-frame buildings, than I do as a set of graphic standards. Ching does offer some specific information, such as thermal resistance of building materials and a general span guide for roof and floor trusses, but much of this information is general and should be verified with more precise data books. However, Ching didn’t set out to create another “Standard Architectural Graphics” book, but rather an affordable guide to building construction which would provide some useful information to the design student and home builder alike.