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Building Construction Illustrated (Paperback)
~ Francis D. Ching (Author)

Building Construction Illustrated

Bought this book the other week, and fount it more than useful, so I thought I’d give it a review. I needed some information regarding residential construction, but what I found was so much more.

This Illustrated book is packed with almost everything you need to know about construction. When I say that, I mean it covers all of the major components. It does not walk you through tiling a floor, but as an example it does show the different methods of framing and provide clear illustration of how each method is done. I only wanted information on residential construction, but this book covers commercial building as well. The drawings are excellent. I found it tough to put the book down and found myself re-reading several sections because of all the information contained in them. It will serve as an excellent reference guide for all of my future projects. I have already changed many of the details for my upcoming project as a result of this book.

New ideas on how to design, build, and decorate a home are always of essential value to architects, designers, and homeowners alike. This book offers an extensive collection of apartments from all over the world, devised by distinguished international architects and designers who have worked to achieve practical, innovative, and stunning solutions adapted to the specific needs and particular tastes of their clients. This compilation expresses the diversity of current trends in apartment design and provides an inspirational source of ideas for those active in the field of design or interested in catching up on the latest in contemporary residential architecture.

The design of an apartment presents several challanges not imposed on the designer of a free-standing house. The most restricting is probably size, and second having to deal with walls that probably can’t be moved. Even more interesting or challenging is dealing with the confines of an older building that may have beams in strange places, or in one instance in this book a now abandoned water tank on the roof to be converted into a penthouse.

The Straw Bale House

If we learned anything from childhood, it was not to build our houses out of straw. After all, that big bad wolf was just waiting to blow it down. But that was before the world knew the numerous advantages of using compressed straw bales, as a key building material as outlined in the book The Straw Bale House. This easy to understand book is comprehensive in its education on how to build with straw- so that no wolf (or tornado for that matter) can ever blow it down.