The Atrium

The current trend toward smaller homes is something many of us never had a choice in joining -- we can't afford McMansions. Several good reasons for NOT building big include the cost of heating and cooling, reconciling needs vs. wants, and exercising what some might call a mandate to live a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. But it's not all about money or principles. You should see what wonders architects have worked on such smaller spaces. The library offers many recent titles highlighting their designs, from house plans to interior decoration.

Sarah Susanka is an architect who wrote a book called The not so big house: a blueprint for the way we really live in 1998, and she started a trend toward thinking about the quality of the way we live as opposed to the quantity of the stuff we have. Since then, she has also written Creating the not so big house : insights and ideas for the new American home, Not so big solutions for your home, and Inside the not so big house : discovering the details that bring a home to life.

Related books on this topic include Mini House, The big book of small house designs, 25 houses under 2500 square feet, The good house book: a common-sense guide to alternative homebuilding, and The new ecological home. There are many more.