There are these beauties and several more farther on down this road.

Architecture of the Old South: 1585-1850 by Henry Chandlee Forman, Harvard University Press, MA, 1948.  Best Of Show.  See below for further. 

Architecture of the Old South:  Colonial & Federal by Mills Lane, A Beehive Press Book, Georgia, 1986.  Good overview of Colonial.

Architecture of the Old South:  Georgia by Mills Lane, Abbeville Press, New York, 1990.  Precious little of Southern Colonial save for the tail-end of the Period, being the last and poorest of the original 13 Colonies.

Architecture of the Old South:  Kentucky and Tennessee by Mill Lane, A Beehive Press Book, Georgia, 1993.  A few good pics.  Federal shows up mighty fast.

Architecture of the Old South:  Mississippi and Alabama by Mills Lane, Abbeville Press, 1989.  Not this custom house designer’s interest.

Architecture of the Old South: North Carolina by Mills Lane, Abbeville Press, New York, 1985.  Plenty to feast upon outside and inside.

Architecture of the Old South:  South Carolina by Mills Lane, Abbeville Press, New York, 1984.  Distinctively Old South.

Architecture of the Old South: Virginia by Mills Lane, A Beehive Press Book, Georgia, 1987.  Plenty of Southern Colonial.
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            AG’s got a heap of reading on proportion and Classical architecture.  Most of it’s not especially interesting – clinical mathematics, nautilus shells, practical and intellectual arm’s length and beyond.

The Art Of The Old South:  Painting, Sculpture, Architecture & the Products of Craftsman, 1560-1860 by Jessie Peosch, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1983.  Broadening.
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            As most interesting as it’s gotten so far is this one albeit heady, heavy-going: Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower, W. W. Norton & Company, 1971. 
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            The Bungalow:  America’s Arts & Crafts Home by Paul Duchsherer & Douglas Keister, Penguin Group, 1995.  Purty pictures and purty informative.
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            Colonial Interiors, Second Series, Southern Colonial and Early Federal by Edith Tunis Sales, c1930, later published by Bonanza Books, undated.  Lest one forget that Classical design roots came over on those boats, too.
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            To impassioned geeks: There’s the graphically entertaining Geometry Of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition b y Kimberly Elam, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, for those more deeply into design, notably including contemporary graphic design; then there’s the intellectually entertaining and well-written The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World’s Most Astonishing Number  by Mario Livio , Broadway Books, 2002; the commanding presentation of the Orders, their making and remaking in The Classical Language of Architecture , The MIT Press, 1962; the philosophically ponderous Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture  by Richard Padovan, Spon Press,  3rd ed. 2003.
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            For the dedicated user of Autocad for residential design, this is the best hatch pattern program we’ve come across, bar none, from CompugraphX, 3 Portsmouth Place, Coto de Caza, CA 92679, P:949-459-5406; F:949-459-5438; http://www.compugraphx.com .  The author, Watson Kilbourne, truly is a gentleman and a scholar.   The rub:  you have to reckon with the tortuous and torturous method to embed it in the drawing software.  Add-on authors should, in this custom home designer’s opinion, include those embed routines in their wares.
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            Whether or not you put any credence in Feng Shui , its principles make for fundamentally sound design.  For written sources on residential design, these are two of the best:

THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO FENG SHUI: How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness by Lillian Too, Harper Collins Publishers, London, 1996, 224 pages; and interior design with feng shui: New and Expanded by Sarah Rossbach, Penguin Group, 1991, 186 pages.
 . . . . . . .
            Almost entirely off the subject of this monograph, but unavoidably attractive to its author – The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce; Dover Publications Inc., 1993; original, Neale Publishing Company, 1911.  Among the insights of Ambrose: “Architect, n. One who drafts a plan for your house, and plans a draft of your money.” Page 7.
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            Best written of ‘em all, this one’s about the essence of quality design – The Old Way Of Seeing: How Architecture Lost Its Magic (And How To Get It Back) by Jonathan Hale, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.  You won’t ever see house design the way you used to.
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            Patterns of Home: THE TEN ESSENTIALS OF ENDURING DESIGN by Jacobson, Silverstein, and Winslow, The Taunton Press, 1941 & 2002.  Keeps on giving.
. . . . . . .
            For staying in-touch with California residential design varying in size, style, and artistry, Pure California: 35 Inspiring Homes in the New California Tradition by Bassenian/Lagoni Architects  "Bassenian/Lagoni Architects" , publishers.
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            “Radon – A Brief Discussion" by Caoimhín P. Connell, Forensic Industrial Hygienist, Forensic Applications Consulting Technologies, Inc., undated, at http://www.forensic-applications.com/radon/radon.html.  Fair, balanced, comprehensive, concise in its way though there’s nothing brief about it.  Best of show.  In this home designer's opinion, if you're mitigating radon, this is a must read.  I dearly wish that the folks who wrote the radon mitigation section of the current International Residential Code had read it and thought hard about the implications for both materials and methods.
. . . . . . .

