Designing a Place Called Home

This insightful volume shares design ideas to help builders, planners and architects create mass-produced affordable housing that pushes suburban development in more sustainable, liveable directions. The author argues that improving the quality of design in our new homes and communities for greater resiliency, sustainability, and equality, we can build neighborhoods and communities where residents feel more connected t their homes and to one another. Through text, photographs and illustrations, the book reviews prototypical American housing design, then suggest ways to both learn from the past as well as adapt for new environmental imperatives, demographic changes and lifestyle needs. Written by a practicing architect with 25+ years of experience optimizing residential design, this pioneering approach to suburban building will inspire readers to view mass produced housing through a new, modern lens.

James W. Wentling, FAIA is a practicing architect specializing in residential design.  His firm is based in Philadelphia and works with clients throughout the United States.

 

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he has served as chair of the AIA Housing Committee as well as a vice president of a residential council in the Urban Land Institute.  He also served as president of Habitat for Humanity, Philadelphia.  He has lectured on residential design throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Europe and Asia.  His previous books include Housing by Lifestyle, The Component Method of Residential Design and Density by Design.'