Azby Brown

Azby Brown

סופר


1.
Building small can be a sign of higher ambitions, and those who take the time to peruse these pages will undoubtedly grow to appreciate that creating a small home can be an amazingly positive and creative act, one which can enhance life in surprising ways.

THE VERY SMALL HOME presents stunning design advances in Japan. Eighteen recent houses, from ultramodern to Japanese rustic, are explored in depth. Particular emphasis is given to what the author call the Big Idea—the overarching concept that does the most to make the house feel more spacious than it actually is. Among the Big Ideas introduced here are ingenious sources of natural light, well-thought-out atriums, snug but functional kitchens, unobtrusive partitions, and free-flowing circulation paths.

An introduction by the author puts the house designs in the context of lifestyle trends, and highlights their shared characteristics. For each project, the intentions of the designers and occupants are examined. The result is a very human sensibility that runs through the book. a glimpse of the dreams and aspirations that these unique homes represent and that belies their apparent modesty.

The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating the special features in the homes, from clever storage and kitchen designs, to ingenious skylights and nooks. As with his earlier SMALL SPACES, Azby Brown has given home owners, designers, and architects a fascinating new collection of thought-provoking ideas....


2.
Just Enough is a book of stories, depictions of vanished ways of life told from the point of view of a contemporary observer. The stories tell how people lived in Japan some two hundred years ago, during the late Edo Period, when traditional technology and culture were at the peak of development and realization, just before the country opened itself to the West and joined the ranks of the industrialized nations. They tell of people overcoming many of the identical problems that confront us today--issues of energy, water, materials, food and population--and forging a society that was conservation-minded, waste-free, well-housed, well-fed and economically robust.

From these stories, readers will gain insight into what it is like to live in a sustainable society, not so much in terms of specific technical approaches, but rather, in terms of how larger concerns can guide daily decisions and how social and environmental contexts shape our courses of action. These stories are intended to illustrate the environmentally-related problems that the people in both rural and urban areas faced, the conceptual frameworks in which they viewed these problems, and how they went about finding solutions. Included at the end of each section are a number of lessons in which the author elaborates on what Edo Period life has to offer us in the global battle to reverse environmental degradation. Topics covered include everything from transportation, interconnected systems, and waste reduction to the need for spiritual centers in the home.

Just Enough, more than anything else, is about a mentality that pervaded traditional Japanese society and which can serve as a beacon for our own efforts to achieve sustainability now....






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