            Roots of Home:  Our Journey to a New Old House by Russell Versaci, The Taunton Press, 2008.  Lucid and illuminating, simple and satisfying historical tracery of American houses.  The single best and most beautifully presented photographic tour of distinctly relevant, American home design styling to this custom home designer’s sense of it.  Artful, interior painters help a lot.
. . . . . . .
            Super Kitchens, 40 Guidelines to Kitchen Planning by the National Kitchen and Bath Association, Inc. http://www.superkitchens.com/sk/asp/catId.59/itemid.123/ks/page.htm

. . .or, better yet, the more rigorous . . .

            Kitchen & Bath Planning Guidelines with Access Standards by the National Kitchen and Bath Association, Inc., http://www.nkba.org/guidelines/
. . . . . . .
            Traditional Construction Patterns: Design & Detail Rules Of Thumb by Stephen A. Mouzon, McGraw-Hill, 2004.  The most useful house design text the AG’s laid hands on to date.  The occasional whiffs of stylistic intolerance can be easily discerned and forgiven.  This is a one-of-a-kind gem for serious designers of a home.
. . . . . . .
            Classy, up-scale, well-designed, well-photographed, chock full of elements, features, treatments . . . especially impressive in various combinations of natural stone and brick, a combo most frequently presented poorly at best and degrading to  past wretched, these illustrations show you how to do it right: Tuscan & Andalusian Reflections: 20 Beautiful Homes Inspired By Old World Architecture by Bassenian/Lagoni Architects, publishers, 2005.
. . . . . . .
            Updating Classic America Bungalows:  Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New by M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman, The Taunton Press, 2002.  The other purty picture book and purty informative text on subject.
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            Expulsive, Victorians be.  And you thought that you knew about Victorians.  Hah. 

The Victorian Home In America, With Over 250 Illustrations by John Maass, Dover Publications, 1972.  Thereafter, take, for example, these two: Victorian House Style, An Architectural And Interior Design Source Book by Linda Osband, David & Charles, 1991-2004 and American Victorian Cottage Homes: Profusely illustrated with perspective views, elevations, floor plans and details by Palliser, Palliser & Co., Dover Publications, orig. 1878, current 1990. 

On brickwork – 2 – the stunning Victorian Brick and Terra-Cotta Architecture: In Full Color, Edited by Pierre Chabat, Dover Publications, Inc., 1989 and in dramatic black and white, Decorative and Ornamental Brickwork: 162 Photographic Illustrations by James Stokoe, Dover Publications, Inc., 1982. 

And you thought you knew Victorian, what constitutes a cottage or farmhouse…ha…Bicknell’s Victorian Building: Floor Plans and Elevations for 45 Houses and Other Structures, A. J. Bicknell & Co. , orig. 1878, current 1979.

. . . . . . .
            This is about the work of Christopher Alexander, particularly as it relates to residential design, as in http://www.jacana.org.uk/pattern/.  There’s A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction by C. Alexander et al., Oxford University Press, 1977, especially pages 375-1166 and its companion The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, Oxford University Press, 1979.  The latter is better read first; the latter’s vital contribution to AG’s way of thinking is the exposition on “the quality without a name.” 

“There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness.  This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.   The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the center search of a person, and the crux of any individual person’s story.  It is the search for those moments and situations when we are more alive.” 

“This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from a seed.”

“The more living patterns there are in a place-a room, a building, or a town-the more it comes to life as an entity, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.”

“So finally the fact is, that to come to this, to make a thing which has the character of nature, and to be true to all the forces in it, to remove yourself, to let it be, without interference from your image-making self – all this requires that we become aware that all of it is transitory; that all of it is going to pass.

“Of course nature itself is also always transitory.  The trees, the river, the humming insect – they are all short-lived; they will all pass.  Yet we never feel sad in the presence of these things.  No matter how transitory they are, they make us feel happy, joyful.

“But when we make our own attempt to create nature in the world around us, and succeed, we cannot escape the fact that we are going to die.  This quality, when it is reached, in human things, is always sad; it makes us sad, and we can even say that any place where a man tries to make the quality, and be like nature, cannot be true, unless we can feel the slight presence of this haunting sadness there, because we know at the same time we enjoy it, that it is going to pass.”  The Timeless Way Of Building by Christopher Alexander, Oxford Press, 1979, Chapter 8, “The Quality Itself.”

