Tag Archives: design

Housing design judge on homes getting smaller, greener

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Housing design judge Heather McCune recently talked about two trends in the housing industry: smaller and greener homes.

The exteriors of the homes are getting far simpler, with far fewer gables and dormers.

There are a couple of reasons for this, we think: One is that this is a change that’s driven by cost. Every time you add a bump-out or change a roofline, it adds to the cost of the house. Builders and architects seem to be consistently asking themselves, does a change like this add value, does it add to the cost? So, the appearances are becoming more streamlined.

The other thing is a generational shift. The entry-level buyer is demanding a home designed for their aesthetic, not for their parents’ aesthetic. They seem to prefer a far cleaner presentation than what had been popular among their parents. I don’t think it would be out of line to characterize it as an anti-McMansion attitude…

Honestly, [“green” is] an evolutionary term in our industry. The definition of green is as different as each and every builder in each and every category. But we didn’t see a single entry that didn’t discuss its “greenness” in its entry statement. The industry is figuring out that green, in some form, isn’t an option anymore — now it’s simply mandatory.

But they each approach it their own way, and a lot of the builders and designers are participating in the many green-building rating systems, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which may emphasize different systems and concepts. Generally, though, what we’re seeing is that reducing energy usage is becoming an aspect of home maintenance, from the homeowners’ point of view. We saw less emphasis on sustainably produced building products than on energy management.

Housing going relatively smaller and greener. These trends seem to be picking up momentum and shouldn’t be a surprise (see a recent headline that suggests that here) to readers of this blog. For example, this housing judge was part of the most recent International Builders Show where a Gen Y home combined a smaller size with outdoor living.

It seems like cost is a big factor here: a larger home or a home with more “unnecessary” features means a higher purchase price while some want to lower home energy costs (some going so far as to have net-zero-energy homes). So perhaps we can infer that if the economy remains in the doldrums, these two features will continue to gain steam as homebuyers think more economically.

Architects and designers need to help create “more sustainable and inclusive cities”

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I’m often intrigued to read about how architects and planners talk about the social impact their work is intended to have. Along these lines, “the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Curator for Socially Responsible Design” talks about what she thinks are pressing issues:

AS: How did you get involved in humanitarian work?

Cynthia Smith: Because I’ve been working on civil and human rights issues most of my adult life and was trained as a designer, I was looking for a way to combine these worlds. I headed to the Kennedy School at Harvard where I met others like me from 44 different countries and every profession. Inspired by the stories and work taking place in the local universities and schools, I returned to New York and began to gather socially responsible design projects from around the world to include in Cooper-Hewitt’s first exhibition dedicated to this type of design work, Design for the Other 90%, mounted in 2007.

AS: What’s the most pressing issue that architects and designers should be addressing?

CS: Today, for the first time in history, more of us are living in cities than ever before. It is critical we create more sustainable and inclusive cities. We can look to emerging and developing economies on how to create innovative solutions from limited resources and challenging environmental requirements. Whether you are a designer, architect, or planner working in your own city or on an international level, engaging and listening to members of a community about what they need is one of the most effective ways to improve urban regions.

There is potential in architecture, design, and planning to create positive social environments, places that give or encourage life versus making like more dreary. However, this can be difficult to bring to fruition and not all designs live up to these standards. Does New Urbanism provide a better way of life? An IKEA house? Concrete modernist buildings (work by Bertrand Goldberg)? The “not-so-big house“? Neighborhoods like those advocated by Jane Jacobs and others? The “High Line” in New York City?

I like the emphasis at the end of the last paragraph quoted above: the process requires interacting with the people who will utilize the structures. Often, architecture seems to be imposed from above, built more around aesthetic or or ideological perspectives than on what people want. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all buildings need to be pragmatic or that strip malls should automatically be built if people like strip malls but there has to be a balance of design expertise and community input.

Net-zero energy homes: well-designed and/or eco-friendly?

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Three net-zero energy homes, homes that produce as much energy as they consume, were recently built in a well-off Edmonton suburb. The description of the homes leads me to ask: are these homes both well-built and eco-friendly?

