The New Family Home: Creating the Perfect Home for Today and Tomorrow

by James L. Tolpin, Mary Lathrop (With)

Imagine a home designed for the family that lives in it. Author Jim Tolpin features 24 of them in The New Family Home, an innovative and inspiring look at the changing family home in America. The New Family Home takes readers on a tour of homes that meet the unique needs of families of all kinds. From flexible floor plans for blended families, to houses with a heightened sense of style for empty-nesters, this book calls to mind the essential bond between a family and the place it calls home.
-- A diverse look at a wide variety of family homes.
-- Includes floor plans, color illustrations, and more than 200 photographs.
-- Cloth edition has sold more than 40,000 copies since publication.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Erika RS · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has two general categories of ideas for making a great family home. First, the home must be flexible and able to change with the changing needs of a family. E.g., the shared rooms and play loft which worked great for children may give way to a relatively private room for a teenager. That may eventually turn into a room for aging grandparents or even, eventually, an easy access master bedroom as the home's owners age. The book has many suggestions around this.

The other category of suggestions was around customizing a home to make it unique and memorable. Many of these suggestions included ways to improve children's space: play lofts, built-in desks and beds, an in-bedroom sink to reduce teenage bathroom fights. Lots of interesting ideas. The main downside to this book is that it was organized as case studies. I find books that I prefer books that spend some time extracting more general lessons from the specific examples they present. In so far as this was your standard figure-it-out-yourself case study book, I did not like it as well as I could have.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jim Tolpin sets his goals high for this book in the introduction and first chapters. His goal is to show homeowners they don't need more space they need more flexible spaces to allow their house to change as the decades go by. Unfortunately he doesn't highlight any of his suggestions in a clean way and instead focuses of various case studies where suggestions are buried in descriptions of the featured home. I just could not relate to most of the case studies with their new construction, soaring ceilings, and huge open spaces. Even the bathrooms are humongous. The featured houses seemed contrary to Tolpin's stated goals. The gorgeous photos focus on the houses' beauty while failing to explain much of what he discusses. An example is one case study where he repeated talks about the kitchen being the center of the home and then never shows an actual photo of the kitchen! In summary I found the book to be too rich and unapproachable for my tastes with few examples of how to really make a house livable for a family and their stuff!

[Bec · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read on the different styles and means of setting out a house and planning for multiple uses as age changes needs, or children return or parents move in. The pictures were gorgeous, and the floor plans for most of the houses were supplied, making it an easy study.