We've ranked the best buildings books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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1
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing
The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.
To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline. [source]
The foundation for investing. A lot of people have used this as their guide to getting into investment, basic strategies. Actually Warren Buffett cites this as the book that got him into investing and he says that principles he learned here helped him to become a great investor. Highly recommend this book. It’s a great way understand what’s going on and how to evaluate different companies out there before you make an investment. [source]
DJ Vlad
The single biggest influence on how I buy and sell stocks. [source]
For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture-a lucid epigrammatic text that reveals as much about human psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-tzu's text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable insight in these ancient words. In his crisp, accessible new translation, scholar John Minford brings this seminal work to life for modern readers.
Minford opens with a lively, learned introduction in which he explores the life and times of Sun-tzu, looks at The Art of War in the context of the turbulent Warring States period, and discusses how best to read and understand the work today. There follows Minford's translation of the core text itself in two different formats-first, the unadorned thirteen chapters of the original work and then the same text reprinted with extensive running commentary by classical Chinese scholars as well as Minford himself. The result is an opportunity for Western readers to experience Sun-tzu's work in all its intensity as it applies to many aspects of our lives.
Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Art of War (Sun Tsu) to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]
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3
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel
4.6
At the core of A Pattern Language is the philosophy that in designing their environments people always rely on certain ‘languages,’ which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a formal system which gives them coherence.
This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable making a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. ‘Patterns,’ the units of this language, are answers to design problems: how high should a window sill be?; how many stories should a building have?; how much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?
More than 250 of the patterns in this language are outlined, each consisting of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely that they will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five hundred years as they are today.
A Pattern Language is related to Alexander’s other works in the Center for Environmental Structure series: The Timeless Way of Building (introductory volume) and The Oregon Experiment.
"Business Adventures remains the best business book I've ever read." --Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal
What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety; these notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.
Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. Longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks's insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history repeats itself.
Five additional stories on equally fascinating subjects round out this wonderful collection that will both entertain and inform readers . . . Business Adventures is truly financial journalism at its liveliest and best.
Brooks’s work is a great reminder that the rules for running a strong business and creating value haven’t changed. For one thing, there’s an essential human factor in every business endeavor. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect product, production plan, and marketing pitch; you’ll still need the right people to lead and implement those plans. [source]
In 1991, Bill Gates asked Buffett for his favorite book. In reply, Buffett sent the Microsoft founder his personal copy of Business Adventures, a collection of New Yorker stories by John Brooks. [source]
In this 1960s classic, Brooks, a longtime New Yorker contributor, tells the stories of 12 notable companies and how they navigated the trials and tribulations of corporate life in America back in the day. [source]
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5
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
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Recommended by AnneMarie Schindler, Holger Seim, Jennifer Rock, and 3 others.
AnneMarie Schindler
I suggest these books because they really open up 'how' you think about life and in turn work, success/challenges/setbacks, and in general, yourself. I believe that the more you can understand yourself and broaden your approach to work, the easier it will be to find work that energizes you. Finally, I'm a team player at heart, and love working with others to achieve a huge goal so a portion of these deal with team composition and performance too. [source]
Holger Seim
Lencioni’s books helped me to shift my focus from individual performance to team performance, and what it takes to make a team perform well. It helped me to realize and take seriously the fact that great team performance doesn’t happen magically but needs conscious effort. When I discovered The Five Dysfunctions of a Team for the first time, we had a dysfunctional team at Blinkist and the book opened my eyes to see the problem clearly and showed clear steps for how they should be tackled. Beforehand I was aware that we had a problem, but I couldn’t pinpoint it specifically and hence, couldn’t solve it easily. This book helped a lot. [source]
Jennifer Rock
In Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the executive asks her senior leaders "Who is your first team?" And they each answer incorrectly that it's the team that reports to him or her. The point is that you need to shift your perspective to understanding your senior leadership peers are your first team. We read that book as a leadership team in a corporation where I worked -- and the environment was very competitive between us. When we agreed that our cross-functional leadership team was our first team, we became more cooperative, innovative and productive. And we vastly boosted our results. [source]
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6
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered early in life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.
In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his Rolodex, people he has helped and who have helped him.
The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington’s corridors of power to Hollywood’s A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 and one of Davos’ Global Leader for Tomorrow.
Ferrazzi's form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handling usually associated with “networking.” He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles. Among them: Don’t keep score: It’s never simply about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too. “Ping” constantly: The Ins and Outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time—not just when you need something. Never eat alone: The dynamics of status are the same whether you’re working at a corporation or attending a society event— “invisibility” is a fate worse than failure. In the course of the book, Ferrazzi outlines the timeless strategies shared by the world’s most connected individuals, from Katherine Graham to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama. Chock full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, becoming a “conference commando,” and more, Never Eat Alone is destined to take its place alongside How to Win Friends and Influence People as an inspirational classic.
I hate business books. They are full of wishy-washy inspirational stuff and rarely of anything actionable. And even when actionable, it's from the context of that founder and the story they've spun, not the reality that most people face. So if anything, I'd have people read books such as Jayson Gaignard's Mastermind Dinners; Derek Coburn's Networking is Not Working; Shane Snow's Storytelling edge; Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone. [source]
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Iggy Peck, Architect
Andrea Beaty, David Roberts
4.4
A hilarious, irreverent book about doing your own thing
Meet Iggy Peck—creative, independent, and not afraid to express himself! In the spirit of David Shannon’s No, David and Rosemary Wells’s Noisy Nora, Iggy Peck will delight readers looking for irreverent, inspired fun.
Iggy has one passion: building. His parents are proud of his fabulous creations, though they’re sometimes surprised by his materials—who could forget the tower he built of dirty diapers? When his second-grade teacher declares her dislike of architecture, Iggy faces a challenge. He loves building too much to give it up! With Andrea Beaty’s irresistible rhyming text and David Roberts’s puckish illustrations, this book will charm creative kids everywhere, and amuse their sometimes bewildered parents.
Also from the powerhouse author-illustrator team of Iggy Peck, Architect, is Rosie Revere, Engineer, a charming, witty picture book about believing in yourself and pursuing your passion. Ada Twist, Scientist, the companion picture book featuring the next kid from Iggy Peck's class, is available in September 2016.
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Building Our House
Jonathan Bean
4.4
In this unique construction book for kids who love tools and trucks, readers join a girl and her family as they pack up their old house in town and set out to build a new one in the country. Mom and Dad are going to make the new house themselves, from the ground up. From empty lot to finished home, every stage of their year-and-a-half-long building project is here. And at every step their lucky kids are watching and getting their hands dirty, in page after page brimming with machines, vehicles, and all kinds of house-making activities! As he imagines it through the eyes of his older sister, this is Jonathan Bean’s retelling of his own family’s true experience, and includes an afterword with photographs from the author’s collection.
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The Rabbit Listened
Cori Doerrfeld
4.3
A universal, deeply moving exploration of grief and empathy
With its spare, poignant text and irresistibly sweet illustrations, The Rabbit Listened is a tender meditation on loss.
When something terrible happens, Taylor doesn't know where to turn. All the animals are sure they have the answer. The chicken wants to talk it out, but Taylor doesn't feel like chatting. The bear thinks Taylor should get angry, but that's not quite right either. One by one, the animals try to tell Taylor how to process this loss, and one by one they fail. Then the rabbit arrives. All the rabbit does is listen, which is just what Taylor needs.
Whether read in the wake of tragedy or as a primer for comforting others, this is a deeply moving and unforgettable story sure to soothe heartache of all sizes.
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10
Little Corner: Coloring Book for Adults and Teens, Super Cute Designs of Cozy, Hygge Spaces for Relaxation (Cozy Spaces Coloring)
Coco Wyo
4.3
If you enjoy decorating your own cozy room, this Little Corner Coloring Book is for you.This book features 40 illustrations of places with super cute decor, such as a fully equipped kitchen, a dreamy bedroom, a wooden fireplace, and many more!It's an ideal present for yourself, your family members, and your coloring buddy.This “Little Corner Coloring Book” features:40 hand-drawn pages ready for coloring.Large, bold, and easy designs for an enjoyable coloring experience.Single-sided pages to prevent bleed-through (if using markers, remember to place a protective sheet behind the page you're coloring)A convenient size of 8.5 x 8.5 inches for easy handling.High-resolution prints for clear, crisp images.
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The Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling
Charlie Wing
4.3
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A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture
Virginia Savage McAlester
4.3
Now in paperback: the fully expanded, updated, and freshly designed second edition of the most comprehensive and widely acclaimed guide to domestic architecture: in print since its original publication in 1984, and acknowledged everywhere as the unmatched, essential guide to American houses.
