Category Archives: Eichler houses

Modern Paint Color and Eichler Plans

Posted on April 23, 2010 | 1 Comment

Nature-Oriented Paint Palettes

We’ve just added four more Eichler mid-century modern house plans (by architect Claude Oakland — see them at the end of this post) to our Exclusive Studio Collection and this has made me think about interior paint colors that might be appropriate for contemporary homes. And it’s spring: spruce-up time! The Yolo Colorhouse palette of no VOC paints (volatile organic compounds) sprang to mind.

The colors are organized in nature-based categories, from Air to Petal. One advantage of Yolo Colorhouse is that you can order poster-size color swatches (instead of smaller paint chips) to see how the color will look (remember that online paint color is only an approximation and you should refer to a dry paint chip sample before purchasing paint).

Because the range of color possibilities is so wide, I asked architectural color consultant Jill Pilaroscia of Colour Studio, who has directed color projects for Herman Miller and a wide variety of community developers, for her advice.

She suggested taking cues from the design, the materials, and the lifestyle characteristics of the typical Eichler home: its open plan, use of wood and warm-toned laminates, casual organization and clean lines; its rooms oriented toward and connecting with the garden; and its abundant daylight through window walls and interior transoms.

She says: “All of these basic characteristics set the stage for a range of natural  and organic colors that will harmonize with the building’s given elements.  Warm reds, rusts, browns, taupes, olives, greens, buffs, greyed tones that mirror those found in shadowed natural settings look wonderful in these homes. Sometimes an owner will find the colors heavy and oppressive and determine they want to paint the ceiling beams, and paint out the woods.  Subjective color likes and dislikes are deeply ingrained with the emotional connotations. This in no way means this is the only way to deal with an Eichler.  Some clients will choose to work in strong colors that suit their personal subjective color needs and can make it work. “

Jill suggested twelve Benjamin Moore hues in several categories as a starting point (swatches shown below).

Warm Accents

035 Baked Clay

077 Fiery Opal

194 Hathaway Gold

Softer Organic Warm Yellows to suggest light:

177 Mushroom Cap

186 Harvest Time

Olives:

492 Dune Grass

495 Hillside Green

Neutrals:

513 Limestone

1522 Inner Balance

Metal color:

1547 Dragon’s Breath,  for deep metal accents

and Deep Browns:

HC-72 Branchport Brown

2114-20 Mississippi Mud

On the Benjamin Moore website you can use their Virtual Fan Deck and Personal Color Viewer to see the paint applied to walls in several sample room photos, like this:

which uses Dune Grass on the fireplace and trim and Hillside Grass on the walls.

Here’s the same room with Hathaway Gold on fireplace and trim and Mushroom Cap on the walls. Beware, the click-and-cover feature can definitely become addictive… For information about colors used in the original Eichlers see CA Modern, the magazine of the Eichler Network.

Our latest Eichler Plans

The most recent additions to our Exclusive Studio Collection are four more historic Eichler plans from the early 1960s.

The 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2,733 sq. ft. layout of Plan 470-6 (original model HPO-15) — organized around an an open-air atrium — allows windows on two sides of every major room for cross-ventilation and balanced light.


The plan is both elegant and practical: a spacious loggia connects the kitchen/multipurpose room with the living room, and a laundry hall opens to the garage. The street front

centers a big welcoming gable porch over the entry beside the flat-roofed garage.

In Plan 470-8 (model NY-254), one of the very few Eichler homes built outside California (in the Hudson River Valley outside New York City),

a long horizontal facade — part garage, part wall — preserves privacy for the  front courtyard.

The 4 bedroom, 2 bath 1,706 sq. ft., L-shaped house wraps around two sides of this open space. The living dining area and the master bedroom open directly to the rear yard.

Plan 470-7 (model MC-34) shows how the so-called “multipurpose room” is no longer part of the kitchen (where it appears in the previous two plans) but its own separate space,

that now really functions as a family room. The “Gallery” in this 2,364 sq. ft., 4 bedroom, 2 bath plan includes a variation on the atrium idea, only this time it has a roof and is part of the interior. The segmented gable

extends from front to rear, across the gallery. These Eichler designs celebrate easy indoor-outdoor living and remain seductive for people who want to live on one level. We are able to offer copies of the designs by special arrangement with the Environmental Design Archives at U. C. Berkeley; a percentage of the plan price supports the Archives.








