Shortridge Design Notes is a series of ten written studies about the construction and planning of ordinary houses. Each study takes one subject and follows it through: what it is, how it behaves, why it is built the way it is, and what is worth looking at before changing it.
What a study contains
A study opens with a drawing made specifically to explain its subject, followed by a fact strip giving the study number, the subject and the scope. The body is divided into sections, each dealing with one part of the problem, and the final section is usually a practical check or a sequence of decisions in the order that avoids trouble.
The drawings are diagrams rather than photographs. They show sections, plans and relationships, with the parts that matter marked and the parts that do not left out. None of them record anything built; they exist to make the text of the study legible.
Where the studies stop
Several of the subjects touch structure, building fabric, drainage or geometry that is governed by regulation, and the applicable figures differ from one jurisdiction to another and from one building to another. The studies explain how these things behave and deliberately stop before telling you what any particular building needs. Where a decision depends on a calculation, an inspection or an approval, the study says so rather than supplying a number.
How the series is ordered
The numbering runs 01 to 10 and is an order of reading. The early studies are about seeing: how light behaves in a room, how to read a plan, how two floors meet. The middle studies are about assemblies and geometry: walls and moisture, stairs, kitchen planning. The later ones are about materials and forces: timber movement, openings and load paths, paint and light, and the ground around a house.
Each study stands on its own and each ends with movement to the previous and next study and back to the index, so the series can be read straight through or dipped into.