Software Tools

Our main design tool will be the awkwardly named Ashampoo 3D CAD Architecture 11, for which we also have the Interior Catalog, Kitchen Catalog and Office Catalog extensions.

For fancy renders, and also for 3D object construction we will use Blender 4.0. We can use Sketchup .skp files as an intermediate form to transfer data between these programs.

We can also find quite a lot of useful stuff on https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/ , for which the Collada format seems most compatible with Ashampoo.

Reference Books

For guidance on building regulations, general dimensions and masses of useful other guidance we have the third edition of Neufert Architect’s Data, published by Blackwell. (There is a sixth edition now available but it’s like, really expensive and from our rather amateur point of view probably not a lot different).

To help us sound less amateurish we are going to try and use the proper terms for things, as defined in Francis D.K Ching’s A Visual Dictionary of Architecture, published by John Wiley. I have a first edition, published 1995 but we hope that the subject has not moved on to far in terminology since then!

For guidance on the visual presentation of information we also have the fourth edition of Professor Ching’s Architectural Graphics, again published by Wiley.

Specifically on country houses I also have Jeremy Musson’s book How to Read a Country House (Ebury Press, 2005).

Finally, in the reference section I would also include Stephen Calloway’s rather beautiful guide to interior design The Elements of Style, I have the revised edition of 2005 published by Mitchell Beasley.

All of these books can be found on the Amazon list here, although quite a few have more recent editions that I am using.

Inspirational Books

You can tell from the name of the project that Pride and Prejudice was one inspiration, but equally an impulse purchase of Clive Aslet’s The Story of the Country House (Yale University Press) was the actual prompt to set to work.

Searching my bookshelves also revealed some potentially useful books

You can find all of these on a different Amazon List.

Potential Sources / Wishlist

I’ve also been browsing the “People also read” sections of the books above and assembled a small collection of other works that might well be of interest when I have the time and funds to buy them! You can find the complete wishlist here.