This revised edition includes a section on neighborhoods; expanded and completely new categories of house styles with photos and descriptions of each; an appendix on "Approaches to Construction in the 20th and 21st Centuries"; an expanded bibliography; and 600 new photographs and line drawings.
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13
Rosie Revere, Engineer
Andrea Beaty, David Roberts
4.3
Rosie may seem quiet during the day, but at night she's a brilliant inventor of gizmos and gadgets who dreams of becoming a great engineer. When her great-great-aunt Rose (Rosie the Riveter) comes for a visit and mentions her one unfinished goal--to fly--Rosie sets to work building a contraption to make her aunt's dream come true. But when her contraption doesn't fl y but rather hovers for a moment and then crashes, Rosie deems the invention a failure. On the contrary, Aunt Rose inisists that Rosie's contraption was a raging success. You can only truly fail, she explains, if you quit.
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The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)
Ken Follett
4.3
Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.
Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.
Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.
The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.
For the Movie tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
Nobody who reads it—nobody who reads it—looks at a church or a cathedral the same. I made me think about my own life differently, reading that book, the experience of reading that book. What a treasure. [source]
Theresa Evanoff
One of my favourite non-business book is “Pillars of the Earth”, by Ken Follett. I have read this many times over the years, and still enjoy eit ach time. I love how the characters are all very complex, strategic, and how the story weaves together on so many levels. [source]
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15
The Hand-Sculpted House: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage: A Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage (The Real Goods Solar Living Book): 10
Ianto Evans, Michael G. Smith, et al.
4.3
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The Most Magnificent Thing
Ashley Spires
4.3
Award-winning author and illustrator Ashley Spires has created a charming picture book about an unnamed girl and her very best friend, who happens to be a dog. The girl has a wonderful idea. She is going to make the most MAGNIFICENT thing! She knows just how it will look. She knows just how it will work. All she has to do is make it, and she makes things all the time. Easy-peasy!? But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl tries and fails, repeatedly. Eventually, the girl gets really, really mad. She is so mad, in fact, that she quits. But after her dog convinces her to take a walk, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right.
For the early grades' exploration of character education, this funny book offers a perfect example of the rewards of perseverance and creativity. The girl's frustration and anger are vividly depicted in the detailed art, and the story offers good options for dealing honestly with these feelings, while at the same time reassuring children that it's okay to make mistakes. The clever use of verbs in groups of threes is both fun and functional, offering opportunities for wonderful vocabulary enrichment. The girl doesn't just make her magnificent thing --- "she tinkers and hammers and measures, she smoothes and wrenches and fiddles, she twists and tweaks and fastens." These precise action words are likely to fire up the imaginations of youngsters eager to create their own inventions and is a great tie-in to learning about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
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17
The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
Eugene Trivizas, Helen Oxenbury
4.3
When it comes time for the three little wolves to go out into the world and build themselves a house, their mother warns them to beware the big bad pig. But the little wolves' increasingly sturdy dwellings are no match for the persistent porker, who has more up his sleeve than huffing and puffing. It takes a chance encounter with a flamingo pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers to provide a surprising and satisfying solution to the little wolves' housing crisis. Eugene Trivizas's hilarious text and Helen Oxenbury's enchanting watercolors have made this delightfully skewed version of the traditional tale a contemporary classic.
Such a great book https://t.co/rioiqWz9dC [source]
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18
If I Built a House
Chris Van Dusen
4.3
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.
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19
Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building
Christy Hale
4.2
A collection of illustrations, concrete poetry, and photographs that shows how young children's constructions, created as they play, are reflected in notable works of architecture from around the world.
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The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
4.2
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21
S, M, L, XL
Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau
4.2
Recommended by Jeremy Till.
Jeremy Till
Koolhaas is just the most brilliant architectural thinker and doer operating today and so I had to include him. [source]
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Walt Disney's Disneyland
Chris Nichols
4.2
Welcome to Disneyland A visual history of the world’s megalopolis of magic
Walt Disney dreamed for decades about opening the ultimate entertainment venue, but it wasn’t until the early 1950s that his handpicked team began to bring his vision to life. Together, artists, architects, and engineers transformed a dusty tract of orange groves about an hour south of Los Angeles into one of the world’s most beloved destinations.
Today, there are Disney resorts from Paris to Shanghai, but the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which has been visited by more than 800 million people to-date, remains one of America’s most popular attractions. From the day it opened on July 17, 1955, Disneyland brought history and fairy tales to life, the future into the present, and exciting cultures and galaxies unknown to our imaginations.
This bountiful visual history draws on Disney’s vast historical collections, private archives, and the golden age of photojournalism to provide unique access to the concept, development, launch, and enjoyment of this sun-drenched oasis of fun and fantasy. Disneyland documents Walt’s earliest inspirations and ideas; the park’s extraordinary feats of design and engineering; its grand opening; each of its immersive “lands” from Main Street, U.S.A., to Tomorrowland; and the park's evolution through the six decades since it opened. It is a treasure trove of Disney original documentation and expertise, with award-winning writer Chris Nichols drawing on his extensive knowledge of both Disneyland and Southern California history to reveal the fascinating tale of “the happiest place on Earth.”
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23
Mighty, Mighty Construction Site
Sherri Duskey Rinker, Tom Lichtenheld
4.2
The #1 New York Times bestseller
At last--here from the team behind the beloved international bestseller comes a companion to Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. All of our favorite trucks are back on the construction site--this time with a focus on team-building, friendship, and working together to make a big task seem small! Down in the big construction site, the crew faces their biggest job yet, and will need the help of new construction friends to get it done. Working as a team, there's nothing they can't do! The millions of fans of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site are in for a mighty good time!
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24
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Bill Bryson
4.2
“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. (front flap)
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If I Built a Car
Chris Van Dusen
4.2
?If i built a car, it?d be totally new! Here are a few of the things that i?d do. . . .? Jack has designed the ultimate fantasy car. inspired by zeppelins and trains, Cadillacs and old planes, with brilliant colors and lots of shiny chrome, this far-out vision is ready to cruise! there?s a fireplace, a pool, and even a snack bar! After a tour of the ritzy interior, robert the robot starts up the motor . . . and Jack and his dad set off on the wildest test drive ever!
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26
The Very Efficient Carpenter: Basic Framing for Residential Construction (For Pros, By Pros Series)
Larry Haun
4.2
A complete course in basic framing, including information on tools, plans, codes, permits, lumber and materials.
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27
Building Green, New Edition: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs
Clarke Snell
4.2
The best-selling and highly regarded reference to sustainable construction gets an update! It’s refreshed with a completely revised introduction, a bright new cover, and extensive online resource tie-ins.
This groundbreaking book doesn’t just tell you about “green” house-building techniques: it actually shows you, with more than 1,200 step-by-step photographs that follow the actual erection of an alternative building from site selection to final-touch interior details. Readers will get a clear sense of the real world challenges as Snell and Callahan create a lovely country cottage using four methods: straw bale, cob, cordwood, and modified stick-frame.
Along with sidebars throughout, there’s a thorough discussion of the fundamentals of building construction, alternative approaches, and designing a beautiful yet environmentally responsible home. Building Green was the first book of its kind—and it remains heads and shoulders above other titles in this field.
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28
Timber Frame Construction: All About Post-and-Beam Building
Jack A. Sobon and Roger Schroeder
4.2
Discover the satisfaction of making your own durable, economical, and environmentally friendly timber frame structures. Covering all aspects of timber frame construction, this practical guide is filled with easy-to-understand instructions, clear illustrations, and helpful photographs. With expert advice on selecting appropriate timber, necessary tools, safety considerations, joinery techniques, assembly, and raising, Jack Sobon and Roger Schroeder encourage beginners by offering complete plans for a small toolshed. Turn your dream of a timber frame house into a reality.
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29
Building an Empire: The Most Complete Blueprint to Building a Massive Network Marketing Business
Brian Carruthers
4.2
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30
The Little Red Fort
Brenda Maier, Sonia Sanchez, Sonia Sánchez
4.2
Ruby's mind is always full of ideas.
One day, she finds some old boards and decides to build something. She invites her brothers to help, but they just laugh and tell her she doesn't know how to build.
"Then I'll learn," she says.
And she does!
When she creates a dazzling fort that they all want to play in, it is Ruby who has the last laugh.
With sprightly text and winsome pictures, this modern spin on the timeless favorite The Little Red Hen celebrates the pluck and ingenuity of young creators everywhere!
