The Barefoot Home: Dressed-down Design for Casual Living - Tapa dura

Beach-house living - wherever you reside - now has a manual. Mark the end of a sun-kissed summer with "The Barefoot Home" (Taunton Press), a sumptuous coffee-table book by Marc Vassallo celebrating "unfussy," informal home design that emphasizes natural light; hardwood; and clean, open spaces.
"Christian Science Monitor
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Author Marc Vassallo says we can have that feeling year-round - and it doesn't require bankrolling a second home. His new book, "The Barefoot Home: Dressed-Down Design for Casual Living" explores the design decisions that can give any house that vacation feeling 365 days a year. With case studies and copious photographs of 23 serenely beautiful homes across the country, Vassallo - who cowrote "Inside the Not So Big House" with architect Sarah Susanka - breaks down into some key categories what makes a home "barefoot."
Eils Lotozo, "The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Homes that feel like a beach cottage Homes are getting more casual all the time. Home-design writer Marc Vassallo looks at the extreme of that trend in "The Barefoot Home: Dressed Down Design for Casual Living." Vassallo's book explores the concept of incorporating vacation living into everyday life. The 24 homes he features have the laid-back appeal of a beach house, yet they're designed for year-round use. Common features include big windows that wash the homes in sunlight, easy access to the outdoors, great views and open floor plans - and, of course, decor that's fuss-free and put-your-feet-up friendly.
Allen Norwood, "Charlotte Observer"
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"In this coffee-table book, Vassallo profiles homes he considers "barefoot": dressed-down, relaxed spaces where rooms spill into one another andindoors winds into outdoors. The trend reflects Americans' informal lives, Vassallo says. He bases a home's "barefootedness" on five qualities: informality, openness, light, texture and the meshing of indoor and outdoor spaces. Pictures of 20-or-so homes from across the country dominate the pages, while brief excerpts describe each living space. Each house gets a sidebar on what makes it a barefoot home.
KRISTINA FIORE, "Newsday" (New York)
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"Dreamy and light, these hideaway domiciles across the country photographed with stunning serenity by Ken Gutmaker share an uncluttered effortlessness. Vassallo defines a barefoot home as enjoying informality, openness to nature, abundance of light ("helps blur the distinction between inside and outside"), and the use of straightforward, touchable textures-peeled cedar columns, exposed cabinets and framing. Vassallo's model here is clearly the Usonian house by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as an open Japanese living room parceled into flexible spaces using screens. Many of the houses selected are located in California and the Pacific Northwest, such as a cozy bungalow in a busy neighborhood in Seattle with high transom windows and a courtyard. Other arresting structures include a summer house on Lake Martin, Ala., featuring flip-up windows rather than air conditioning; a modernly refurbished colonial in Bethesda, Md., with a fairly unconventional, detached screen porch that doubles as a clubhouse for the kids. By far the wildest structure here is a revamped Native American longhouse smack in the middle of the Kansas prairie: no curtains necessary. Vassallo, like Henry David Thoreau, whom he quotes, eschews the stuffiness and formality of thetypical home. "(Sept.)"
"Publishers Weekly"
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Homes are getting more casual all the time. Home-design writer Marc Vassallo looks at the extreme of that trend in "The Barefoot Home: Dressed Down Design for Casual Living," Vassallo's book explores the concept of incorporating vacation living into everyday life. The 24 homes he features have the laid-back appeal of a beach house, yet they're designed for year-round use. Common features include big windows that wash the homes in sunlight, easy access to the outdoors, great views and open floor plans -- and, of course, decor that's fuss-free and put-your-feet-up friendly.
-- Mary Beth Breckenridge, "Akron Beacon Journal"

As our personal and professional lives become more demanding and hectic, people have reacted with a more casual, relaxed, and open way of living at home. Kitchens are no longer just for cooking but serve as entertainment hubs; barbeques on the grill have replaced formal dinners. As our lives at home have become increasingly informal, the "barefoot living" lifestyle has emerged and there is increased demand to carry this attitude over into home design.
Relaxed, open, filled with light, and intimately connected to the outdoors, barefoot houses make living at home feel like being on vacation 365 days a year. The 24 houses featured in "The Barefoot Home" reflect today's barefoot times. From a long, low house on the Kansas prairie to an adobe home in New Mexico and a New England cottage by the sea, these homes capture the essence of barefoot living.