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Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid Hardcover – January 1, 2008

by Marianne Cusato (Author), Ben Pentreath (Author), Richard Sammons (Author),

4.6 596 ratings

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Even as oversized McMansions continue to elbow their way into tiny lots nationwide, a much different trend has taken shape. This return to traditional architectural principles venerates qualities that once were taken for granted in home design: structural common sense, aesthetics of form, appropriateness to a neighborhood, and even sustainability. Marianne Cusato, creator of the award-winning Katrina Cottages, has authored and illustrated this definitive guide to what makes houses look and feel rightto the eye and to the soul. She teaches us the language and grammar of classical architecture, revealing how balance, harmony, and detail all contribute to creating a home that will be loved rather than tolerated. And she takes us through the do’s and don’ts of every element of home design, from dormers to doorways to columns. Integral to the book are its hundreds of elegant line drawingsclearly rendering the varieties of lintels and cornices, arches and eaves, and displaying avoid” and use” versions of the same elements side by side.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Sterling
Publication date

January 1, 2008
Dimensions

9 x 0.75 x 11.25 inches
ISBN-10

9781402736285
ISBN-13

978-1402736285
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1402736282
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sterling; First Edition (January 1, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781402736285
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1402736285
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9 x 0.75 x 11.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #498,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #354 in Architectural Drafting & Presentation
- #479 in Residential Architecture
- #1,098 in Do-It-Yourself Home Improvement (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 596 ratings

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About the authors

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Marianne Cusato
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Marianne Cusato is a designer, author and lecturer in the fields of real estate trends and housing. Her messages speak to the ever-changing needs of homeowners striving to balance the practical requirements of economy and durability with the desire to love where we live.
Cusato is the author of two books: The Just Right Home: Buying, Renting, Moving...or Just Dreaming--Finding Your Perfect Match! (April 2013, Workman Publishing) and Get Your House Right, Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid, with Ben Pentreath, Richard Sammons and Leon Krier, foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales (January 2008, Sterling Publishing).
She is currently developing a new series of designs with Clayton Homes, a Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway company. She’s been a visiting professor at both The University of Notre Dame and The University of Miami and is a blogger for Huffington Post.
Cusato is well-known for her work on the Katrina Cottages. In 2006, her 308 s.f. cottage design won the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s “People’s Design Award.” That same year, Congress appropriated $400 million for an alternative emergency housing program, based on Cusato’s designs. In 2006, she was ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry by Builder Magazine. In 2012, Cusato was voted one of the 30 Most Influential Women in the Housing Economy by HousingWire Magazine.
She and her work are featured often in the media including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, Time magazine, The Week, InStyle Home, Fitness Magazine, Builder magazine, Architectural Record, ABC News, CNN, CNBC and NPR.
Cusato is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and is based in Miami, FL.
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Ben Pentreath
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Ben Pentreath’s architectural and interior design studio has established a powerful reputation across a variety of disciplines from master-planning and urban development, to private houses and playful interiors.
Ben’s background is in Art History, which he studied at the University of Edinburgh before attending the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture.
He worked for five years in New York and then with the Prince’s Foundation, before starting his own practice in 2004.
In 2008, Ben opened a tiny eponymous design store in Bloomsbury which has become one of the most influential small shops in London.

Ben's aesthetic is inspired by tradition and a respect for carefully detailed, authentic materials and design, but combined with a love of contemporary culture, which means that life is never dull.
He writes regularly for the Financial Times, and his weekly blog, Inspiration, is followed by many thousands of readers in the UK, America and around the world.
His book, English Decoration was published in 2011 and his sequel interiors book, English Houses launches in September 2016.
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This book is awesome

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023

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I am completely gutting and restoring/remodeling a house from 1871 and this book is helping me make smart decisions that I never would have made otherwise. I would have continued doing the things that everyone does nowadays that we think is normal, but is actually wrong, and I would have ended up with another bland house that lacks real character.

The key to this book is the large amount of illustrations that show what you shouldn't do, and then more illustrations of what you should do. Its awesome. There are words, and you should read them, but the illustrations are what make this book special.

From chimneys to casing to porches, windows, and doors, this books covers all the major exterior and a few of the interior elements of a house, and the proper way they should be designed and executed.

4 people found this helpful

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Justin the Chef

Get your COLONIAL House Right

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2015

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Phenomenal book that talks about the historically correct way to style an Adam, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, or Neo-Colonial style house. Also quite useful for Victorian style homes, but less authoritative. Once you get into Craftsman-style homes (turn of the 20th century) and later there really isn't anything of value in this book. There's absolutely nothing on mid-century modern. Lots of information about proportion and the Greek/Roman orders of architecture. Great reference if you want to create a historically accurate home from one of the specifically mentioned styles, or need to do historic restoration without butchering its character. The book mostly focuses on the exterior, admitting that interior was beyond the scope of the book. There is one short but useful chapter on the interior, however. For historically-correct interiors I really liked Traditional American Rooms (Winterthur Style Sourcebook): Celebrating Style, Craftsmanship, and Historic Woodwork , which covers the traditional woodwork of homes from the same era, with examples from 12 of the original 13 colonies. Also worthy of note are pattern books from those eras, many of which are still in print, such as the works of Asher Benjamin.

