Modern Shoestring Contemporary Architecture on a Budget

Residential design provides a rich testing ground for architectural innovation. Intimate scales and specific programs inspire distinctive homes, and comparatively small budgets are catalysts for exploring nontraditional materials.Modern Shoestringproves that building a contemporary house can be affordable and shows how constraints actually stimulate the most creative design solutions. Eighteen residential projects are presented, with emphasis on the goals of the owners, the site, and the cost in the design process. Collections determine floor plans, observatories are built for starry rural nights, and found and industrial materials such as highway construction remnants, laboratory counters, plastic water bottles, and discarded chalkboards keep costs low while imbuing structures with character. These ingenious designs range in cost from $50 to $220 per square foot and represent geographical settings from Los Angeles to Anchorage to East Hampton.

Susanna Sirefman is the founder and principal of Dovetail Design Strategists LLC, a firm that matches clients with designers, architects, and landscape architects. She is the author of several books, including New York: A Guide to Recent Architecture, Chicago: A Guide to Recent Architecture, Whereabouts: New Architecture with Local Identities, and The Contemporary Guesthouse: Building in the Garden; has contributed to Architecture, Architectural Record, Metropolis, and Graphis; and is currently a contributing editor for Surface. Sirefman trained at the Architectural Association School of Archiecture in London before returning to her native New York, where she has taught at the Parsons School of Design and at the School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at the City College of New York. She was recently an advisor for "Urban Voids: Grounds for Change," an international design competition for Philadelphia's vacant land sponsored by the Van Alen Institute and the City Parks Association of Philadelphia.