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Nanotecture: Tiny Built Things
The most wide-ranging, comprehensive and inclusive book on small-scale architecture ever published An inspiring, surprising and fun collection of 300 works of small-scale architecture including demountable, portable, transportable and inflatable structures as well as pavilions, installations, sheds, cabins, pods, capsules and tree houses.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2016
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117 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 14, 2026
There’s definitely some crossover with Roke’s “Mobitecture” another Phaidon collection she took on which covered a wide array of modern and quirky creations from around the world. This makes an ideal companion to that aforementioned title and there's a lot of creative, inspiring and indeed surprising examples in here, which keep this interesting and engaging throughout. Though there does seems to be a bizarre emphasis on cats, with a surprising number of designs catering for domesticated felines?...
November 26, 2018
This is yet another of John's random offerings – books he comes home with from the library (or otherwise gifts me) that he thinks I would enjoy. Sometimes his instincts are spot on; sometimes, they are ridiculously, hilariously off-base. (N.B. As of this review, I've decided I'm giving him his own bookshelf.)
Nanotecture: Tiny Built Things is kind of middle of the road on that scale. While the subject matter is interesting enough – architected spaces and objects on a small or even tiny scale, from site-specific, purpose-built chapels to cat playhouses to installations of pure artistic flights of fancy – unfortunately the book format leaves too much to be desired. To begin with, it's only slightly bigger than 5" x 7", with each page dedicated to a description and a picture (and only one picture) of a single structure. The design was solid enough: the description was small and squished to maximize space for the photo but rendered in a clean, modern, sans-serif font for easy reading, the notations and legend for the construction materials was clever, and the indexes were plentiful and informative. But aside from a minor quibble with using the faddish dotted page format so popular now with bullet journalers, my big complaint is that the vast majority of these often very complex creations is that they simply cannot be well-represented by a single photo (and a necessarily small photo at that, given the book's diminutive size). And the one object / one page convention is rigidly adhered to, so there's no hope of getting an interior photo or something on the next page. Worse, the pages are matte, not glossy, so the crispness is compromised, plus the photos vary in quality – some are excellent, but some are just candids. There is not a great deal of consistency throughout; you can sometimes see wildly different white balance in photos on two facing pages.
I started Googling the entries I wanted to learn more about, but that got old and tedious quickly. I realized at that point that this title would work much better in an ebook edition, where the reader could easily click links to high-res photos and additional views and information. Naturally it doesn't come in ebook format, let alone the even better method that publishing it as a website would have been. It's sort of the classic case of new media material shoehorned into an old media format. It's too bad.
Nanotecture: Tiny Built Things is kind of middle of the road on that scale. While the subject matter is interesting enough – architected spaces and objects on a small or even tiny scale, from site-specific, purpose-built chapels to cat playhouses to installations of pure artistic flights of fancy – unfortunately the book format leaves too much to be desired. To begin with, it's only slightly bigger than 5" x 7", with each page dedicated to a description and a picture (and only one picture) of a single structure. The design was solid enough: the description was small and squished to maximize space for the photo but rendered in a clean, modern, sans-serif font for easy reading, the notations and legend for the construction materials was clever, and the indexes were plentiful and informative. But aside from a minor quibble with using the faddish dotted page format so popular now with bullet journalers, my big complaint is that the vast majority of these often very complex creations is that they simply cannot be well-represented by a single photo (and a necessarily small photo at that, given the book's diminutive size). And the one object / one page convention is rigidly adhered to, so there's no hope of getting an interior photo or something on the next page. Worse, the pages are matte, not glossy, so the crispness is compromised, plus the photos vary in quality – some are excellent, but some are just candids. There is not a great deal of consistency throughout; you can sometimes see wildly different white balance in photos on two facing pages.
I started Googling the entries I wanted to learn more about, but that got old and tedious quickly. I realized at that point that this title would work much better in an ebook edition, where the reader could easily click links to high-res photos and additional views and information. Naturally it doesn't come in ebook format, let alone the even better method that publishing it as a website would have been. It's sort of the classic case of new media material shoehorned into an old media format. It's too bad.
October 19, 2017
A delightful catalog about different personal ways to inhabit the world. True confession I didn't get to the very end and I checked it out of the library twice, but it was super fun.
October 5, 2019
I think this book would have been better with less buildings and extra photos showing interiors. There were so many that required more than a short blurb and I feel like a few buildings could have been removed to allow for this.
March 8, 2019
Inspiring.. going to make myself a tree house!
December 13, 2016
The books nano size means nano images. With a single small image per built object, design fans will spend lots of time browsing the Internet for additional images and views. No plans are provided. Most of the descriptions seem cut and pasted. Yawn.
January 25, 2017
This is a charming little book with color illustrations of structures ranging from elaborate dog and cat houses to small homes for people, tree houses, and urban park follies.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews