Meet the little building that can! I’m excited to announce the launch of our Flexa Studio: a modern, versatile, 120 square-foot prefabricated room. It’s a way to add space without the expense and disruption of remodeling. Award-winning designer Casper Mork-Ulnes, who holds a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University and is creative director of Modern Cabana, developed Flexa Studio in collaboration with Houseplans.com.

The simple shed-roof and crisp horizontal rain-screen siding — with glass entry door and fixed and operable side windows — give the structure  a handsome contemporary presence to complement any garden setting. Place it in the backyard or side yard,

to use as a home office, media room, or teen pad:

or add a sleeper and turn it into an overflow guest room.

The 10- by 12-foot structure comes pre-assembled or as a panelized kit-of-parts that you put together yourself. In both cases you build the foundation, then bolt the Flexa Studio to it. It’s eco-friendly thanks to the use of  FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council)-certified lumber, recycled denim insulation, prefabricated elements for minimal waste, and a small footprint for less site impact. In most jurisdictions, permits are not required for structures that are 120 square feet or less — check with your building department to verify local permitting requirements. Flexa House starts at $8950 plus shipping, which varies based on distance and whether you order it pre-assembled or as the panelized kit.

I want to thank Room & Board and R & B Design Associate Joe Darling for expertly furnishing our model to illustrate the Live, Work, and Play possibilities. The warm contemporary pieces in the photographs are listed below:

1. Gallery leaning media shelf in natural steel: $749

2. Eames molded plywood lounge chair in walnut by Herman Miller: $679

3. Fuller 7′ x 7′ felted rug in grey: $1715

This is a cool fool-the-eye rug: the design resembles a shadow pattern on the floor and made me look around to see where the light was coming from.

4. Tiffany arm chair in red: $249

5. Portica desk in stainless steel with solid walnut top (48 x 24 x 29h): $959

6. Pierce 69″ two-cushion full comfort sleeper in Delamont charcoal: $2299

7. Outdoor Sunbrella pillow in orange: $59

8. Hive pillow in Ink: $109

9. Sasha table lamps with silver shades: $229 each

10. Link table lamp in orange: $380

11. Nelson medium cigar pendant lamp: $329

12. Framed print, Study for Homage To the Square – 1954, Albers: $419

13. Framed poster, Rothko Blue, Green and Brown poster: $199

14. Laguna outdoor chair (and ottoman, not shown) in Sunbrella taupe: $599 (2)

15. Montego outdoor side table (18 inches square): $449

The Flexa Studio Photography is by Joe Fletcher, who shot the unit at San Francisco’s Flora Grubb Gardens (which provided the plants and pots). The Flexa Studio is a cousin of our Flexahouse modern ranch house plan by architect Nick Noyes — someday I hope we’ll have a whole family of Flexas!

More About Casper Mork-Ulnes

In addition to founding Modern Cabana with builder Nick Damner (last year they showcased other Modern Cabana products at Sunset’s Celebration Weekend where I first spoke to them about working with us), Casper has produced a variety of sleek contemporary houses and remodels through Mork-Ulnes Design. Here, for example, he

reshaped a San Francisco Victorian into a dramatic light-box-cum-stair-tower.

On the top floor he reinvented a dormer window into an elegant sitting, viewing, and storage alcove (photos courtesy Inhabitat.com). These are great ideas worth remembering as you think about ways to customize any of our home plans.

Last week in Melbourne I was lucky enough to see the Walsh Street home of the late Robin Boyd (1917-1971), one of Australia’s most famous modern architects and critics. He ran Australia’s Small Homes Service (stock plans by architects) in the late 1940s and early 1950s, designed a wide variety of structures, and wrote several influential books including Australia’s Home: Its Origins, Builders, and Occupiers (1952), The Australian Ugliness (1960), and The Puzzle of Architecture (1965). He was what I would call a “flexible modernist,” especially adept at finding innovative solutions for particular site conditions. The home, built in 1957 and now owned by the Robin Boyd Foundation, is one of his most ingenious — maximizing indoor-outdoor living space on a narrow urban lot — with many lessons for today.

The model, from Museum Victoria (by Paul Couch, Carter Couch Architects, 1989) shows how the house is divided into two sections book-ending a central glass-walled courtyard: entry, living-dining area, kitchen, and master bedroom at one end; childrens’ bedrooms and Robin’s office above the garage at the other. The courtyard is the leafy, sun-filled heart of the house: a private, spacious, wind-protected outdoor living room.

