It pairs Susanka - author of previous ' Not So Big House' books, which emphasize the trend toward smaller homes - and noted landscape and garden designer Julie Moir Messervy. KOZIOL, The Chicago Tribune This beautiful book combines the best qualities of coffee-table attractiveness and excellent advice.

At least not until recently, when the two spaces - home and garden - wed harmoniously in the new book, ' Outside the Not So Big House' by Sarah Susanka and Julie Moir Messervy. And there are architectural design books that tell us how our homes should look. Whether you seek comfort and calm or activity and energy at home, The Not So Big House offers a place for every mood.There are gardening books that tell us what to plant and where.

Consider which rooms in your house you use and enjoy most, and you have a sense of the essential principles of The Not So Big House. In 1999, Sarah Susanka was then architect and principal with Mulfinger, Susanka, Mahady & Partners, the firm selected to design the 1999 Life Dream House brought Frank Lloyd Wright's same common-sense, human-scale design principles to our generation. Why are we drawn more to smaller, more personal spaces than to larger, more expansive ones? Why do we spend more time in the kitchen than we do in the formal dining room? The Not So Big House proposes clear, workable guidelines for creating homes that serve both our spiritual needs and our material requirements, whether for a couple with no children, a family, empty nesters, or one person alone. Architects and builders around the country report clients showing up with dog-eared copies of The Not So Big House, pages marked to a favorite section. And the people responsible for building our homes have also gotten the message. Since then, the book's simple message - that quality should come before quantity - has started a movement in home design. Nearly a quarter-million people bought this ground-breaking book when it was published in Fall 1998.

Now, the book that celebrated that bold declaration is back in this special 10th anniversary edition featuring a new introduction and 16 additional pages that explore three new homes. Ten years ago, Sarah Susanka started a revolution in home design with a deceptively simple message: quality should always come before quantity.

Creating the not so big house