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31
Paint by Sticker (Official): Architecture: Re-create 12 Historic Structures One Sticker at a Time!
Workman Publishing
4.2
Discover and decorate stunning architecture from around the world with this exciting addition to the bestselling Paint by Sticker series. Paint by Sticker: Architecture contains everything you need to create 12 totally unique polygon paintings of famous buildings and structures—simply find a sticker (for example, A1), place the sticker in the spot labeled A1 on the corresponding sticker map, and watch your art come to life, sticker by colorful sticker. Create the signature curves of the Sydney Opera House; the impressive spindle-shaped towers of Barcelona's La Sagrada Família; the iconic blocklike facade of Habitat 67 in Canada; and more. Plus the card-stock pages are perforated, so every finished piece can be easily removed for gifting or display.
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32
The Timeless Way of Building
Christopher Alexander
4.2
In The Timeless Way of Building Christopher Alexander presents a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being.
He writes, “There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”
The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume to Alexander’s other works, A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, in the Center for Environmental Structure series.
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33
Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment
Grady Hillhouse
4.2
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34
Andrew Henry's Meadow
Doris Burn
4.1
A classic reissued for a new generation
Andrew Henry has two younger brothers, who are always together, and two older sisters, who are always together. But Andrew Henry is in the middle--and he's always with himself. He doesn't mind this very much, because he's an inventor. But when Andrew Henry's family doesn't appreciate him or his inventions, he decides it's time to run away. Many children in the neighborhood feel the same way and follow him to his meadow, where he builds each of his friends a unique house of their very own. But in town the families miss their children and do everything they can to find them. And the kids realize that it feels a little lonely out in the meadow without their parents.
Just as relevant today as it was in 1967, this is a heart-warming story about children who want to feel special and appreciated for who they are. With a new jacket and expanded trim size, Andrew Henry is ready to enchant the next generation of kids.
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35
Oasis: Modern Desert Homes Around the World
iO Tillett Wright
4.1
Welcome to the desert. Welcome home. This visually stunning tour of the world’s most amazing desert homes will inspire you to create an oasis with “desert vibes” wherever you are. Creatives are drawn in by the extreme landscapes and limited resources of the desert; in fact, they’re inspired by them, and the homes they’ve built here prove the power of an oasis. From renovated Airstreams to sprawling, modern stucco, desert has become the new beachfront.In Oasis, artist iO Tillett Wright captures the best of this specific culture that emphasizes living simply, beautifully, and in connection with the earth. He highlights the homes that define this desert mindset, featuring the classics like Georgia O’Keefe’s in Abiquiu, New Mexico, alongside more modern homes such as Michael Barnard’s Solar House in Marfa, Texas. With Casey Dunn’s stunning photography, Oasis will transport you to these relaxing refuges, where you’ll learn what elements create the balance of intentionality, ease, style, and function that these homes exude.
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36
The Little House
Virginia Lee Burton
4.1
Virginia Lee Burton won the Caldecott Medal in 1943 for her memorable picture book The Little House, a poignant story of a cute country cottage that becomes engulfed by the city that grows up around it. The house has an expressive face of windows and doors, and even the feelings of a person, so she’s sad when she’s surrounded by the dirty, noisy city’s hustle and bustle: “She missed the field of daisies / and the apple trees dancing in the moonlight.” Fortunately, there’s a happy ending, as the house is taken back to the country where she belongs.
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37
The Book on Negotiating Real Estate: Expert Strategies for Getting the Best Deals When Buying & Selling Investment Property
J Scott
4.1
Recommended by Chris Mobbs.
Chris Mobbs
The Book on Negotiating Real Estate: Expert Strategies for Getting the Best Deals When Buying & Selling Investment Property https://t.co/KVSKLy5aQU https://t.co/Dbn2sAYpcd [source]
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38
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations
Nicole Forsgren PhD
4.1
Does technology actually matter? And how can we apply technology to drive business value? For years, we've been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn't matter--that it can't provide a competitive advantage to our companies. Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance--and what drives it--using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.
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Recommended by Kirk Borne.
Kirk Borne
Fantastic accomplishment! Congratulations @nicolefv on your outstanding #DevOps book ... I love that: “The Science of Lean” ... that works also for #DataOps and Lean Analytics. https://t.co/i9gPhKL0dt https://t.co/DNJpuJtER0 [source]
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39
Resident Dog (Volume Two): Incredible Homes and the Dogs Who Live There
Nicole England
4.1
As an architecture photographer, Nicole England found that the shoots she enjoyed the most were the ones where dogs were present – nothing lightens the mood like a nonchalant pup. However imposing the architecture, some doggy hijinks can immediately bring an element of sociability and fun. With this in mind, Nicole set about setting up her instagram, Resident Dog, and now this book, Resident Dog Around the World, which showcases over 25 of the world's most amazing houses, and the dogs that live there.Photographing dogs is not always straightforward, because they don't always cooperate! The result is that these images end up with a looser, more spontaneous style. Just as every home is different, so is every dog. The photographs showcase incredible, amazing architecture and capture the personality of the idiosyncratic personality of each canine. Take a wander around the world's most stunning homes, from Mexico to Sydney, London, New York and LA, with the home pooch as your tour guide. Each home will feature several photographs, and an interview with the architect or home owner.
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40
If I Built a School
Chris Van Dusen
4.1
In this exuberant companion to If I Built a Car, a boy fantasizes about his dream school--from classroom to cafeteria to library to playground.
My school will amaze you. My school will astound. By far the most fabulous school to be found! Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. On a scale, 1 to 10, it's more like 15! And learning is fun in a place that's fun, too.
If Jack built a school, there would be hover desks and pop-up textbooks, skydiving wind tunnels and a trampoline basketball court in the gym, a robo-chef to serve lunch in the cafeteria, field trips to Mars, and a whole lot more. The inventive boy who described his ideal car and house in previous books is dreaming even bigger this time.
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41
Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making More Magic Real
The Imagineers
4.1
How can you make dreams come true? Or transform a fantasy into a colorful, exciting world that visitors can move through, touch, and enjoy? Such fabulous work is the daily business of Walt Disney's Imagineers, a core group of creative and highly skilled professional wizards who combine imagination with engineering to create the reality of behind the dreams that comprise the Disney theme parks. In this sequel to the best-selling Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind-the-Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real, the Imagineers serve up another dose of magic with an even closer look at who they are, what they do, and how they do it, illuminating their theories and explaining the tools they use, and where and how they use them. Contained within this deluxe tome are rough drawings, conceptual models, and behind-the-scenes stories showcasing Disney's newest attractions and innovations from the inside out. There's also an exclusive peek inside the Research and Development Lab to see what new magic will soon be appearing. The Imagineers tell their own stories, as well as how they got there, what they do on a daily basis, what they show their friends in the parks, and how you can learn what it takes to become an Imagineer. Presented in a large, lavish format, this book is sure to be a must-have for every Disney collector.
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42
A House in the Woods
Inga Moore
4.1
It’s nice to have your friends move in, but. . . . A sweet, wry tale of cooperation and camaraderie, told with pastoral artwork by Inga Moore.
One little pig has made a little den for herself in the woods, and another little pig has a small hut next door. One morning they return from a walk to find that their big friend Bear has moved into the den and an even larger Moose into the hut. CRASH! With both homes collapsed, they’re all in a pickle—but what if they find a way to build a house in the woods that all four of them can share? With lush, whimsically detailed illustrations and a cast of endearing, industrious (and most accommodating!) characters, Inga Moore constructs an inviting story of friendship that kids will be happy to visit awhile.
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43
The Poetics of Space
Gaston Bachelard, Maria Jolas, John R. Stilgoe
4.1
Since its first publication in English in 1964, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.
"A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard." -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe
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44
Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter
Lloyd Kahn
4.1
Master builder Louie Frazier's Japanese-style pole house in Northern California, reachable on a 500" cable across a river / Ian MacLeod's handbuilt stone house in South Africa, where baboons jump on the roof at night / Ma Page's bottle house in the Nevada desert / artist Michael Kahn's semi-subterranean sculptural ivillage in Arizona / Bill and Athena Steen's strawbale houses / Ianto Evans' cob houses in Oregon / the Archlibre group of countercultural builders in the French Pyrenees / Bill Coperthwaite's spectacular 3-story yurt in the Maine woods / Bill Castle's finely-crafted log home and sauna in the NY Appalachians / a commune in the Tennesee mountains / the "Flying Concrete" brothers in Mexico and their far-out sculptural structures / Barns in California, Washington, and Connecticut / Photo-essays of Lloyd Kahn's trips to Nevada, the Mississippi Delta, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, and Baja California / Photos of buildings all over the world by photographers Yoshio Komatsu and Kevin Kelly + more, lots more. . .I get excited just listing these things! -LK
PS SHELTER, it turns out, had a major influence on builders, and included are buildings our 1973 book inspired, so this is truly a sequel.