This view is toward the living room. The wings are tied together by an upswept roof of planks supported on cables, like a suspension bridge, as shown in this section view, below,

(courtesy Robin Boyd: A Life by Geoffrey Serle, 1995). Famous examples like the Menai Straits Bridge (1825)  in North Wales (courtesy Wales Directory)

with its cables slung over stone towers, or Kane’s Bridge (1929) over the Yarra River in Melbourne’s own Studley Park

(courtesy Bushwalkingblog.blogspot.com) spring to mind — Boyd would have known many such prototypes. The following ceiling detail

shows the cables supporting the boards of the roof.

At the top of Boyd’s catenary curve is the master bedroom (shown below)  over the living-dining area and kitchen. One of the clever twists here is that the main entrance from the street is through this space (called a bed-sitting room on the plan), which is treated as a floating indoor-outdoor platform overlooking the courtyard.

That’s why it doesn’t look like a master bedroom. Boyd Foundation executive director Tony Lee, who gave my wife Mary and me the insightful and inspirational tour, said that the Boyds always entertained guests in this space and then took everyone downstairs for dinner. (I guess they were very fastidious and always made their bed — it certainly sounds like something only an architect would do). Also the railings are mostly metaphorical (except  for the couch) so as not to interrupt views and spatial flow…or gravity, for that matter. Architects just love to levitate!

The living-dining area on the lower level extends into the courtyard through a wall of glass.

The kitchen is behind the stair and partially open to the living area — also note how the lighting is deftly tucked between the overhead beams. The plan (also from Serle’s book) shows how courtyard and house are extensions of each other,

making structure and site one supremely efficient unit. The key lesson here is that house is not a separate block plopped onto the lot; it becomes the lot. Every inch of the site is part of the plan; this is still an excellent way to design for tight urban sites. Precedents for such a patio-centric layout go all the way back to the Roman atrium

as in the plan for the so-called House of the Surgeon at Pompeii (courtesy AD 79). As a worldly modernist — who knew Walter Gropius, and in 1956 held a visiting professorship at MIT during which he met Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and Eero Saarinen, among others  — Boyd might also have known the Eames House and Studio at Pacific Palisades near Los Angeles, of 1949.

It also brackets a courtyard (house on left, studio on right, plan courtesy Key Houses of the Twentieth Century by Colin Davies, 2006) ) though the site is very different and the structure faces a meadow across the long boardwalk. Robin Boyd seemed to absorb ideas like a sponge while addressing each architectural problem from a fresh point of view. His was a highly cultured yet agile imagination, firmly grounded and flexible at the same time. It was a delight to meet that mind at home.

It may still be dark and wintry outside but here’s a way to brighten the indoors: browse the range of contemporary floor coverings now available. Start with the new rugs designed by Los Angeles architect Stephen Kanner, FAIA and his 14 year-old daughter Caroline. These floor coverings give new meaning to the phrase “cut a rug:” the grid of vivid colors seems to float and dance, creating a room-within-the-room.

It, and the elegant runner below, are part of the “Squares” line.

The rugs are part of the Ariana + Kanner Modern Rug Collection, constructed by Ariana Rugs’ Ahmad and Alex Ahmadi, who are third generation Afghan rug weavers from Kabul.

These hand-knotted, hand-tufted cotton and wool rugs incorporate sustainable materials including bamboo silk and banana. The one above is from the “Square Compressions” line. Inspiration for the designs comes from the geometries and color field explorations of 20th century painting, including Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus, and American Abstract Expressionism.

Stephen is known for sleek machine age architecture — from futuristic homes and a zig-zagging In-’n-Out Burger outlet to the sweeping car-commanding canopy/marquis of his United Oil Gasoline Station,

completed in 2009 (photo by John Linden, courtesy archdaily) and  shown here.  But in the rugs I detect a new found freedom with hue and pattern that must have come from his collaboration with Caroline.

Another product — more a floor covering than a rug — is by a company called FLOR. It’s all about flexibility: you can mix and match the 19.7 inch squares or “carpet tiles” (made of renewable and recycled content) as you see fit. Launched in 2003, FLOR’s offerings keep expanding. We used FLOR in several Sunset Idea Houses and they were very successful.

