Handmade Houses

Richard Olsen is formerly the architecture editor at Architectural Digest, the author of Log Houses of the World, and coauthor of Malibu: A Century of Living by the Sea. Kodiak Greenwood s photographs have appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Condé Nast Traveler, Patagonia, the New York Times, and Travel & Leisure. Lucy Goodhart s pictures have appeared in numerous publications, including London's The Sunday Telegraph and The Times, and in Bay Area publications Monocle and Edible San Francisco.

"Handmade Houses: A Century of Earth Friendly Home Design (Rizzoli; $45), by Richard Olsen, a former editor at Architectural Digest, is a breezy history of the genre, tracing its roots from Henry Thoreau to Carl Jung, and from Helen and Scott Nearing, whose mid-century subsistence living experiment in Vermont and Maine prefigured the 70s-era back-to-the-landers, to Lloyd Kahn, once the shelter editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, and the dean of the hand-built movement." ~New York Times

What Richard Olsen has assembled is an attractive and engaging book, suitable for coffee table, bookshelf, or drawing board. Through interviews, research, and the collaboration of his photographers Lucy Goodhart and Kodiak Greenwood, he has created a beautifully tactile storybook about a passion to build. ~New York Journal of Books

This tale is a lot more than hippies and hot tubs, however. Olsen provides a thorough history of the owner-built, woodbutcher movement from places like Big Sur, California, and Prickly Mountain, Vermont. And he addresses the sources of handcraft construction: Buddhist architecture of Japan, Norwegians cabins, Sea Ranch in California, Gaudi, Maybeck, and Jung, to name a few). Works from Europe and Australia provide an international context. ~Architectural Record

If you are like me, interested in environmentally friendly design and unique style in the home, you will appreciate this book. ~Mid-Century-Modern.net