Well lit with large, south-facing windows, the feature home offers a simple yet refined open plan for the kitchen/main room where the festivities were held.

In each room, labels here and there denoted the latest eco-friendly features and breakthrough methods of energy and resource efficiency. Particularly notable were the 75-cm thick walls, especially designed to provide insulation for Edmonton’s chilly winters.

Although not excessive in size, the house is open and spacious and has all the amenities needed for a modern lifestyle.

As Boman described to the assembled guests, one of the great appeals of the home is the sense of place that comes with it. It is “not another McMansion,” she quipped.

I’m very intrigued by the quote at the end of the above excerpt: it suggests that the homes are nice and eco-friendly. It would be interesting to hear more about the particular architectural details of these houses and how much they differ from homes that are built as part of larger subdivisions. The quote suggests the homes are known for being better quality, places rather than spaces in urban sociology terms, in strong contrast to McMansions. On the other hand, the homes have a lot of green features. Going green doesn’t necessarily make it a well-designed or a quality house. If you pull these two ideas apart, is a ugly or mass-produced green house better or worse than a beautifully designed but wasteful house? Which of these qualities are more important and how do builders and architects have to balance these two to sell such homes?

Apparently there is some momentum for these homes – see my post last week about the cost of net-zero energy homes.

Who is going to pay for those architect-designed plans for the suburbs?

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In reviewing the “Foreclosed” exhibit at MoMA, Felix Salmon raises an interesting question: who is going to pay for these projects to be built?

Anybody who visits the exhibit can see that nothing remotely along the lines of the buildings being proposed is ever going to be realized — Orange, New Jersey, for instance, is not going to replace its roads with long strips of narrow housing. But what’s less obvious is the way in which all of these projects are also a huge financial stretch. They were charged with coming up with innovative forms of home finance, but all those innovative solutions tend to boil down to the same basic idea: get the local municipal government to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars and then spend that money on a massive housing development which will, somehow, generate the income needed to service the debt.

Such ideas have a tendency to work much better in theory than they do in practice; they’re fragile things, at risk from dozens of different directions at the same time, and if I were a local bank, I’d stay well away from funding them. And I certainly would never advise small and unsophisticated suburbs like these ones to get into bed with the sharks peddling municipal bonds and associated interest-rate derivatives.

Michael Bell, in the video above, makes the very good point that architecture and architects are largely absent from the suburbs. But I guess that I was really looking for something much lower-cost than the mega projects that the teams in the MoMA show came up with. Certainly lower in up-front cost, anyway. The foreclosure crisis was caused by people borrowing enormous sums of money and then finding themselves unable to pay it back. The last thing we want to do is risk repeating that all over again.

The reality is that few houses in the United States are designed by architects; I remember seeing a statistic a few years ago that suggested it was roughly 5-10%. There are plenty of other people who think they can design them, such as builders or engineers or Menards. A couple of issues could be present here. Adding an architect to the homebuilding process includes another person that needs to be paid. If you are a builder who is hoping to  Some designs might be considered “too modern” for many suburban neighborhoods that tend to celebrate bland or known styles. This is the  reason you can get stucco houses across the country – people know these but are more skeptical of modernist homes.

The funding is another matter. Salmon suggests that few municipalities should enter into such deals in good or bad economic times. However, where else could people get money to build innovative projects? If government isn’t going to front the money, would private lenders (either well-off banks or wealthy individuals or foundations who want to get into real estate or put their stamp on the physical landscape. Without funding, how much more likely are we to get “normal” or “tried and true” projects and how then do we push things forward in architecture or urban design?

Putting together the “IKEA house”

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Popular Mechanics looks at how the new prefab “IKEA house” was designed:

Russell started Ideabox in Salem, Ore., more than six years ago, but he suddenly gained a following—thousands and thousands of emails in just a few days—when he unveiled the first-ever Ikea-inspired prefab home at a Portland home show last week. Contrary to what you may have read in the blogosphere, the Aktiv house isn’t actually from Ikea, sanctioned by Ikea, or in any way sold through Ikea. However, the folks at the local Ikea in Portland certainly played a major role in coupling Russell’s love of small-space prefab buildings with Ikea’s design-savvy, space-saving systems. The collaboration yielded a home filled entirely with Ikea products.

