Simple Rules

Simple Rules is a new kind of builder handbook/design guide.

Inspired by long forgotten sources, the design content included here—timeless composition principles, elegant proportional systems, building techniques and formulas for making buildings more beautiful—is intended as a guide for the modern builder who cares about aesthetics and meaning as much or more than the bottom line.

In this small guide a few select concepts and techniques, salvaged mostly from 18th, 19th and early 20th-century builder pocket references and architectural guides, have been resurrected and abridged—or interpreted where possible—for practical use by the 21st-century architect and homebuilder.

Simple building practices like the traditional design principles and conventions included here were used in the past to make places that were at once familiar and meaningful, sensible and beautiful. While there is a focus on American vernacular building traditions, most of the ideas here are universal. The design concepts are equally applicable to modern design. In fact, they are intended to serve as archetypes for a new modern architecture, to free builders from the need to simply replicate old styles.

Revealing and instructive for homeowners as well, this collection of rules and traditions should prove handy to anyone involved in residential design, home construction, finance or purchase; inspiring to artists and craftsmen; and appealing to the armchair architect, and others who simply enjoy thoughtfully designed homes.