Mimi Zeiger

There is certainly some interesting architecture and great photography in this book, but tiny "houses" is not the whole truth.

The smaller "houses" are really little more than solid sleeping cells. Permanent tents, you might say. Room to sleep for 2 or more people, but no storage, no kitchen of any kind, no bathroom of any kind, no room to turn around while standing even. While some of these are interesting--the sleeping/playing/resting huts at a Thai orphanage, for example--they are hardly show more "houses".

Many are vacation homes. I am actually curious how many are lived in by a person/family most/all of the time. show less

I must admit that I thought about Ted Kaczynski's little shack in the woods at first, but this book is a collection of delightful small houses in nature, ones that a contemporary Henry David Thoreau might enjoy using for his comtemplation and writing! The ones with lots of bookshelves were among my favorites, of course. :-)

This book profiles a selection of tiny (and not so tiny) houses with beautiful detailed photography to show highlights.

Thisis an interesting book, but my beef is that they are not all tiny houses. Some certainly are, but others are either not tiny (1200 sf, really?), or they are more appropriately called vacation cabins.

In comparison to Zeiger's other two books on tiny houses - Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature and Tiny Houses in the City - I'd give this one third place; the modern, often sterile feeling, designs seemed to value aesthetics over functionality which, in my opinion, doesn't support the heart of a tiny house's purpose. Plus the cost to build the designs featured in Tiny Houses had to be huge. So, again, not in line with my ideas for tiny living.

2 stars