As generations of cramped apartment-dwellers can attest, part of the Ikea allure (besides the fact that its furnishings are cheap and pack flat) is that the broad range of design options lets you get the most out of a small space. For example, Russell says, the variety of Ikea kitchen options gives customers design flexibility and the ability to mix and match Ikea products in the space, choosing for both style and cost. He designed the 745-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom home around specific Ikea components, and the designers from the local Portland store worked directly with Ideabox to ensure the builders had all the parts they needed (there was no room for the frustration of a missing bolt on a commercial-scale project). In all, he says, building an Aktiv will cost about $86,500…

The major difference comes in the delivery of the home, forcing designers to engineer the structure for travel. “When you are picking up the house and driving it down the freeway, sheer loads are very important,” Russell says. Thus, the house, just like a car, must be built with as unified a body construction as possible, ensuring that the home stays together in the face of winds on the highway, or transfers from the production shop to the truck or from the truck to the foundation. “There is a little more stealth factor,” Russell says about the sleekness of the design.

Once the home gets delivered and is safely resting on the foundation, it is as close to a “plug-and-play” model as possible, requiring only hookups to the water, power, and sewer connection points, since all the wiring and plumbing was already done in the production facility. From there, the customer is free to walk into their new Aktiv space.

The house looks decent enough and I’m sure the connection to IKEA will attract many. However, I wonder who would buy this: as some of the commenters have suggested, is this basically a fancier mobile home?

In some ways, I think this house isn’t innovative enough. A couple of thoughts:

1. What about having a neighborhood of these? How would that look and would people want to live there?

2. Can it be expanded or is this the one-bedroom for the living alone culture?

3. I’ve always been really intrigued by the 250 square foot living spaces that are featured in the IKEA stores. Why not work with a really small space (and you don’t have to go to the really small size of a tiny house) and be more innovative?

4. People can already buy smaller homes from a variety of sources – for example, you can buy the materials for a 1,471 square foot home from Menards (from the most recent weekly ad):

Granted, you still have to put the home together and it doesn’t have the IKEA name but the Copeland does have two floors and three bedrooms. So why go for the IKEA house?

h/t Instapundit

Exploring the Gen Y home

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The International Builders Show that recently concluded featured a Gen Y home. Here is what it involved:

The so-called Gen Y House, one of a trio of Builder Concept Homes constructed for the show, also departs from housing’s (and the trade show’s) long-running obsession with the baby boom generation.

Its 2,163 square feet marry indoors with outdoors: One all-glass exterior wall literally disappears, folding away to open the home to the patio and pool. The party-hearty vibe is hard to miss…

It’s a wide-open floor plan that emphasizes flexibility and gives a nod to the fact that, being in Florida, relatives and friends are likely to show up to visit: There’s a separate studio apartment with kitchenette just off the front courtyard. That courtyard provides a roomy alternative to the traditional notion of a front yard. Out back, there’s that pool and hot tub; a separate entrance from the master bedroom leading to the pool practically screams “midnight swim.”

The architect said that homes have to have contemporary styling for this age group.

One architect quoted in the story suggests that Generation Y “can lead out of this [down housing] market.” Thus, it sounds like builders and others think there is a lot of money in designing homes for the younger generation.

Four thoughts about this home:

1. Does it work outside of Florida? This home seems to take advantage of its setting but it might look a little different for a Gen Yer in Minneapolis.

2. This goes along with a larger industry theme that smaller might be better today. Again, however, this home is not short on features and has a price tag of $300,000. This is not exactly affordable housing though it appears that people want to make clear it is not a McMansion.

3. Would this home stand the test of time? What I mean here is whether this home would look dated in 15 to 20 years or if it is so geared to a particular group that it would have little appeal for the larger market. Styles and accoutrements do change over time but I assume builders don’t want to limit who would purchase these homes.

4. This home seems to emphasize fun and entertainment. Would these homes encourage sociability in the long run or reinforce a lack of attachments to civil society a la Bowling Alone?

