The Advantages of a Small House T he simplest way to build less expensive houses is to build them smaller, not differently. Smaller houses have fewer bathrooms, smaller kitchens with less cabinetwork, which is expensive, and fewer and smaller rooms.
Smaller houses have the added advantages of being cheaper to heat and cool and easier to maintain.
They also mean less housework, which should appeal particularly to working couples and single parents. Melanie Taylor, a New Haven architect, has designed several compact family houses, intended for year-round living, some of them as small as 575 square feet. Other Taylor houses, many of which have a faintly Victorian air, were featured in several national magazines, and proved so popular that the architect was obliged to prepare stock plans for national distribution. In San Francisco the architect Donald MacDonald has successfully built and marketed tiny row houses of 600 to 960 square feet, including garages. Last summer the architect unveiled an even smaller house, intended for a single person or a parent with a small child.