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45
Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter
Lloyd Kahn
4.1
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46
2018 International Residential Code for One- And Two-Family Dwellings
International Code Council
4.1
This comprehensive code comprises all building, plumbing, mechanical, fuel gas and electrical requirements for one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses up to three stories. The IRC contains many important changes such as: An updated seismic map reflects the most conservative Seismic Design Category (SDC) based on any soil type and a new map reflects less conservative SDCs when Site Class A, B or D is applicable. The townhouse separation provisions now include options for using two separate fire-resistant-rated walls or a common wall. An emergency escape and rescue opening is no longer required in basement sleeping rooms where the dwelling has an automatic fire sprinkler system and the basement has a second means of egress or an emergency escape opening. The exemption for interconnection of smoke alarms in existing areas has been deleted. New girder/header tables have been revised to incorporate the use of #2 Southern Pine in lieu of #1 Southern Pine. New tables address alternative wood stud heights and the required number of full height studs in high wind areas.
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Recommended by Alan Pierce.
Alan Pierce
This is a great book for overall understanding of primarily modern western building and the many different building styles and materials employed. [source]
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47
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks
Brad Lancaster
4.1
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2, 2nd Edition is a how-to guide enabling you to “plant the rain” by creating water-harvesting “earthworks” or “rain gardens.” Earthworks are simple, inexpensive strategies and landforms that passively harvest multiple sources of free on-site water including rainfall, stormwater runoff, air conditioning condensate, and greywater within “living tanks” of soil and vegetation. The plants then pump the water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, timber and forage, while controlling erosion, reducing down-stream flooding, dropping utility costs, increasing soil fertility, enhancing the soil carbon sponge, and improving water and air quality.
This dramatically revised and expanded full-color second edition builds on the information in Volume 1 by showing you how to turn your yard, school, business, park, ranch, and neighborhood into lively, regenerative producers of resources. Conditions at home will improve as you simultaneously enrich the ecosystem and inspire the surrounding community.
Learn to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen earthworks. All is made easier and more effective by the illustrations of natural patterns of water and sediment flow with which you can collaborate or mimic. Detailed step-by-step instructions with over 550 images show you how to do it, and plentiful stories of success motivate you so you will do it!
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48
Audubon Birdhouse Book: Building, Placing, and Maintaining Great Homes for Great Birds
Margaret Barker
4.1
A visit to almost any home or garden center presents birders with numerous cute and colorful contraptions that are sold as bird homes. But the fact is, many of these products provide anything but a safe refuge for your feathered friends. Produced in association with the National Audubon Society, Audubon Birdhouse Book explains how to build and place functional DIY bird homes that are safe and appropriate for more than 20 classic North American species, from wrens to raptors. Each of the easy-to-build boxes and shelves within is accompanied by cut lists, specially created line diagrams, and step-by-step photography, making the projects accessible to those with even the most rudimentary woodworking skills. In addition, this practical and beautifully presented guide is packed with color photography and information about the bird species covered—including titmice, chickadees, nuthatches, phoebes, swallows, waterfowl, and even kestrels and owls—to help the reader properly place and maintain the homes to attract birds. And because these projects are the product of years of experience and field-testing, you can be sure you’re getting the best advice regarding proper design, safe construction materials, and correct home placement to mitigate exposure to elements, pests, and predators. Finally, beyond the birdhouses, you’ll find out how you can contribute to the larger birding community and even enhance your birding experience with the aid of new technologies.
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49
Buildings Don't Lie
Henry Gifford
4.1
A simple, clear, thorough, and complete explanation of basic building science applicable to any building in any climate. Over 1,000 large color drawings and photos, plus fun quizzes. No charts, graphs, or math. Read this book and become your own expert on making buildings comfortable, healthy, safe, durable, and very energy efficient, because you will understand the underlying science of the movement through buildings of heat, air, water, light, sound, fire, and pests, and how these can be controlled. This book also includes sections on designing building enclosures, indoor air quality, choosing heating and cooling systems, and how to ventilate, heat, and cool different types of buildings.
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50
School's First Day of School
Adam Rex, Christian Robinson
4.1
It's the first day of school at Frederick Douglass Elementary and everyone's just a little bit nervous, especially . . . the school.
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51
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworker's Reflections
George Nakashima
4.1
On a farmlike compound near New Hope, Pennsylvania, George Nakashima, his family, and fellow wood-workers create exquisite furniture from richly grained, rare timber. Tables, desks, chairs, and cabinets from this simple workshop grace the homes and mansions and executive boardrooms of people who prize such excellence. In this lavishly illustrated volume, George Nakashima allows us in intimate look at his artistry, his philosophy, his life. It is the portrait of an artisan who strives to find the ideal use for each plank in order to "create an object of utility to man and, if nature smiles, an object of lasting beauty."
The author's search for the meaning of life took him as a young man to Paris, Tokyo, and Pondicherry, India. In India, he found the inner peace for which he had been searching and began to find ways to work with timber. He writes movingly about the grandeur of ancient trees and stunning figured woods and explains how he selects and prepares his materials. Above all, he impresses us with his devotion to discovering the inherent beauty of wood so that noble trees might have a second life as furniture. The Soul of a Tree looks at the world through the eyes of an artist and evokes the joy of living in harmony with nature.
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52
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain Into Your Life and Landscape
Brad Lancaster
4.1
Turn water scarcity into water abundance!
"Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 1, 3rd Edition" is the best-selling, award-winning guide on how to conceptualize, design, and implement life-enhancing water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. This book enables you to assess your on-site resources, gives you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empowers you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional plan specific to your site and needs.
Clearly written with more than 290 illustrations, this full-color edition helps bring your site to life, reduce your cost of living, endow yourself and your community with skills of self-reliance and cooperation, and create living air conditioners of vegetation growing beauty, food, and wildlife habitat. Stories of people who are successfully welcoming rain into their life and landscape will invite you to do the same.
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53
Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques
Kaki Hunter
4.1
Over 70 percent of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials—straw, cob, and earth—for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials.
Earthbag Building is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks, and techniques for building with bags filled with earth—or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. A reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty—in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.
This profusely illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building: Special design considerations Foundations, walls and floors Electrical, plumbing and shelving Lintels, windows and door installations Roofs, arches and domes Exterior and interior plasters.
With dedicated sections on costs, making your own specialized tools, and building code considerations, as well as a complete resources guide, Earthbag Building is the long-awaited, definitive guide to this uniquely pleasing construction style.
Kaki Hunter and Donald Kiffmeyer have been involved in the construction industry for the last 20 years, specializing in affordable, low-tech, low-impact building methods that are as natural as possible. They developed the "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" of building affordably with earthbags and have taught the subject and contributed their expertise to several books and journals on natural building.
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54
Structuresor Why Things Don T Fall Down
J. E. Gordon
4.1
I am very much aware that it is an act of extreme rashness to attempt to write an elementary book about structures. Indeed it is only when the subject is stripped of its mathematics that one begins to realize how difficult it is to pin down and describe those structural concepts which are often called' elementary'; by which I suppose we mean 'basic' or 'fundamental'. Some of the omis sions and oversimplifications are intentional but no doubt some of them are due to my own brute ignorance and lack of under standing of the subject. Although this volume is more or less a sequel to The New Science of Strong Materials it can be read as an entirely separate book in its own right. For this reason a certain amount of repeti tion has been unavoidable in the earlier chapters. I have to thank a great many people for factual information, suggestions and for stimulating and sometimes heated discussions. Among the living, my colleagues at Reading University have been generous with help, notably Professor W. D. Biggs (Professor of Building Technology), Dr Richard Chaplin, Dr Giorgio Jeronimidis, Dr Julian Vincent and Dr Henry Blyth; Professor Anthony Flew, Professor of Philosophy, made useful suggestions about the last chapter. I am also grateful to Mr John Bartlett, Consultant Neurosurgeon at the Brook Hospital. Professor T. P."
It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design. [source]
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55
Construction
Sally Sutton
4.1
Hoist the wood. Hoist the wood. Chain and hook and strap. Swing it round, then lower it down. Thonk! Clonk! Clap! Build the frame. Build the frame. Hammer all day long. Make the stairs and floors and walls. Bing! Bang! Bong!