These blue striped squares are part of the “Stripe It Rich/C Note” line and run about $16 per tile. Or here’s the “Shiny Doodle 2 Rug Kit:”

which includes ten tiles. A special “FLORdot” system holds each square securely in place.

Chilewich is a New York company that has made a name in very contemporary matting made from woven vinyl in a variety of textures, patterns, and colors.

They can add lightness as well as warmth to a room, as the image of a modern dining area, above, shows. Here’s their “Bright” series:

And the more subdued “Dark Neutrals:”

These mats are elegant and practical at the same time: easy to clean by vacuuming, or mopping with a detergent solution.

So now as you take a break from watching the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, you can think about ways to bring a little gold medal design excitement into your home!

Our newest exclusive modern plan is historic: we now offer copies of Case Study House #3 designed by William Wurster and Theodore Bernardi. The avant-garde Los Angeles magazine Arts & Architecture and its editor John Entenza addressed the need for new housing after World War II by launching the Case Study House Program in 1945. The plans for CSH #3 were published in the June 1945 issue (cover shown below).

The program promoted low cost, experimental, contemporary home designs using donated materials from industry and manufacturers and showcased the work of mostly Southern California modernists like Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, and Pierre Koenig. Wurster was the most famous Northern California architect to be included in the program. At the time, Wurster was Dean of Architecture at MIT while Bernardi ran the office in San Francisco.

Wurster’s work embodied the Bay Region Style in his use of simple understated forms, natural materials, strong indoor-outdoor connections, and straightforward construction methods. He once said: “I like to work on direct, honest solutions, avoiding exotic materials, using indigenous things so that there is no affectation and the best is obtained for the money.”

(Photo courtesy Environmental Design Archives.) He was what I would call a “Back Door Modernist” in that he made plainness and simplicity artful and current. One of his earliest houses, from 1928,

shows the emphasis on light, proportion, and natural textures (Roger Sturtevant photo above courtesy EDA). He was fond of using ordinary but modern materials like plywood and concrete block. He returned to California in the late 1940s and helped found the College of Environmental Design at U. C. Berkeley.

Case Study House #3 (originally called CSH #2, as shown on the drawing) is our Plan 470-9 and is an H-shaped design that celebrates nature with a tall covered outdoor room called “the porch” between the kitchen/dining/living area and the bedroom wing.

It’s basically a modern version of the “dogtrot” — two rooms separated by a breezeway — a classic early American vernacular plan. The carport is cranked away from the main rectangle to meet the driveway. A drawing by delineator Arne Kartwold (who worked in Wurster’s office for a few years) captures the expressive energy of the design

complete with a big-fender automobile idling by the front door. Kartwold’s rear perspective

shows how the central porch and master suite open to the backyard, combining indoor and outdoor space in a unified design. Another distinctive feature is the “work room” adjacent to the kitchen. It was conceived as a hobby room but could become a mudroom/laundry. The plans would need to be brought up to code and a few details updated — for example, the master bathroom is small by today’s standards (see our Customization Department!) — but the graceful flow between rooms, the elegant windows and doors,  and the generous use of sheltered outdoor space make this design compelling. The house was built in the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles. Arts & Architecture covered the completed house in its March 1949 issue.

A percentage of the plan price supports the Environmental Design Archives at U. C. Berkeley, which preserves the drawings and papers of significant California architects and landscape architects. For more on the Case Study House program see the Arts & Architecture website above and Case Study Houses: 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy (Hennessey & Ingalls, 1977), and Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program by Elizabeth A. T. Smith (Taschen, 2009).  For more on Wurster see An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster, edited by Marc Treib (SF Museum of Modern Art, 1995) and Bay Area Houses, edited by Sally Woodbridge (Gibbs Smith, 1988).

Contradictions make us concentrate. Look at this image from Heyri, Korea, a new planned city outside Seoul.

Is it a leafy wall or a concrete tree, and how did they build it, anyway? The photo is one of many shot by folks at IDEO, global design consutants based in Palo Alto, California. (Find the image on their website under “Postcards.”) I think it begins to illustrate what IDEO calls “design thinking,” which is a way to derive new ideas from opposing extremes.