Now, if that doesn’t scratch the itch you have not yet reached, the more’s the pity.
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            First reasonably comprehensive and intellectually accessible lighting design guide the AG’s seen so far: http://www.elflist.com/index.html.  If you’re into getting your light performance bar raised higher, try on http://www.lightingplans.com, where you’ll just have to get over fluorescents, fluorescents, fluorescents.  Note: generally, AG and the Missus leave specifics to others in the lighting profession fulltime; however, our guidance is increasing.  Herewith, two fuller presentations of lighting design, the former marginally more readable than the latter and the latter informative in the AG’s opinion, noting that AG senses 2 surprising aspects to lighting design: 1. vacuum of really useful, all in one place, drop-dead gorgeous presentation of lighting design; 2. stupefyingly fragmented subject matter: Lighting Design Basics by Mark Karlen  and James Benya, John Wiley & Sons, 2004; Interior Lighting For Designers, 4^th ed. by Gary Gordon, John Wiley & Sons, 2003
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            Comprehensive, concise, considered.  This work is fundamental to anyone designing anything.  You may need to stretch your senses and sense of things to relate virtually every point to house design, and the exercise is worth the effort.  Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler, Rockport Publishers, Inc., 2003.
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            English country houses are joys to behold on several levels.  Here’s the elegantly presented road map to beholding them – How to Read a Country House by Jeremy Musson in Association with Country Life, Edbury Press, London, 2005.  Masterly writing.  Try to read it with an accent.
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                For those interested in Southern Colonial Style, a/k/a Postmedieval English, and vaguely referenced as Jacobean, here are 2 out-of-print books worth every penny and more: The Architecture of the Old South: The Medieval Style 1585-1850 by Henry Chandlee Forman, Harvard University Press, 1948 [AG’s opinion: Best Of Show]; Historic Houses of Early America, Tudor Publishing Co., 1927.  [Previously, others were included in this listing, and subsequently removed for eventually determined lack of substance comparable to the first two acquitted.]

            Then there’s the in-print, fine compendium, An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape, Carl R. Lounsbury, Ed., orig. Oxford University Press, Inc. 1994; reprint, First University Press of Virginia, 1999.  Farther down the Southern Colonial food chain, interesting some both for exteriors and interiors (along with the best pic yet of Bacon’s Castle from a woodcut), not so interesting in that attention to Southern, residential architecture thins out and falls off after turning into the 18^th century, is Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic by Fiske Kimball, orig. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922; reprint Sidney Fiske Kimball, 1950; reprint, Dover Publications, Inc., 1966. 

            Finally, he thinks, A Guide to Early American Homes – South [yes, Clarence, there’s another for the North, too] by Dorothy and Richard Pratt, Dorothy and Richard" , McGraw-Hill, 1956; reprint, Bonanza Books, which, while not strikingly forthcoming in either picture or print, surprises for what’s left out, e.g., Bacon’s Castle [an AG hone of a house] and what’s left in, e.g., the Tupper-Barnett house [AG’s newest best friend in Old South residential architecture].
. . . . . . .
            In AG’s opinion, the best of a breed – Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture by R. W. Brunskill, Universe Books, 1970.   Rightly, vernacular architecture is that design which gets you from here to there pleasantly albeit ham-fisted; whereas, “polite architecture” is that design which the other guy who’s gone to school thinks you ought to have to get you from here to there looking like a national or international aesthetic.  The territory is England.  The work is disciplined.  Categorically, what you read and see about that Old Country residential, vernacular architecture comes to Early America to become the American aesthetic, schooled or not. 

Lost America:  From the Atlantic to the Mississippi by Constance M. Greiff, The Pyne Press, 1974.  All buildings no more, some residential, some Southern Colonial.
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            Shop Drawings For Craftsman Interiors, Cabs, Moldings & Built-Ins For Every Room In The Home, measured and drawn by Robert W. Lang, Fox Chapel Publishing, Cambium Press, 2003.  Indispensable.
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            This one’s a wee step or two outside AG’s trodden path with design – to an extent, more detailed on interior designing than usual…..not ever…..just not usual.  “Climbing The Walls” by Charlene Prince, San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, December 7, 2005…unusually creative, generally simple ways to turn a space into an indoor playground.  AG and The Missus have been commissioned to design as much of that article into a to-be-built house.  This in-house playground is different enough in AG’s judgment to rise to your attention.
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            You betcha that there’s an Australian Vernacular home design style.  Recent inquiry brought it to the attention of AG and The Missus.  Examples are not abundant.  Among them, there’s the well executed Timber And Iron:  Houses in North Queensland Mining Settlements, 1861-1920 by Peter Bell, University of Queensland Press, 1984; the insightful “Vernacular Architecture in Queensland, Australia:  Current Issue and Opportunities” by B. Bajracharya et al., School of Design and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2003; the marvelous “Anglican Church of Australia Archives” http://www.anglican.org.au/archive/images.cfm?BrowseCategory=24#title

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