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56
The Harmonious Home: Designing Peaceful, Personal Spaces Inspired by Nature
Rebecca Atwood
4.1
A holistic approach to creating a home using the colors, patterns, and textures found in the natural world, from the author of Living with Color and Living with Pattern.Hailed by Vogue for her "approachable patterns and textiles" Rebecca Atwood shares a new method for styling your interiors, one guided by nature: specifically landscapes that capture your imagination. As an artist, she has found that the details of a landscape helps make design accessible, and when decorating a home, it can even direct the decisions you make. Think of a place outside that contains a mood you want to bring into your home, such as the beach or a garden you saw on your travels. Identify the colors in its landscape and you can choose a room’s paint colors. Pick out its textures and you can decide what materials—rugs, wallpaper, upholstery fabric—to bring into the room. The Harmonious Home walks you through six different landscapes—Dunes, Ocean, Field, Forest, Garden, and City—and shows you how to pull together color and pattern combinations you might not have imagined on your own that evoke the feeling of the place without looking overly thematic.Throughout, you’ll find gorgeous photographs of interiors around the country and expert advice from celebrated interior designers for selecting lighting, a floor plan, window treatments, and more. With endless inspiration for building a room around a mood, The Harmonious Home takes you from fabric and paint swatches to a harmonious design that feels like home.
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57
International Building Code
International Code Council
4.1
Featuring the very latest industry standards in material design, the 2015 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE SOFT COVER version offers up-to-date, comprehensive insight into the regulations surrounding the design and installation of building systems. It provides valuable structural, fire-, and life- safety provisions that cover means of egress, interior finish requirements, roofs, seismic engineering, innovative construction technology, and occupancy classifications for all types of buildings except those which are detached one and two family homes and townhouses not more than 3 stories high. New code sections have been added to the 2015 IBC that cover rooftop mounted photovoltaic solar panels and all the content in the book is developed in the context of the broad-based principles that facilitate the use of new materials and building designs. The updates to this code make it an essential reference guide for anyone seeking a strong working knowledge of building systems.
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58
The Next Always (Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy, #1)
Nora Roberts, MacLeod Andrews
4.1
The historic hotel in Boonsboro has endured war and peace, changing hands, even rumored hauntings. Now it’s getting a major facelift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. Beckett is the architect of the family, and his social life consists mostly of talking shop over pizza and beer. But there’s another project he’s got his eye on: the girl he’s been waiting to kiss since he was fifteen.
After losing her husband and returning to her hometown, Clare Brewster soon settles into her life as the mother of three young sons while running the town’s bookstore. Busy, with little time for romance, Clare is drawn across the street by Beckett’s transformation of the old inn, wanting to take a closer look . . . at the building and the man behind it.
With the grand opening inching closer, Beckett’s happy to give Clare a private tour - one room at a time. It’s no first date, but these stolen moments are the beginning of something new - and open the door to the extraordinary adventure of what comes next . . .
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59
2018 International Building Code
International Code Council
4.1
This code applies to all buildings except detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses up to three stories. The 2018 IBC contains many important changes such as: Accessory storage spaces of any size are now permitted to be classified as part of the occupancy to which they are accessory. New code sections have been introduced addressing medical gas systems and higher education laboratories. Use of fire walls to create separate buildings is now limited to only the determination of permissible types of construction based on allowable building area and height. Where an elevator hoistway door opens into a fire-resistance-rated corridor, the opening must be protected in a manner to address smoke intrusion into the hoistway. The occupant load factor for business uses has been revised to one occupant per 150 square feet. Live loads on decks and balconies increase the deck live load to one and one-half times the live load of the area served. The minimum lateral load that fire walls are required to resist is five pounds per square foot. Wind speed maps updated, including maps for the state of Hawaii. Terminology describing wind speeds has changed again with ultimate design wind speeds now called basic design wind speeds. Site soil coefficients now correspond to the newest generation of ground motion attenuation equations (seismic values). Five-foot tall wood trusses requiring permanent bracing must have a periodic special inspection to verify that the required bracing has been installed. New alternative fastener schedule for construction of mechanically laminated decking is added giving equivalent power-driven fasteners for the 20-penny nail. Solid sawn lumber header and girder spans for the exterior bearing walls reduce span lengths to allow #2 Southern Pine design values.
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60
Trail Solutions: Imba's Gudie To Building Sweet Singletrack
International Mountain Bicycling Association
4.1
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61
Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves You Can Build
Ianto Evans, Leslie Jackson
4.1
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62
The Handbuilt Home: 34 Simple Stylish and Budget-Friendly Woodworking Projects for Every Room
Ana White
4.1
Create a Beautiful, Modern Home with One-of-a-Kind DIY Furniture Beds, organizers, Adirondack chairs, a play table, and more! It's easy to build inexpensive, quality furnishings with this indispensible collection of woodworking projects from Ana White, the popular blogger who has inspired millions of homemakers with her stylish furniture plans and DIY spirit. As a young mom on a tight budget, Ana learned to make her own well-designed pieces inspired by the styles in her favorite stores—saving thousands of dollars in the process. Now, in this reference for woodworkers of all skill levels, Ana shares everything she has learned along the way. Inside The Handbuilt Home you'll find: • Plans for 34 versatile furniture projects for every room in your house—from beginner-friendly home accessories to sturdy tables, a media center, kids’ items, and storage solutions • Comprehensive information on using off-the-shelf lumber and basic equipment—almost every project can be made with a drill, a saw, and some hand tools • Easy-to-follow instructions, costs, and time estimates to guide even the most amateur of carpenters through any project You don’t need to be physically tough or superstrong to make your own furniture, and it’s okay if you don’t know that a 2x4 doesn’t actually measure 2 by 4 inches. All you need is the determination to create a better home for yourself or your family and the confidence to say, “I can build that.”
Also available as an eBook
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63
A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder
Michael Pollan
4.1
A room of one's own: is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape?
When writer Michael Pollan decided to plant a garden, the result was an award-winning treatise on the borders between nature and contemporary life, the acclaimed bestseller Second Nature. Now Pollan turns his sharp insight to the craft of building, as he recounts the process of designing and constructing a small one-room structure on his rural Connecticut property--a place in which he hoped to read, write and daydream, built with his two own unhandy hands.
Invoking the titans of architecture, literature and philosophy, from Vitrivius to Thoreau, from the Chinese masters of feng shui to the revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright, Pollan brilliantly chronicles a realm of blueprints, joints and trusses as he peers into the ephemeral nature of "houseness" itself. From the spark of an idea to the search for a perfect site to the raising of a ridgepole, Pollan revels in the infinitely detailed, complex process of creating a finished structure. At once superbly written, informative and enormously entertaining, A Place of My Own is for anyone who has ever wondered how the walls around us take shape--and how we might shape them ourselves.
A Place of My Own recounts his two-and-a-half-year journey of discovery in an absorbing narrative that deftly weaves the day-to-day work of design and building--from siting to blueprint, from the pouring of foundations to finish carpentry--with reflections on everything form the power of place to shape our lives to the question of what constitutes "real work" in a technological society.
A book about craft that is itself beautifully crafted, linking the world of the body and material things with the realm of mind, heart, and spirit, A Place of My Own has received extraordinary praise.
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64
Cabin Porn: Inside
Zach Klein
4.1
First a mega-popular online phenomenon and now a bestseller with more than 300,000 copies in print worldwide, Cabin Porn has become a powerful lifestyle movement that is synonymous with unplugging from a tech-obsessed world to find peace amid nature. Startups, homes, and even housing developments have all been inspired by the original book. In this hotly anticipated extension of the Cabin Porn series, the creators give their fans what they ask for most: a look inside the most beloved cabins they have featured over the past ten years.
Cabin Porn: Inside is the definitive guide for the cabin builder, as well as anyone seeking perspective on how to create spaces that just work--the ones that spellbind us in their warmth and ingenious simplicity.
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65
Case Study Houses
Elizabeth Smith
4.1
The Case Study House program (1945-66) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. The program's chief motivating force was Arts Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture's greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to re-define the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture. With comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, floor plans and sketches.
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66
Demolition
Sally Sutton, Brian Lovelock
4.1
What's even more exciting to preschoolers than seeing big machines that build things? Watching the massive ones that tear them down!
Crush the stone. Crush the stone. Chip and grind and munch. Make new concrete from the old. Whirr! Churr! Crunch!
From the huge crane with a swinging ball (crack! ) to the toothy jaws that ram the walls (thwock! ), this rambunctious demolition, reverberating with sound words, is guaranteed to have small kids rapt. Bright spreads showcase the gargantuan machines in all their glory, and a pictorial glossary explains what each one can do.