The firm’s Chris Waugh and others explained this approach at a fascinating all-day retreat for builders, developers, architects, designers and others that I attended recently. The gathering was sponsored by The Vine: A Conversation on the Nature of Community, which is an offshoot of the Pacific Coast Builders Conference. (Full disclosure: I’m on the advisory board of The Vine.) As Chris pointed out, design thinking is about being comfortable with ambiguity and, in fact, finding new potential in it. The discussion made me realize that design thinking isn’t new; it’s what the best architecture has always been about.

One of IDEO’s current projects is helping the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rethink airport security checkpoints. (What a great idea — up to now these areas appear to have been made up on the fly — so to speak). IDEO looked beyond the detection of objects to the environment of the checkpoint, and they studied human behavior.

Their prototype design, called TSA Checkpoint Evolution, uses informational screens, “Prep Stops,” and soothing lighting as crowd-calming devices in order to make potential  “hostile threats” more visible. In other words IDEO looked beyond the narrow security function and concentrated on how to relieve the stress as a way to make the most serious potential stress stand out. They may also be creating an instant community out of a collection of strangers. So out of ambiguous and even contradictory circumstances and needs  — stress vs. relaxation — comes a possible solution for increased security.

The home is a similar interactive environment, only more intimate, and one hopes less in need of security checkpoints  — The White House notwithstanding. Each room or space has the potential for different kinds of behavior: from gathering to seclusion. A well designed home encompasses these potential contradictions. New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger’s  insightful new book Why Architecture Matters – I highly recommend it — deftly illustrates this zoning principle in his description of architect Sir John Soane’s breakfast room in London: “with a round table set under a low dome that is not a real dome but a canopy, supported by narrow columns at four corners. Where the canopy meets the corners, Soane placed small round mirrors, so the occupants of the breakfast table can see one another without looking directly at each other.”

(Photo courtesy Livejournal.com) Paul continues: “Soane liked to create rooms within rooms and spaces that connect in unusual ways with other spaces, and in the breakfast room you can see that he is doing it not just as the early nineteenth-century’s version of razzle-dazzle but to provide a kind of psychic comfort. The dome is protecting but it is not quite enclosing, a reminder that while we may feel uncommunicative and vulnerable early in the morning, we need to move out of that stage into the world. The breakfast room functions as a kind of halfway house…it introduces us to the day…a room of great beauty and serenity, perfectly balanced between openness and enclosure, between public and private.”

So how does design thinking inform our house plans? Gregory La Vardera’s latest scheme, Plan 431-12, demonstrates. I asked Greg to explain what he did.

Compact at 1,800 square feet –  for three bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths — “there is no room for hallways or circulation space in the tight footprint,” says Greg.  “So for that reason we arrived at the unusual configuration of placing service spaces – bathrooms+laundry & coat closet –  on the stair landing levels of the house.”

Greg continues: “After wrestling with the floor plan it became apparent that any other location of the bathroom would require more hallway, or require the stair to be located elsewhere in the house. By using the stair itself as the “hallway” to reach the bathroom we gained back considerable space, enough to make the master bedroom suite quite generous for such a small house, as well as the open living area.”

“So the laundry area and bathroom serving bedrooms 2 & 3, and the powder and coat room on the main level are off-set from the floor they serve by 1/4-1/3 level. That uneven division itself may also seem a bit peculiar but it serves two purposes. It gives these functions bias towards the levels they serve – for instance the laundry + bathroom is much closer to the bedrooms than it is to the downstairs – it’s clearly part of the upstairs realm, there is no ambiguity about which floor it belongs to. This is because it’s just a couple of steps down from the bedrooms. On the living level the powder room has a similar but different relationship. Its definitely part of the first floor – you would never have the sense that the powder room is in the basement. Yet because it is a few steps down from the living areas it gives it a distance, both physical and experiential, that serves the design of the house well. You don’t want a powder room right on top of your living spaces. Yet with a small footprint house it is hard to avoid. The house in fact lives much larger than it is because the use of vertical as well as horizontal separation of these service spaces.”

Here an architect, like the designers at IDEO, willingly embraces — but is not bound by — the constraints of his problem.  IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown reminds us in his new book  Change By Design, that this is an approach most famously articulated by the great mid-century modern designer Charles Eames.

As you explore Houseplans.com you can practice design thinking as well by seeing how a particular plan is or is not able  to turn limitations into advantages.