The strength of this book is that it explicitly shows common mistakes and explains why they look odd, whereas most historic references (like "The American Vignola") often skip details, or are harder to follow. If you're interested in a more detailed understanding of the classical orders, Robert Chitham's "The Classical Orders of Architecture" has this book beat in its sheer depth, although that book is geared toward architects, not homeowners. Still, this is a great addition to the library and one I find myself referencing more.

111 people found this helpful

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Fun, exactly as billed, with a spark of genius

Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2008

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I bought this book about a month or so ago. I have read through it once. While I will skim it again, from time to time, I'll be keeping it as an irreplaceable reference manual for home design or purchase.

The illustrations are gorgeous and pure genius. Most of them are NOT CAD drawings, but honest-to-goodness pencil illustrations, which all have a definite artistic flair to them.

The premise is simple: the Greeks and Romans got it right, and modern home designers try to ape their aesthetic without doing the requisite homework make awful looking houses. Once you read this book, you'll never be able to go into a rich new suburban development without easily being able to point out the painfully obvious design gaffes that abound. That's the downside--you're an instant architectural snob after one read. But the upside is that when it is time to YOU to buy or build, you'll know precisely what to look for and what to avoid.

Marianne Cusato has proven her genius with the "Katrina Cottage" design, which will probably set her for life financially. I hope it does, so she can focus all of her energies toward the classicist movement. I'd sure love to hire her to design my next home (if I could ever afford her now).

The modern architectural ethic of the last century, emphasizing a lack of details, machinelike designs, and a material driven ethos (steel, glass, and concrete) is absolutely put to shame by the Greek and Roman orders of proportion, balance, and detail. Hopefully, Ms. Cusato and her classicist colleagues can put the last few nails in that coffin. I could live the rest of my life quite well without having to view another gawd-awful building that looks like it was designed by Fisher Price.

This book is a masterpiece.

18 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Excellent Reference!!

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2011

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I just received my copy in the mail and have been very pleased with what I've seen so far. While this book does an excellent job of illustrating what architectural elements to use and how to use them, it is limited in that the scope of the book seems to be only classical architecture (Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival). If you are looking for a source to guide you as you pick out architectural details to include in your "new" Queen Anne, Gothic Revival, or Craftsman then you might want to look elsewhere. That being said, I am very happy I bought this book even if it is focused exclusively on classical architecture. A great example of how to use this book can be found under the millwork section. A chart is provided which details how tall your ceilings are and how tall your baseboard/crown molding should be. Proportions are everything and this book is an excellent guide for that.

15 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

MISSCDN

It's All About the Details

Reviewed in Canada on September 8, 2023

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I bought this in conjunction with 'A Pattern Language' for our new build. One deals with the humanity of your build, this one deals with the structural details that matter. There are so many important aesthetic aspects to building a house that don't necessarily equate to $$$. While certainly some of the details that the authors speak to would, indeed, increase the cost (in some instances significantly) there are a lot of things one can do to bring your home into harmony by just paying attention to proportion and simple design rules. An example is one of the most common we see - decorative shutters applied to the front of a house that could not possibly be functional and are often illogical. The book provides a good understanding of the original practical functionality behind a lot of building elements and how we've messed that up in a lot of mass produced homes today. Perhaps you can't implement all the best practices described (from both a budget and control perspective) but there is a lot you can do to make your home look proportional and feel like a quality build. Excellent reference material!

Amazon Customer

Enjoyable read

Reviewed in India on December 26, 2018

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Very good book for architecture students interested in residential design or anybody who wants to add elements of western traditional architecture to their homes.

Amazon Customer

renewing a house or just interested in why things look the way they do will both enjoy reading the book and find the contents ve

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 14, 2016

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Anyone thinking of creating a home, renewing a house or just interested in why things look the way they do will both enjoy reading the book and find the contents very useful

Silver breeze

Exellent reference book for today's architects

Reviewed in Canada on February 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

This is an excellent book for architectural related professionals. Everybody who choose architecture as profession MUST have this book! This is not about object design.It is about real architecture design technic and its coordination of building elements.
I noticed an astonishing reality that there is not much to learn in most architectural schools today,no matter a design or technical oriented school. Since most instructors do not have necessary knowledge to teach and consequently, their students do not have adequate professional training at school. A lot architects treat architectural design as object design and this is total misunderstanding of this profession. This design goal is to pursue whatever a strange form as design objective. This is very common in architecture profession everywhere on this planet. And this situation has been existing for several generations! The result is evident: how terrible are our new buildings and towns (cities).
Once I received this book and went through its index, I realized that there are some responsible and knowlegeble architects ( these people are real architects) are trying to bring back this devastating profession, architect, back to its right track. And this book is an effort to bring back the lost design tradition. The design skills shown in this book are only the beginning of any creative architectural design in future.

One person found this helpful

awm

Indispensable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 4, 2014

Verified Purchase

A hugely useful and accessible book - and a must-read for anyone interested in designing or building a beautiful and harmonious house. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid Hardcover – January 1, 2008

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Marianne Cusato

Ben Pentreath