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67
How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home (RSMeans)
Charlie Wing
4.1
FIX IT. MAINTAIN IT. UNDERSTAND IT. THE LATEST EDITION OF THE BESTSELLING VISUAL GUIDE FOR ALL HOMEOWNERS.Most people will never make a more important purchase than a house; properly understanding and maintaining your home can be a fundamental component of a financially sound life. Most homeowners, however, rely on contractors and building engineers to understand the systems that comprise a modern home. There is an urgent need for a guide which makes these essential systems transparent to the general consumer. How Your House Works provides a working overview of all the basic systems that make up your home, from electrical systems to HVAC to plumbing and beyond. Richly illustrated and with clear, accessible language, this book demystifies the foundations of home ownership and puts you in control of the structures that make your house work. Readers of the fourth edition of How Your House Works will also find: New chapters on household batteriesExpanded sections pertaining to smart home technology and sustainabilityDetailed, full-color illustrations by the authorHow Your House Works is a must-have for any homeowner or prospective buyer.
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68
The Lego Neighborhood Book: Build Your Own Town!
Brian Lyles and Jason Lyles
4.1
In The LEGO Neighborhood Book, you'll create buildings with real-world details like cornices and facades, and try your hand at interior design by filling your buildings with furniture and light fixtures. Then add the finishing touches to your models with plants, traffic lights, scaffolding, and park benches. Snap together a few houses, shops, and apartment buildings to create your own neighborhood!
Inside you'll find:
Complete, step-by-step instructions for four multistory buildings Dozens of inspiring ideas to use in your own models Mini builds for a recliner, old-time lamp post, traffic light, and more A gallery of the authors' designs For ages 10+
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69
Build Your Own Earth Oven: A Low-Cost Wood-Fired Mud Oven, Simple Sourdough Bread, Perfect Loaves
Kiko Denzer
4.1
Earth ovens combine the utility of a wood-fired, retained-heat oven with the ease and timeless beauty of earthen construction. Building one will appeal to bakers, builders, and beginners of all kinds, from: the serious or aspiring baker who wants the best low-cost bread oven, togardeners who want a centerpiece for a beautiful outdoor kitchen, tooutdoor chefs, tocreative people interested in low-cost materials and simple technology, toteachers who want a multi-faceted, experiential project for students of all ages (the book has been successful with everyone from third-graders to adults)."Build Your Own Earth Oven" is fully illustrated with step-by-step directions, including how to tend the fire, and how to make perfect sourdough hearth loaves in the artisan tradition. The average do-it-yourselfer with a few tools and a scrap pile can build an oven for free, or close to it. Otherwise, $30 should cover all your materials--less than the price of a fancy "baking stone." Good building soil is often right in your back yard, under your feet. Build the simplest oven in a day! With a bit more time and imagination, you can make a permanent foundation and a fire-breathing dragon-oven or any other shape you can dream up.Earth ovens are familiar to many that have seen a southwestern "horno" or a European "bee-hive" oven. The idea (pioneered by Egyptian bakers in the second millennium bc!) is simplicity itself: fill the oven with wood, light a fire, and let it burn down to ashes. The dense, 3- to 12-inch-thick earthen walls hold and store the heat of the fire, the baker sweeps the floor clean, and the hot oven walls radiate steady, intense heat for hours.Home bakers who can't afford a fancy, steam-injected bread oven will be delighted to find that a simple earth oven can produce loaves to equal the fanciest "artisan" bakery. It also makes delicious roast meats, cakes, pies, pizzas, and other creations. Pizza cooks to perfection in three minutes or less. Vegetables, herbs, and potatoes drizzled with olive oil roast up in minutes for a simple, elegant, and delicious meal. Efficient cooks will find the residual heat useful for slow-baked dishes, and even for drying surplus produce, or incubating homemade yogurt.
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70
Tip Tip Dig Dig
Emma Garcia
4.1
A parade of colorful construction vehicles doing their work means plenty of joyful noise! From the crane that lifts, lifts, lifts to the bulldozer that push-push-pushes, to the steamroller that rolls, rolls, rolls, every machine here makes it own special sound. Kids will love the irresistibly rhythmic text and the adorable, personality-filled vehicles with headlights that look like eyes. And the surprise ending, when the great big mess on page one becomes a wonderful playground, is sure to leave them delighted!
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71
The Cob Builders Handbook: You Can Hand-Sculpt Your Own Home
Becky Bee
4.1
Cob (an old English word for lump) is old-fashioned concrete, made out of a mixture of clay, sand, and straw. Becky Bee's manual is a friendly guide to making your own earth structure, with chapters on design, foundations, floors, windows and doors, finishes, and of course, making glorious cob.
"I believe that building with cob is a way to recreate community and experience the joy of working together while taking back the right to build our own homes and look after our Mother Earth."
She loves doing something that makes sense in a world where lots of things don't.
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72
The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book: A Beginner's Guide to Building and Programming Robots
Laurens Valk
4.1
The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book is a complete beginner's guide to the EV3 kit from bestselling author and robotics expert Laurens Valk. This full color book teaches you fundamental programming and robotics skills as you build and program powerful robots that move, monitor sensors, and respond to their environments. You will build seven increasingly sophisticated robots like the BRICK SORT3R (a robot that sorts bricks by color and size), the THE SNATCH3R (an autonomous robotic arm), and LAVA R3X (a humanoid that walks and talks). Valk also covers more advanced programming techniques like data wires and variables, and shows you how to create custom remote control programs. More than 100 building and programming challenges throughout encourage you to think creatively and to apply what you've learned to invent your own robots.
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73
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
Ross King
4.1
Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance man bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder. Not a master mason or carpenter, Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and clock maker. Over twenty-eight years, he would dedicate himself to solving puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architecture. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone (some among the most renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated seventy million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction. This drama was played out amid plagues, wars, political feuds, and the intellectual ferments of Renaissance Florence - events Ross King weaves into a story to great effect. An American Library Association Best Book of the Year Boston Globe: "An absorbing tale." Los Angeles Times: "Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing... Fascinating."
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74
Bloom
Doreen Cronin, David Small
4.1
A glass kingdom is no place for a Mud Fairy. Bloom and her mud fairy magic might be able to turn weeds into flowers and spin sand into glass, but the people of the kingdom ceaselessly complain about the trails of dirt and puddles of mud that seem to follow her every step, and finally they cast her out.
But when the glass castle begins to crack, then cracks some more, the King and Queen in a panic search for the long-banished fairy, but they can’t find Bloom anywhere. Desperate to save their home, they send their meekest, most ordinary subject, a girl named Genevieve whose sole task until now has been to polish the Queen’s crystal sugar spoon—to coax any worthy fairy to come and save the kingdom. Genevieve finds Bloom exactly where the king and queen failed to see her, and Bloom knows exactly how to save the kingdom. But it will take the two girls working together, along with a mighty dollop of self-confidence—and some very messy hands—to accomplish the extraordinary.
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75
Eames
Gloria Koenig
4.0
Visual impact: Nothing says modernist perfection like an Eames design The creative duoCharles Eames (1907 1978)andRay Kaiser Eames (1912 1988)transformed the visual character of America. Though best known for their furniture, the husband and wife team were also forerunners in architecture, textile design, photography, and film.The Eames work defined anew, multifunctional modernity, exemplary for its integration of craft and design, as well as for the use of modern materials, notablyplywood and plastics.The Eames Lounge Chair Wood, designed with molded plywood technology, became a defining furniture piece of the twentieth century, while the couple s contribution to theCase Study Housesproject not only made inventive use of industrial materials but also developed anadaptable floor plan of multipurpose spaceswhich would become ahallmark of postwar modern architecture.From the couple s earliest furniture experiments to their seminal short filmPowers of Ten, this book covers all the aspects of the illustrious Eames repertoire and itsrevolutionary impact on middle-class American living. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN s Basic Architecture Series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts and plans) "
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76
Ballpark: Baseball in the American City
Paul Goldberger
4.0
An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.
From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a "saloon in the open air"), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked Victorian society in the accommodations--bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class; the "concrete donuts" of the 1950s and 60s made plain television's grip on the public's attention and the new need for stadiums that could also accommodate football; and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore's Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and for baseball's role in urban development. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the ways in which baseball's history--its concurrent rise with the railway system, the origins of the American and National Leagues, the first stolen base--is clued into the important architectural, material, engineering, and site details and requirements that shaped our most beloved stadiums. A fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities--where dreams are as limitless as the outfields.
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Recommended by Brian Mctaggart.
