Villa Savoia, Sardinia, Italy. Copyright 2012 Kodiak Greenwood

How did you choose to write a book about handmade houses? Was it a reaction to the kinds of houses celebrated in dwelling and design magazines?

In 2001, I was hired as Senior Editor of architecture and design books at Harry N. Abrams Publishers in New York. My first day was August 31, 2001. A week into the job, I crossed Fifth Avenue after getting my morning coffee and looked up to see the [World] Trade Center on fire. A month into the job, of course, a new back-to-the-land movement had begun. I found myself wanting to be a part of it but for various reasons couldn’t make the leap. The next best thing, in my circumstance, was to document it. So I began looking at [the books] Handmade Houses: A Guide to the WoodButcher’s Art and Shelter, both from 1973. I wanted to revisit those houses, provided I could find them, and show how they inspired the post-2001 back-to-the-landers that I knew. In 2003, the wife of one of my authors sent me Woodstock Handmade Houses and Craftsmen of Necessity, two more classics from the early 70’s. By then I was hooked on this subject. Four years later I’d relocated to California. It seemed that I, myself, might be able to make the handmade houses book that I’d been wanting to own. But then, needing a day job, I got sidetracked with the book project and began working for [the magazine] Architectural Digest. But all the while, in my free time, I did the field research for Handmade Houses. It was clear that there’d be little conflict of interest between my Digest work and the Handmade work.