3-D Home Kit: All You Need to Construct a Model of Your Own Home or Addition (with Booklet "Architecture & Math Workshop Notes")

List Price: $39.95 Discount Price: $28.24

Customer Reviews:

A gift for my mother [Posted on 2002-03-09]
She seemed to really like it. I saw what she did with it and it seems to work in showing where everything goes in creating your own house that some day you may want to have all your own.

Don't buy this [Posted on 2005-01-04]
I thought this kit would allow you to create the kind of house that is pictured on the cover. It appears that the kit will allow you to build walls and design rooms. In reality, the box only includes a series of pieces of paper with pictures of furniture and building materials printed on them. There is no support structure whatsoever for the building. The design items are not self sticking or even easily accessible. They are tiny pictures printed on large pieces of regular paper. Hours of cutting would be required for the simplest of home designs. "Fun and easy to use" is quite inaccurate. Also, $22 for a stack of paper is ridiculous.

new house project [Posted on 2005-06-22]
I purchased this kit in the first stages of planning my new home. I found it very helpful in planning the layout of the rooms, the roof design, and the locations of windows. The model helped me communicate with my architect and builder.

An Excellent Teaching Tool [Posted on 2005-08-12]
This kit does a difficult task admirably – it offers novice designers a clear and understandable path through the complex processes of house design and paper model-building. As a K-12 design educator who uses 3-d Home Kits with my middle school (math and engineering) students, I can tell the creator of this kit has refined the process by teaching with the kit many times himself.

The wealth of information (text plus illustrations) in the “Hands-on Design + Math” section teaches a good introduction to the design process for students and homeowners alike: program (determining your needs); site considerations; interior spaces; how to work in scale; and roof design. The “Model Construction section, a concise step-by-step guide, wisely includes a sample room addition with which to practice.

Homeowners creating their own home design or remodel should be taking their time with process; I would suggest absorbing what this kit can teach, then doing drafts and rough study models using other paper and oak tag, then using the kit’s materials to create an attractive and useful final model.

Wonderful gift for amateur designer [Posted on 2007-11-08]
I have used the 3-D Home Kit for the past four years as the basis for teaching the Architecture and Mathematics Workshop at the SummerMath program at Mount Holyoke College. My students are high school girls and they come from economically and culturally diverse background--from everywhere throughout the U.S. to Europe, Asia and African. They have little or no prior architectural training. Each student gets a kit and the opportunity to design and construct a model of her own dream home.

Students mostly work independently, sometimes help each other, and get my assistance as needed. Using the kit, they learn about space planning, size, scale and proportion, as well as endless design details including where to put a bathroom or stairway, furniture layout, and how to design a kitchen and a roof. Some students work on landscape design adding pools, patios, trees and walks. The students also improve their hands on skills including how measure, cut and glue. The workshop is one-and-a-half hours per day for two weeks.

Some students jump into the kit's design process in a moment, others take most of the two weeks to understand that making a mistake is a valuable lesson. Problem solving is the name of the game. When one design doesn't work, the student can scrap that approach and quickly measure and cut another sheet of the kit's building materials to actually see another option. The kit provides a wonderful way for the student to try several designs. The 3-D Home Kit turns each student's efforts into a realistic three-dimensional house model--and they love it.

I highly recommend the kit, and have used it to plan several of my own design and fantasy projects: my own home, art studio from a tobacco shed, and vacation home designs such as a seashore cottage and mountain yurt.

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