Brian Mctaggart
If you love baseball and ballparks like me, check out @paulgoldberger's new book "Baseball in the American City" from @penguinrandom: https://t.co/EOiGk94mVG… https://t.co/gqd40kkrZC [source]
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77
Shelter
Lloyd Kahn
4.0
Shelter is many things - a visually dynamic, oversized compendium of organic architecture past and present; a how-to book that includes over 1,250 illustrations; and a Whole Earth Catalog-type sourcebook for living in harmony with the earth by using every conceivable material. First published in 1973, Shelter remains a source of inspiration and invention. Including the nuts-and-bolts aspects of building, the book covers such topics as dwellings from Iron Age huts to Bedouin tents to Togo's tin-and-thatch houses; nomadic shelters from tipis to "housecars"; and domes, dome cities, sod iglus, and even treehouses. The authors recount personal stories about alternative dwellings that illustrate sensible solutions to problems associated with using materials found in the environment - with fascinating, often surprising results.
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78
Everything You Need For a Treehouse
Carter Higgins and Emily Hughes
4.0
Featuring beautiful images and a lyrical text with an exquisitely readable cadence, this book gives life and meaning to all the requisite elements of a treehouse, from time, timber, and rafters to ropes of twisted twine that invite visitors to sprawl out on a limb and slide back down again. For anyone who's ever wanted to escape real life and live in a nostalgic dream come true, this poignant picture book captures the universal timelessness of treehouses and celebrates all the creativity and adventure they spark.
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79
Skoolie!: How to Convert a School Bus or Van into a Tiny Home or Recreational Vehicle
Will Sutherland
4.0
School buses that have been converted into mobile living spaces — known as skoolies — are a natural extension of the tiny house craze. Buses are not only easier and safer to drive than an RV, they provide a jump-start on the conversion process with frame, roof, and floor already in place. Experienced builder Will Sutherland, whose creative school bus conversions have been featured in Road and Track and Popular Mechanics, is behind the wheel of this alluring look at life on the road. In addition to profiles of eight fellow skoolie fans and stunning photos of bus interiors designed for simple living, Skoolie! does what no other book on the subject has — it offers a complete, step-by-step guide to the conversion process, from seat removal to planning layout and installing insulation, flooring, and furnishings that meet your needs.
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80
Architecture: Form, Space, & Order
Francis D. K. Ching
4.0
THE CLASSIC ARCHITECTURAL REFERENCE, UPDATED WITH CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES AND INTERACTIVE RESOURCES
For more than forty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has served as the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated and revised Fourth Edition features the fundamental elements of space and form and is designed to encourage critical thought in order to promote a more evocative understanding of architecture.
Architecture: Form, Space, and Order distills complex concepts of design into a clear focus and brings difficult abstractions to life. The book explains form and space in relation to light, view, openings, and enclosures and explores the organization of space, and the elements and relationships of circulation, as well as proportion and scale. In addition, the text's detailed illustrations demonstrate the concepts presented and reveal the relationships between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultures.
This edition includes an access card with a redemption code for the online Interactive Resource Center, which features thirty-five animations, flashcards of key architectural terms, and an image gallery showcasing hundreds of photos that enrich the book's content.
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81
Building a House
Byron Barton
4.0
Byron Barton, the celebrated creator of numerous picture books for very young children, including Trucks, My Bus, and My Car, builds a house, step by step, right before your eyes!
A machine digs a big hole. A cement mixer pours cement. Carpenters put up walls. Bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, and painters do their part. Through brilliantly simple words and pictures a house is built.
"You can almost do it yourself by carefully noting the steps depicted in each bright, brisk, clearly delineated picture . . . With independently interesting pictures and a definite, sunny personality, a very fine piece of work indeed."—Kirkus Reviews
Named a Notable Book for Children by the American Library Association
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82
Build, Dogs, Build: A Tall Tail
James Horvath
4.0
Join head foreman Duke and his crew of worker dogs on a busy day of construction fun in this colorful picture book written and illustrated by James Horvath. With lively scenes showing accurately illustrated vehicles in action, this book will be a joy to read out loud for truck-obsessed readers and their parents!
In Build, Dogs, Build, our favorite doggy construction team is pulling down an old building to make way for a new one! Using equipment like cranes, bulldozers, dump trucks, and cement mixers, these busy dogs must race to finish the job in this fun follow-up to Dig, Dogs, Dig.
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83
Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid
Marianne Cusato
4.0
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84
At Home on the Water
Jaci Conry
4.0
Coastal havens designed for laid-back living.The idea of a retreat—a place removed from one’s daily stressors, a secluded haven to be enjoyed by family--is more appealing than it has been in decades. But second homes are far from a novel concept. Families have built retreats since the late 1800s, when the well-to-do began to construct reprieves in coastal areas to escape the combustive atmosphere of city life. Homes on the water have been coveted and cherished for their particular restorative qualities. In an oceanside house, one can’t help but pause to contemplate the view.At Home on the Water offers a history of coastal living and features twelve homes on the water on both coasts and the gulf. This stunning title focuses on both the design of the homes and the way the homeowners live in them, embellished by interviews with homeowners, designers, and/or architects.
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85
Building with Cob: A Step-by-Step Guide
Adam Weismann, Katy Bryce
4.0
With detailed illustrations and photos, this manual features step-by-step instructions for creating cob structures. Information on natural finishes is provided, including lime plasters, renders and washes, homemade clay and casein paints, and earthen plasters. It details how to construct a cob building that complies with modern building standards, and gives guidance on restoring and repairing old cob structures. A comprehensive list of resources and suppliers is also included.
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86
CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
Patrick Hutchison
4.0
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87
The Cardboard Kingdom
Chad Sell
4.0
Welcome to a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary boxes into colorful costumes, and their ordinary block into cardboard kingdom. This is the summer when sixteen kids encounter knights and rogues, robots and monsters--and their own inner demons--on one last quest before school starts again.
In the Cardboard Kingdom, you can be anything you want to be--imagine that!
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88
Building Construction Illustrated
Francis D. K. Ching, Cassandra Adams
4.0
A professional architect presents an update to the classic manual on residential and light construction techniques and includes increased coverage of environmentally friendly materials--plus the latest data on concrete, steel and glazing technology, energy efficiency in buildings, moisture and thermal protection, natural lighting, and masonry. 100+ line drawings.
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89
Architecture: A Visual History
Jonathan Glancey
4.0
With over 500 images and 13 specially commissioned 3-D artworks identifying key structural and aesthetic features, this is a visual tour covering more than 350 of the world's greatest buildings of architectural styles.
Take a spectacular tour of the world's architecture--from ancient stupas to modern high-tech skyscrapers to today's green buildings in Architecture. From the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt to the Parthenon in Greece, from the White House in Washington, DC, to Bhurj Khalifa in Dubai and beyond, this visual worldwide survey of architecture offers close-up detailed photographic references to the vocabulary of each period, plus principal elements and decorated features.
Presented in a die-cut slipcase, it is the perfect gift for anyone interested architecture and engineering.
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90
Jack: Straight from the Gut
Jack Welch
4.0
Nearly 20 years ago, former General Electric CEO Reg Jones walked into Jack Welch's office and wrapped him in a bear hug. "Congratulations, Mr. Chairman", said Reg. It was a defining moment for American business. So begins the story of a self-made man and a self-described rebel who thrived in one of the most volatile and economically robust eras in U.S. history, while managing to maintain a unique leadership style. In what is the most anticipated book on business management for our time, Jack Welch surveys the landscape of his career running one of the world's largest and most successful corporations.
In his 2001 shareholder letter, Buffett gleefully endorses Jack: Straight from the Gut, a business memoir of longtime GE executive Jack Welch, whom Buffett describes as [source]
Annika Falkengren
I read Jack Welch’s book back in 2003 and it was at the time a great source of inspiration. There were a couple of things that got stuck in my mind and in some cases changed my mind: that there are no shortcuts, that facts always must be faced no matter how brutal and that losing or failing had a value as long as your learn from them. His thoughts on how crucial the soft values are, inspired me a lot. It is really a genuine focus on people and mindset, or call it culture, that makes an organization excel in the long run. [source]
Tudor Mihailescu
In every industry, there would be many relevant books but nothing would replace being in touch with the customers and people in own organisation. It’s a vast of space to recommend books, but I would suggest that learning how proven entrepreneurs or managers have done this as a good start (read about Jake Welch – Straight from the Gut, Steve Jobs, Shoe Dog – Phil Knight or Elon Musk) – admittedly, some of them may set a very high bar. [source]
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91
Profit First for Contractors: Transform your Construction Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine
Shawn Van Dyke
4.0
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92
Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Masterpiece
Marc Harshman, Anna Egan Smucker, LeUyen Pham
4.0
In the wooded heart of Pennsylvania, a house perches atop a waterfall. The water's tune echoes through its sunlit-dappled rooms, and the façade blends effortlessly into the rock and forest behind it. This is Fallingwater, an architectural masterpiece born from the marriage of meticulous research and unbounded imagination, the legacy of the lauded American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
This stunning picture book collaboration between Marc Harshman, Anna Egan Smucker, and LeUyen Pham guide readers through Wright's process designing Fallingwater, from his initial inspiration to the home's breathtaking culmination. It is an exploration of the creative process; a celebration of potential and the vision required to unlock it. Graceful prose and rich, dynamic illustrations breathe life into the story of Wright and of Fallingwater, a man and a home unlike any other.