New MoMA exhibit “Foreclosed” reimagines suburban life

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Perhaps a side effect of the downturn in the housing market in recent years is a willingness to think boldly about a new future for American suburbs. “Foreclosed,” a new exhibit at MoMA, proposes several solutions:

Foreclosed had its origins in a research project initiated by Reinhold Martin in 2009. Martin, who directs the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, wondered whether the foreclosure crisis could have a silver lining, by giving Americans reason to rethink one of the most impractical (and wasteful) aspects of the American dream. That, he argued, could lead to the proliferation of new housing types that blur lines between public and private spaces. With Anna Kenoff and Leah Meisterlin, he produced a book, the Buell Hypothesis, last year…

That proposal is by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood of WORKac, for a section of Keizer, Oregon that would be five times as dense as neighboring suburbs, but with three times as much open space. A gorgeous, dome-shaped structure contains a community composting plant. Around it are buildings that recall the best work of Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, and MVRDV. One imagines a developer seeing Andraos and Wood’s elaborate 1:250 model, depicting a gently futuristic suburb, and wanting to break ground tomorrow.

The other star of the exhibition is Jeanne Gang, the Chicago architect. She and her teammates tackled the problems of Cicero, an older Chicago suburb that is filled with rotting industrial facilities but not the kind of housing needed by its large immigrant population. They decided to play to Cicero’s strengths, as what Gang calls an “arrival city,” by creating modular housing that can go up or down in size as families evolve. They also reclaimed industrial facilities as gardens and, like most of the teams, came up with an unconventional financing scheme. Like the very different WORKac proposal, Gang’s Cicero proposal seems practically shovel-ready, even though, as she pointed out in a New York Times op-ed, it remains illegal under Chicago’s zoning code.

The most provocative idea in the show may belong to MOS—the firm headed by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample—which focuses on East Orange, New Jersey. The plan acknowledges the lack of pedestrian life in today’s suburbs and reclaims the streets themselves as building sites. That allows increased density without the need to demolish existing housing. But if the idea is strong, details, of what the “ribbon” buildings” would look like and how they would function, are sparse…

Inner-ring suburbs are in need of some solutions as they often face big-city problems without the resources or attention they need to truly innovate.

Now the trick is to try to implement one of these options. (See some images here.) While it is interesting to consider what might be done, it would be useful to ask the architects about how they would go about putting these plans into action in particular suburbs. What would suburban governments and residents approve? Where would the funding come from? A prominent composting plant? Gang’s plan requires changing a lot of zoning laws? Looking at some of the comments to this story, there is some skepticism. If these designs are in a museum, is the exhibit intended to be more art or practical design?

Also, I always wonder about the assumption that better design will automatically lead to population, cultural, and economic revival. In other words, if you adopt these new methods, your suburb will improve. Alas, these things don’t come with money-back guarantees.

What the future Navy Pier might look like

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Navy Pier is in for a redesign and here are quick summaries of the redesign plans from the five competitors:

•AECOM/BIG — The Crystal Gardens would become a “vertical urban farm” to supply produce to restaurants at the pier. A grand staircase would sweep over a proposed addition to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and offer uninterrupted skyline views. On the pier’s far east end, a tiered platform would create a “lifted corner” that would rise above the Dock Street promenade, providing another lookout. A tier on the other corner would descend directly to the water.

•Davis Brody Bond/Aedas/Martha Schwartz Partners — A series of boardwalklike extensions on the pier’s southern edge would include a variety of features, among them slips for tour boats, an outdoor theater, fishing areas and a beach. A “flyover” ramp would connect Pier Park to the boardwalks. A gondola would carry visitors to the pier from Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive.

•!melk/HOK/UrbanLab — Curved platforms would extend over the pier’s southern edge, providing lookout points. Boardwalks at the pier’s eastern end would let visitors get closer to the lake; below the platforms, and visible to the visitors, would be underwater “fish resorts” where fish would congregate. The towering structure called the Glacier would rise out of the lake off the pier’s eastern end.

