What Not To Build

The story is all too common in today’s housing market: the basic principles of scale, proportion, balance, rhythm, and consistent architectural styles are often misapplied in new residential construction. Walk around almost any new development, and you’ll find dormers that are bigger than the front door; windows that are out of scale; too few or too many columns; and more. What Not to Build: Do's and Don'ts of Exterior Home Design shows these problems and more to the reader.

Focusing on the exteriors of houses, the authors--who are architects and designers--have identified a number of "problem"designs. Through photographs and illustrations, they show how the problems can be solved by applying easy-to-understand design principles. Anyone reading the book will be able to avoid the problems when designing their own house or fix problems that appear in the house they’re already living in.