The little house that could

The 1998 success of ''The Not So Big House" surprised even its architect author. Until she was displaced by a book about Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Susanka recalled reigning at the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list.

But if many people have been intrigued by her notion that a ''not so big house" makes more sense than an oversized, look-alike McMansion, they have yet to put such ideas into practice. In an age when bigger seems better and SUVs rule the highway, homebuyers are likely to say to a real estate agent what they would to a fast-food clerk: ''Can you super-size that, please?"

Still, Susanka and other architects believe that many people buy sprawling pleasure domes simply because those are what developers are building. If buyers had more choices, a segment of the market would make different decisions. And if buyers were educated in how to articulate their desires, different and better housing styles would result. Out this month, Susanka's latest book, ''Home By Design," aims to teach readers how to talk design with architects.

Make no mistake: A ''Not So Big House" is neither small nor cheap. It's akin to buying a $35,000 Volvo sedan instead of a $40,000 Ford Explorer. A ''Not So Big House" can be built from scratch, or an existing home can be remodeled to express its ideas. Depending on the scale, a redesign can cost anywhere from under $100,000 to more than $1 million, and it would likely require the services of an architect, whose fees can account for about 10 to 15 percent of a total remodeling budget.

Whether building a new house or re-doing an old one, Susanka said the goal is to ''reapportion dollars away from square footage and into quality and character." Such thinking could eventually catch on in Eastern Massachusetts, where undeveloped real estate is so scarce that housing prices are sky high.

One of the guiding principles in Susanka's series of ''Not So Big" books is that a well-designed home should nourish the spirits of the people who live there. Put another way: An owner's lifestyle should shape a home's design and not vice versa.

A ''Not So Big House" should also relate to its landscape and neighborhood, said Paul Lukez of Paul Lukez Architecture in Somerville. Above all, it shouldn't waste space. In the world of the ''Not So Big House," a mudroom, or an alcove with a window seat, is far better than a grand foyer entrance or a formal living room that's rarely used.

A Lukez design was featured in one of Susanka's books, and after they saw it, Michael Switkes and his wife, Emma Stellman, hired Lukez to remodel their 1,900 square-foot, two-and-a-half story, century-old, Somerville home. Even with new daughter, Lillian, the couple has no plans to move to a bigger house. What they wanted was for Lukez to take the house they already owned and customize it to their needs.

''We took the ground floor down to the studs," said Switkes, a 30-year-old scientist. ''There was nothing left but walls and the chimney."

Before the remodeling, the ground floor had been ''chopped up into a lot of small rooms," he said. The house also had two staircases. Today back staircases are esteemed as the latest must-have feature for a trendy McMansion.

Switkes was unmoved. ''We took it out in a heartbeat," he said.

What resulted from Lukez's redesign were large first-floor living spaces that flow into one another. Switkes called the final product ''fantastic," though he noted that he and his wife had to bunk with relatives during three months of construction.

If Switkes and his family now have a home tailor-made for their lifestyle, most new houses on the market have all the individuality of an off-the-rack suit. In 2003, there were 1.85 million housing starts in the country, and many of them were nothing more than ''houses on steroids," said Jeremiah Eck of Jeremiah Eck Architects inc. of Boston and a Fellow at the American Institute of Architects.

Ironically, the number of people living in a household is getting smaller even as the size of homes is getting larger. Perhaps that's because people have more stuff -- a computer and a TV in every kid's bedroom, a walk-in closet and a Jacuzzi in the master suite, and maybe there's a home office in the finished basement. Using one measure, the March/April issue of ArchitectureBoston magazine noted that homes have gone from an average of about 1,700 square feet in the 1970s to nearly 3,700 square feet today.

Susanka acknowledges that it could take time for Americans to embrace a less-is-more mindset.

''This culture is trying to deal with wealth," she said. ''We live in a wealthy culture, and people are trying to figure out what to do. Get more stuff and have a better life. We've done that and we don't feel better. Now people are asking, 'What's wrong?"'

So far, Eck said, ''Not So Big House" is not so much a movement but a philosophy, an argument for persuading people to think about smaller homes.

''Whether they're actually listening or not is another question," he said. ''We now see houses that are built big for big's sake. They're pretty ugly, and some people are saying: 'Can't we do better? Isn't there another alternative?' It's a hard battle. I've been fighting it for 25 years."