Small houses are of particular interest to American homeowners searching for unique and affordable ways to live. Architects and builders can be highly innovative in designing and constructing small homes -- creating multi-use rooms, coming up with unusual ways of dividing interior spaces, and using exterior details to make a small house look bigger and grander than it really is. In this collection of 24 houses by some of Americas best residential architects, originally published in Fine Homebuilding magazine, you will find wonderful examples of distinctive and highly livable small homes -- most of them with less than 2,000 square feet of floor space.

• Includes over 175 photos and 45 drawings and floor plans of small houses that make a big impact
• Reveals how architects and builders overcome the challenges of building smaller homes
• Includes work from some of Americas premier residential architects
• Covers family homes, senior-friendly homes, and guest houses, as well as successful co-housing developments

Introduction

When Builder Weds Architect
Mike Guertin

Downsizing with Style
David O'Neil

A Basic Box Isn't All Bad
Kelly Davis

In the Belly of the Barn
Brian Reading and William McHenry

A Rustic Country Cottage
David Edrington

A House Designed by Consensus
Scott Gibson

Building Smaller, for Now
Robert Knight

An Industrial Loft in Texas
Richard Wintersole

A House Disguised as a Cottage
William F. Roslansky

A Deliberate Neighborhood
John Abrams

A House with Wings
Dan Rockhill

Modern Living in a New England Village
Scott Simons

Red House
Paul and Peggy Duncker

Designing a Historical House
Kevin McKenna

A California Home Designed with the Future in Mind
Bruce Kelley

Texas Saddlebag House
Todd Hamilton

Built Intending to Stay
Mark Primack

Guest House by the Bay
Peter Zimmerman

Round Roof in the City
Dan Parke

Simple House, Contemporary Look
Rob Kovitz

A Cozy Vermont House
Leslie Hill

Part Office, Mostly House
Kathryn Porter

Credits

In the late 1940s, William Levitt started buying up potato fields on Long Island, New York, and building houses. To meet the needs of servicemen returning home from World War II, he built one-story, two-bedroom Capes that measured less than 800 sq. ft. Fifty years later, the average new home in this country is three times that size, and it gets bigger every year. I'm not sure why we want bigger and bigger houses (unless it's to store all of our unused exercise equipment), but I wish it weren't the case.

Smaller houses require fewer resources to build. They're less expensive to heat, cool, and maintain. And generally speaking, I'd rather see money spent on great details than on drywall acreage. The tide may yet turn. That first wave of baby boomers, many of whom were born in Levittown, are approaching 60 now. And they're starting to think about smaller, one-story houses that would be easier to clean and to get around in.

With the hope of encouraging smaller homes, we've collected 22 articles from past issues of Fine Homebuilding that feature houses under 2,400 sq. ft. (anything smaller than the national average qualifies as small in our book). Written by builders and architects from all over the country, these articles cover a diversity of styles, materials, locations, and programs. But each of them explores one central issue: how do you make the most of a small space?

-- Kevin Ireton, editor in chief