Architecture Books

What Your Contractor Can't Tell You is a comprehensive guide to getting the best results while building or renovating a home. Most homeowners spend about 20% of their time on the plan and 80% of their time on a messy, traumatic, expensive construction phase. Pros spend 80% of their time ...more

The classic visual guide to the basics of building construction, now with the most current information For nearly three decades, Building Construction Illustrated has offered an outstanding introduction to the principles of building construction. This new edition of the revered classic remains as relevant as ever-providing the latest information in ...more

Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing. . . . Fascinating." (Los Angeles Times) By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi, goldsmith and clockmaker, was an unkempt, cantankerous, and suspicious man-even by the generous standards according to which artists ...more

"Payne is a visual poet as well as an architect by training, and he has spent years finding and photographing these buildings—often the pride of their local communities and a powerful symbol of humane caring for those less fortunate. His photographs are beautiful images in their own right, and they ...more

A do-it-yourself guide to designing, building, and maintaining water tanks, cisterns and ponds, and sustainably managing groundwater storage. It will help you with your independent water system, fire protection, and disaster preparedness, at low cost and using principles of ecological design. Includes building instructions for several styles of ferro cement ...more

Since 1973 over 10 million copies of READER'S DIGEST COMPLETE DO-IT-YOURSELF MANUAL have been sold. And now, the definitive ''on-the-job'' manual has just gotten bigger and better than ever. The editors of Reader's Digest and The Family Handyman magazine have joined forces to completely revise, update, rewrite, and redesign this ...more

For the beginner or experienced painter, this book provided inspiration and insight into the art of watercolour. Learn how the unusual techniques of pouring paint and masking give a glowing quality to the picture. Pouring causes the colour to tint rather than cover the paper while masking allows more freedom ...more

John Saladino's powerful new book is nothing less than a master class in interior and garden design. Villa focuses on the stone ruin in Southern California that Saladino painstakingly refashioned into his dream house, and it shows how his principles and passions guided him through the five-year process of reconstruction, ...more

Google SketchUp is the exciting free software package that makes 3D available to everybody. Whether you need to build 3D models for work, or you’ve just always wanted to explore 3D modeling, Google SketchUp was made for you. Still, it does take a bit of understanding to get started, so ...more

How to turn an old home into a jewel on the block. What do a fashion mogul, a Williams-Sonoma executive, a museum curator, and a design-savvy actress have in common? Good taste, of course, but more than that: a shared passion to "bring back," to carefully restore and artfully embellish, ...more