•James Corner Field Operations — Undulating steps would join Pier Park with the Dock Street promenade. The plan also suggests turning the interior of the Crystal Gardens into a striking display of hanging gardens and putting oval-shaped cabs on the nearby Ferris wheel. A swimming pool with a sand beach would run along the pier’s southeast corner at lake level. A stepped amphitheater would lead down to the eastern end of the pier, where a platform would extend into the lake.

•Xavier Vendrell Studio/Grimshaw Architects — Circular arrangements of trees and plants would be installed to soften Pier Park. They would enliven the South Dock with pocket parks, terraces and kiosks. A wedge-shaped “horizon walk” platform would extend outward and upward from the pier’s east end, creating another vantage point to gaze over Lake Michigan and providing another reason for people to walk the entire length of the pier.

The images give you some ideas of the interesting ideas in play here. Check out “The Glacier” that would jut out of the water at the east end, various ways of expanding into the walkways into the lake, and a raised eastern corner paired with a depressed eastern corner (image 6 and 10/12 and 13, respectively, in this gallery). The idea that looks the most interesting to me: images 14 and 15 show a grand staircase that would really transform the “roof” of the structure.

At the same time, I can’t imagine that the City will allow anything too crazy, particularly something that might mar the lake views. After saving Grant Park from major changes with the proposed move of the Children’s Museum, I think Chicago will play it relatively safe while trying to offer more consistent recreational opportunities along the pier. I imagine there is more room to play with the walkways/promenade along the lake though this still has to appeal to a broad swath of residents and tourists. Perhaps the best way to do this is to make the promenade greener while also better utilizing the existing structures.

I do like the fact that this process has been made public. While some of these ideas are quite unique, it gives the public a larger vision about public spaces and what is possible. We could benefit from thinking bigger about what these types of public spaces could be like and how we could all benefit.

A shift from the size of the McMansion to the quality of the large house

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The Tennessean takes a look at a trend I have been hinting at for a while: people may willingly buy smaller homes but they also want an increase in quality.

After a slowdown caused by the recession, neighborhoods of million-dollar houses are being developed in Davidson County again. But please don’t call them McMansions.

Not long ago, homes in the million-dollar range were easy to spot because of their size, typically 6,000 square feet or more. Today, the average size has shrunk to between 3,500 and 5,000 square feet of space, according to developers.

That’s the size of many less expensive houses, but homes with seven-figure price tags have individual architectural designs and other features that won’t be found in a typical subdivision house, says Alan Looney, president of Castle Homes…

Buyers are interested in quality of construction, not quantity of square feet, says Eric Bentley, construction consultant for home builder Carbine & Associates.

Is this an improvement for those who decry the architecture or design of McMansions or the environmental impact of these larger houses? The improved quality of these large homes may just fit Bourdieu’s ideas that quality and aesthetics are more important to the educated classes rather than the size and functionality that those with money might go after. At the same time, this is taking place during an economic downturn and we don’t know the profiles of these buyers – are these people who had also had plenty of money before the recession and are only now buying houses because they desire quality and not size? Or is the downtown leading a whole bunch of people to reconsider their priorities when money is more scarce?

Unusual 60,000 square foot house in northern Ohio

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Big houses tend to draw attention but particularly eccentric big houses. Here are some of the features of an unusual 60,000 square foot home in northern Ohio:

A wealthy inventor conceived of a home with whimsical, underground ‘streets’ built to scale and inspired by those he’d seen in Georgetown, Paris and Savannah. Above ground, it featured a private beach and marina sculpted into the shores of Lake Erie. And a helicopter pad…

“It takes four-and-a-half hours to show this property,” said Scott Street of Sotheby’s, the listing agent for the Waterwood Estate, which is now listed on the Vermilion real estate market for $19.5 million.

The property sits on 160 acres, boasts three-quarter miles of frontage on Lake Erie and contains a series of “pods” connected by glass corridors that were navigated by scooters and golf carts…

Jacobsen used his trademark “pod” style design to give the design more flexibility and allow it to evolve as Brown wanted other things added. The entire home is a series of 20 castle-like concrete buildings connected by glass corridors and each structure is topped with a slate pyramid.

Perhaps one could argue that any 60,000 square foot home is unusual but this has many intriguing traits.

Why build this property on Lake Erie?