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Posted in architectural history, Architectural Styles, color, contemporary home design, Decorating Ideas, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Eichler houses, Eichler plans, Green Design, Home Products, Modern Houses, modern houses and house plans, Plan Collections, Uncategorized

Collecting Retro Modernity

Posted on February 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

Paper — Or Plastic — Chase

Design collecting takes many forms. I recently attended a workshop on the mid-century modern design photographer Maynard Parker at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California and met Charles Phoenix, resplendent in a vintage Hawaiian shirt, who is one of the great collectors of 50s and 60s modern Americana, a frequent guest on NPR and Martha Stewart and author of Americana The Beautiful: Mid-Century Modern Culture in Kodachrome (Angel City Press, 2006)

His enthusiasm for popular culture — from high style to kitsch — is infectious and his frequent slide lectures

– showing a vast collection of Kodachromes like the one above — are famous. He calls thrift shops “museums of merchandise” that are “the perfect place to study the underbelly of our mass consumerism culture.” I agree and think a lot can be learned about our culture by studying everyday life in any decade — just think how the phrase “better living through chemistry,” which became synonymous with the 1950s and derived from a Dupont slogan adopted in 1935 (according to Wikipedia), has now acquired an ironic edge. And don’t forget the “one word” that Mr. McGuire said to Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman)  in The Graduate (1967) : “Plastics.”

Charles’ interest in ordinary mid-century life made me think about the parallel universe of high style retro modern imagery — also called classic  modern –  that’s visible in current paper goods like these eye-catching note cards by Annacote (6 cards and envelopes for $12), available at Esty.

The famous diamond-pattern metal chair designed by Harry Bertoia, originally produced by Knoll, makes a vivid design, as do the even more  famous

Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe — designed in the late 1920s but coming to embody a corporate American look in the 1950s — and the

bent plywood chair by Charles and Ray Eames. These sleek and elegant forms remain powerfully seductive. Perhaps a Happy belated Valentine to the designer in your life!

Vintage modern plans are seductive too — browse our Historic Plan Collection, for example. The Stock plan exhibit mentioned in a previous post has made me review my own collecting habit.  I am fond of ranch house plan brochures like this

one from 1946. And in doing my research for Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House (Rizzoli, 2008 — Shameless Self-Promotion Department!) I found this brochure

from the early 1950s for May’s tract ranch houses in Denver. With some updates — kitchens and bathrooms always need adjustment for today’s living patterns, and low-e glass, and higher grade insulation are essential — such a plan would work for today. Robert Nebolon’s updated Eichler (Plan 438-1), shown below in floor plan and elevation,

is comparable — and he’s already done all the upgrade work! For similar plans see our Ranch House Collection.

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Posted in architectural history, Architectural Styles, Books, contemporary home design, Eichler houses, House plans, layouts, Plan Collections, Uncategorized

Stock Plans Old and New

Posted on January 29, 2010 | 4 Comments

Building Patterns

Plan books  go way back, as the exhibit Stock Options: Houses for Everyone,

which just opened at U. C. Berkeley, vividly demonstrates. Curator and College of Environmental Design Head Librarian Elizabeth Byrne traces the history of the western home through the profusion of pattern books and brochures published by building companies since the nineteenth century.

This is where most of the designs for the houses that shape our cities and towns come from.

The New York firm of Palliser & Palliser was one of the early plan companies. As the economy and the middle class expanded, home building grew apace, especially in the early 20th century, when

bungalows, promoted by builders and magazines alike, took the country by storm and became identified with California and the good life. Truly the model T of home design in that era, the bungalow — like the automobile — overran towns like Pasadena, California, where there’s even a neighborhood

called “Bungalow Heaven.” And by the way, garage plans suddenly became important. The pent-up demand for housing produced by the Depression and then World War II resulted in a huge building boom at mid century

when plan books flooded the market. For example,  prominent Los Angeles architect Paul Williams published two books of plans in 1945 and 1946.  Plans like “The Ulster” shown below, with its efficient central courtyard arrangement

appeared in The Book of Small Houses, also in 1946. (The books themselves are shown in a photo at the top of this post). Ranch houses became the post-war equivalent of the bungalow, only more open to the yard, as this Cliff May plan from Sunset Western Ranch Houses of 1946

shows. Note the headline, which rings even more true today, when scarce land for building makes every inch count. To continue the auto metaphor, you could say the ranch house became the Ford Mustang of home design in the 1960s, especially as it metamorphosed into Eichler tract houses and other contemporary designs. The exhibit brings us down to the present by showing recent prefab work by Michelle Kaufmann and online home plans like our very own Flexahouse. For an  exhaustive scholarly history of the pattern book see Houses From Books: Treatises, Pattern Books, and Catalogs in American Architecture: 1738-1950: A History and Guide, by Daniel D. Reiff (Penn State Press, 2000).

Our Newest Exclusive

I’m excited to present work by our latest exclusive architect, Bud Dietrich. It vividly continues the stock plan story into the future.

This elegant house combines a traditional outline with modern indoor-outdoor living in a crisp orderly plan.

Spatial surprises abound, from the home office/den in its own window bay to the

barrel vault in the living room and the daylit basement

play room opening to a broad stair up to the garden. I like Bud’s design philosophy: “We should create right-sized homes that are gentle on us and our resources. Rather than getting distracted by questions of architectural style let’s use our own wisdom and common sense to create homes that are appropriate for their time and place.” His beautiful multifunctional design shows just how far the stock plan has come.

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Posted in architectural history, Architectural Styles, Books, contemporary home design, Eichler houses, Modern Houses, Uncategorized