-from front cover flap
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Recommended by Shannon Miller.
Shannon Miller
I love this picture book from @MacmillanKids about the creative process of designing and building Frank Lloyd Wright’s, Fallingwater home. It’s beautifully written with amazing illustrations and will leave readers wanting to learn and research even more. ❤️ #kidlit https://t.co/SjndRxh0X9 [source]
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93
Be a Maker
Katey Howes and Elizabet Vuković
4.0
How many things can you make in a day? A tower, a friend, a change? Rhyme, repetition, and a few seemingly straightforward questions engage young readers in a discussion about the many things we make--and the ways we can make a difference in the world. This simple, layered story celebrates creativity through beautiful rhyming verse and vibrant illustrations with a timely message.
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94
Houses Made of Wood and Light: The Life and Architecture of Hank Schubart
Michele Dunkerley, Jim Alinder, Jane Hickie
4.0
American architect Hank Schubart was regarded as a genius for finding the perfect site for a house and for integrating its design into the natural setting, so that his houses appear to be as native to the forest around them as the trees and rocks. Salt Spring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada, offered him a place to create the kind of architecture that responded to its surroundings, and Schubart-designed homes populate the island. Built of wood and glass, suffused with light, and oriented to views, they display characteristic features: random-width cedar siding, exposed beams, rusticated stonework. Over time, Schubart's homes on Salt Spring Island came to be considered uniquely Gulf Islands homes.
This inviting book offers the first introduction to the life and architecture of West Coast modernist Henry A. Schubart, Jr. (1916-1998). While still in his teens, Schubart persuaded Frank Lloyd Wright to accept him as a Taliesin Fellow, and his year's apprenticeship in the master's workshop taught him principles of designing in harmony with nature that he explored throughout the rest of his life. Michele Dunkerley traces Schubart's career from his early practice in San Francisco at the noted firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, to his successful firm with Howard Friedman, to his most lasting professional achievements on Salt Spring Island, where he became the de facto community architect, designing more than 230 residential, commercial, educational, and religious projects. Drawing lessons from his mentors over his decades on the island, he forged an everyday architecture with his mastery of detail and inventiveness. In doing so, he helped define how the island could grow without losing its soul. Color photographs and site plans display Schubart's remarkable homes and other commissions.
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95
Bridges: A History of the World's Most Spectacular Spans
Judith Dupré
4.0
From New York Times best-selling author Judith Dupré comes a revised and updated edition of Bridges, her magnificent chronological tour of the world's most significant and eye-popping spans. Now in color and bigger than ever, Bridges covers thousands of years of architectural history, each bridge is gorgeously photographed "elevating the landmarks from mode of transportation to works of art" (Bustle).
Technological advances, structural daring, and artistic vision have propelled the evolution of bridge design around the world. This visual history of the world's landmark bridges has been thoroughly revised and updated since its initial publication twenty-five years ago, and now showcases well-known classics as well as modern innovators. Bridges featured include:
The Brooklyn Bridge (New York) Danyand-Kunshan Grand Bridge (China) Gateshead Millennium Bridge (England) The Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco) Zakim Bridge (Boston) Including all-new photographs and the latest cutting edge work from today's international superstars of architecture and engineering, Bridges covers two-thousand years of technological and aesthetic triumphs, making it the most thorough, authoritative, and gorgeous book on the subject-as dramatic in presentation as the structures it celebrates. Breathtaking photographs capture the bridges' details as well as their monumental scale; architectural drawings and plans invite you behind the scenes as new bridges take shape; and lively commentary on each structure explores its importance and places it in historical context. Throughout, informative profiles, features, and statistics make Bridges an invaluable reference as well as a visual feast.
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96
Hammer and Nails
Josh Bledsoe, Jessica Warrick
4.0
Nominee: Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy CLEL Bell Award, TALK 2017-2108 Chickadee Award
Darcy has plans. She and her friend are going to play dress up, do each other’s hair, and polish their nails. Daddy has plans, too. He’s going to read the paper, mow the lawn, and fix the fence. When Darcy’s friend cancels and she’s sure her day is ruined, Daddy suggests that they tackle their to-do lists together with a Darcy-Daddy Day. Daddy dons a tutu, and Darcy gives him a fancy hair do. They groom the lawn with Her Majesty’s Mowing Service and face off in a Daddy-directed sock battle. But will Darcy want to hammer? Will Daddy do nails? Stepping outside their comfort zones, Darcy and Daddy opt to be open-minded and even a bit daring. As Daddy says, “Sometimes things you’ve never done end up being fun!” With a gung-ho attitude, Darcy masters the hammer, and Daddy goes for it with the nails.
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97
Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere
Zach Klein
4.0
Rural escapes for those yearning for a simpler existence, by the creators of the wildly popular tumblr Cabin Porn. Created by a group of friends who preserve 55 acres of hidden forest in Upstate New York-Cabin Porn began as a scrapbook to collect inspiration for their building projects. As the collection grew, the site attracted a following, which is now a huge and obsessive audience.
The site features photos of the most remarkable handmade homes in the backcountry of America and all over the world. It has had over 10 million unique visitors, with 350,000 followers on Tumblr. Now Zach Klein, the creator of the site (and a co-founder of Vimeo) goes further into the most alluring images from the site and new getaways, including more interior photography and how-to advice for setting up a quiet place somewhere.
With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create.
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98
Manual of Biogenic House Sections
Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, David J. Lewis
4.0
Recognizing that buildings are a major contributor to global warming and the critical role of embodied versus operational carbon, the book focuses on houses built from materials that either sequester carbon (plants), use materials with very low embodied carbon (earth and stone) or reuse substantial amounts of existing materials.Organized by those materials (wood, bamboo, straw, hemp, cork, earth, brick, stone and re-use), and incorporating life cycle diagrams demonstrating how the raw material is processed into building components, the book shows how the unique properties of each material can transform the ways architects conceive the sections of houses. The house was selected as the vehicle for these investigations due to its scale, its role as a site of architectural experimentation, and its ubiquity. Building on the techniques of the Manual of Section, the book is comprised of newly generated cross-sectional drawings of fifty-five recent, modestly sized houses from around the world, making legible the tectonics and materials used in their construction. Each house is also shown through exploded axonometric, construction photographs and color photographs of the exterior and interior. Introductory essays set up the importance of embodied carbon, the role of vernacular plant-based construction and the problems of contemporary house construction. Drawing connections between the architecture of the house, environmental systems and material economies, the book seeks to change how we build now and for the future.
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99
The Better Tree Fort
Jessica Scott Kerrin, Qin Leng
4.0
“Let’s build a tree fort,” Russell says to his dad when they move into a house with a big maple tree in the backyard. His dad doesn’t know much about building, but he gamely follows Russell’s plan. Several trips to the lumber store later, the tree fort is done. There is no slide, balcony or skylight like Russell imagined, but it is perfect — right up until he notices another tree fort going up three houses over.
When Russell goes over to investigate, he meets Warren, whose bigger tree fort has castle turrets and working lights. Russell is in awe until it dawns on him that it’s not worth worrying about who has the better tree fort when he has a loving dad there to build one with him.
In this subtle, humorous story, Jessica Scott Kerrin explores the idea of keeping up with the Joneses — and what that means when you’re a kid with a tree fort. Qin Leng’s lighthearted watercolor illustrations show the unshakeable bond between a father and son, as well as the delightful details of two tree forts.
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100
Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits Vegetables
Mike Bubel, Nancy Bubel
4.0
Stretch the resources of your small backyard garden further than ever before, without devoting hundreds of hours to canning! This informative and inspiring guide shows you not only how to construct your own root cellar, but how to best use the earth’s naturally cool, stable temperature as an energy-saving way to store nearly 100 varieties of perishable fruits and vegetables.
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