Sarah Susanka

Introducing Sarah Susanka

By Christa Gala

Before she became an architect, Raleigh resident Sarah Susanka wanted to be a writer. Now she is, with six books to her accomplishment and a seventh on the way.

In case you haven't heard, Susanka is the inventor of the "Not So Big?" concept, which encourages consumers to build better, not bigger, homes. The idea was born of Susanka?s desire some years ago to explain to her Minneapolis clients that they could have the architectural details they wanted in a home if they were willing to be conservative with square footage. At the time, many had trouble thinking outside what society predicated as the norm for homebuilding.

"I had been working with residential clients and realizing that almost all of those people would come into our office saying "I want 3,000 square feet, and I want it for $100 a square foot, and I want it to look like this." And the pictures they were showing me were $200 to $300 per square foot," Susanka says. "As soon as they designated the amount of space they wanted, they were precluding the possibility of the getting the quality of space they wanted."

After a while, Susanka tired of explaining the concept, so in 1998 she wrote The Not So Big House (Taunton Press). The book spent two years as one of the top five best sellers on Amazon.com's Home and Garden List and generated lots of conversation.

"It was partly that people wanted something that they didn't see in the marketplace, but didn't know how to get," Susanka says. "But it was also partly that there was another additional message to The Not So Big House. It's about livability. It's a blueprint for the way we really live."

Creating the Not So Big House (Taunton Press) came next in 2000, which ranked among the top 15 books on the New York Times "Advice & How-to?"bestseller list. Everyone was interested in the Not So Big concept. Susanka touted its virtues on The Oprah Winfrey Show and via The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, among others. Today, Susanka?s name is synonymous with building smarter, whether it's about conserving space and resources, building for quality and character, or creating harmony, architects and builders all over the country eagerly read her books.

Her other titles, all published by Taunton Press, include Not So Big Solutions for Your Home (2002), Home By Design (2004), and Inside the Not So Big House (2005). Then, in January 2006 Random House published Outside the Not So Big House.

Another trailblazer

Susanka co-wrote Outside the Not So Big House with Julie Moir Messervy, a noted landscape designer with architectural training. It was the first time she's written with a partner. It turned out to be a perfect fit.

"Julie has a really sophisticated sense of space," says Susanka. "She developed her own language on the outside that parallels my own on the inside."

This book, much like its sisters, is also a trailblazer in terms of concepts. It basically ties house and garden together and encourages readers to consider them as a whole.

"When Julie Messervy and I were first planning this book, we looked at all the other books that were out there and there?s nothing like it," Susanka says. "There's nothing that deals with both house and garden as one thing.

"The house architect does the house and the landscape architect does the yard and the two never meet, even on the drawing," Susanka continues. "A lot of land architects and architects deal with these issues daily and have a real hard time. Even our professions are separate and don't really talk to each other."

The book talks about several components that bring the inside and the outside together. For example, one chapter of the book "Playing up the Corners" features a home in Stowe, Vermont where Susanka utilized corners both inside and out to make the space feel larger and to draw the eye across the space. Inside, a window seat positioned in the corner at a bank of windows invites the outdoors in. And outside, shrubs and flowering perennials frame a corner of the terrace, along with tables and chairs.

The book also addresses the topic of flow. Susanka and Messervy are big fans of pathways-whether with stone, gravel, wood or brick. At the beginning of this chapter, Susanka writes: "Journeys around your property include ways to enter, exit, pause, stop, and view in a continuous flow." Several components of this chapter focus on how to design using repeating patterns and also how to maximize small yards.

Finally, it wouldn't be prudent to pass over the chapter called "Japanese Journey." Susanka has long had an affection for the calming effect of Asian design. In the book, one thing Susanka and Messervy suggest is taking open space and creating a type of pool, circular in shape and filled with water, gravel, sand or turf.

At home with Susanka

Visiting with Sarah Susanka at her 2,400-square-foot North Raleigh home, it's easy to see she practices what she preaches. One of the reasons she bought the home in 2001 with her husband because the lot is comprised of two homesites. The second lot was deemed ?unbuildable? by developers many years ago, although Susanka says it only would have taken a little creative work.

The two-acre yard is a peaceful place, with stone and gravel pathways that travel over a dry creek bed and past Asian-inspired rock gardens and statues. A tree-seat envelopes a large tree in one area and a gazebo is perched in another.

Susanka points out the meditational paths that wind around the yard as well as other examples found in her book, including creating a diagonal view by playing up the corners and using different kinds of materials?stone, cedar, gravel and turf. A Thai princess statue can be seen from the kitchen window, illustrating a concept in the book called Point of Focus, where an object, even though it's outside, is placed so it can be seen from inside as well.

The yard has been several years in the making, and Susanka and her husband are always working on it?or thinking of it. "We're huge stone fans so we just go around to stone yards and gravel places," Susanka laughs.

Susanka is a Minneapolis native, who for many years was a principal and founding partner of an architecture firm. So what made her move to Raleigh" "I love this climate and I love North Carolina; it's such a beautiful state," she says.

Susanka first fell in love with the area in 1996 when she came here for a speaking engagement at the North Carolina Museum of Art. She moved here three years later, just one year after her first book published, but it wasn't until 2003 that she finally gave up her house in Minnesota.

Future building trends

Eight years after the debut of Susanka's first Not So Big book, builders, developers and consumers all over the country are still learning and following its principles.

"Every place I go now, literally hundreds of people come up to me saying "We build using your principles." It has started a movement of people all over the country; in fact, all over the world," Susanka says. "It is so heartwarming because what it?s done is allow people to actually build what they want."

In addition to writing and speaking, Sarah Susanka also uses her architectural skills these days building one or two international show homes each year. As a result, she's got her finger on the pulse of what's up and coming in the homebuilding industry.

"We're headed to green and sustainably made housing," says Susanka. "This will include not only using energy efficient materials, but also considering how much energy it costs to create the product and how the product treats the environment."

What's driving this? Susanka says at the heart of it is about 25 percent of the population, those who call themselves "cultural creatives." She maintains those are the folks who first started reading her books in large quantities.

"They actually consider the choices they're making and what those choices will do to the environment. They don't separate it out," explains Susanka. "It's not like they're trying to adopt a certain set of values; they're integral to how they live. As that mentality grows, there's more of an interest in sustainable construction.

"I think houses are going to be made in a different way too," Susanka continues, predicting homes of the future will be made in factories instead of being stick-built on site. She admits, however, that before that happens the image of factory-built homes needs a lot of help. The first thing is to show the public that a quality home can be factory built.

"It's a huge problem," says Susanka. ?We have a false attribution of meaning. We believe that because it's factory made, it?s less than. It?s only because that's the only product we?ve seen come out of the factory, that's why we feel that way. We may have to invent a new name in the process."

What?s next?

Book number seven is on its way, and while this one isn't about architecture, it still utilizes the Not So Big principles. The Not So Big Life will discuss "how we inhabit our lives in time," says Susanka.

"So many people are going on fast-forward and feeling like they can't keep up and trying to figure out how to juggle everything," she says. "So what I'm trying to do, just like I did with space, is ask people to be more conscious of the decisions and choices they're making."

"It's different, but it really underlies my other books. I couldn't have written my other books if I hadn't already been starting to live this way?even in making the time to write The Not So Big House."

In fact, Susanka says, the idea for this book came about because she loved to write but never had time, so she started changing how she spent her time and the way she was ?engaging the world.?

And that's how the Minneapolis architect finally became a writer.

Christa gala is a freelance writer. Materials From Creating the Not so big house, published by Taunton Press in 1998