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.

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.

With the many boxes of architecture books in our basement you could say that they’re helping to support our house, and with all the architecture books on our shelves you could also say that they’re helping to weigh it down. But at least it’s balanced — though some folks in my family could say we have reached a tipping point, literally. In any case, the obsession must be fed, so here’s a quick round-up of design books that have recently caught my eye — good for last minute gifts or your first reading list of the new year.

In the decades following World War II, a number of small communities across the country built modern, architect-designed houses, such as Snake Hill in Belmont, Massachusetts, and Six Moon Hill at Lexington in the same state. Living Modern, by Waverly Lowell (William Stout, publisher), chronicles the planning and building of such an enclave, called Greenwood Common, in the Berkeley Hills above the University of California campus in 1952.

It was developed by architect William Wurster, dean of Berkeley’s architecture school and later founder of the College of Environmental Design. His idea was to create a modern but regionally responsive, outdoor- and community-oriented neighborhood of houses by a diverse array of contemporary architects. (Full disclosure:  Wurster bought the land from my grandmother, who was very interested in modern architecture. My father used to tell us children about playing softball on what his family called “The Front Lot,” where eight houses now stand.) Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin designed the setting

including the common green facing a view of the Bay, and several of the individual gardens many years before he became famous for his city parks and water gardens around the country. The book vividly describes how clients and architects worked together to create very progressive living environments and includes conceptual sketches like this series by architect Donald Olsen,

which shows his interest in International Style geometries.

Casa Del Herrero, by Robert Sweeney (Rizzoli, publisher) is the story of a meticulously preserved Spanish Colonial Revival style house in Santa Barbara from the 1920s.

The name means house of the blacksmith and the edifice was built as the winter home for the family of St. Louis industrialist George Steedman, who enjoyed such hobbies as metal working (hence the name), wood working, and wine making.  For Steedman, according to Sweeney, “the shop was the holy land.” And his shop is indeed a marvel: the large room is densely packed and highly organized, with a vast array of tools occupying every surface.

He must have been a challenging client because he was constantly tinkering with every detail, from handrails to glassware. Spanish tile and wrought iron embellish every room.  You can visit the house by contacting the Casa Del Herrero Foundation.

Energy Free Homes for a Small Planet by Ann Edminster (Green Building Press) is an essential reference for anyone planning to build a home that uses as little energy as possible.

The author is an architect who helped develop our national green standards. She  explains what a net zero energy home is and shows how to develop your own plan for building such a house. The chapters address her concept of integrated design and how to minimize the energy your house needs, how to minimize the energy the house’s occupants need, and explain the options for appliances and fixtures. It’s a comprehensive guide to the greenest green.

What do architects read? I am always interested in this question because I want to know where architects get their design ideas. Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books by Jo Steffens (Yale University Press) looks at the book collections of ten contemporary New York-area architects.

Interviews with each architect explains what they read, and what their top ten books are. Robert Venturi’s seminal Complexity & Contradition in Modern Architecture — a book published in 1966 that championed the role of ambiguity in architectural form — is on several lists. There’s a voyeuristic aspect to the photos of sample shelves from each library…I confess I’m always looking for a copy of my book Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House! (must be the egg nog from our holiday party just now finished: it’s a truth serum). Billie Tsien and Tod Williams talk about their love of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica both for its lucid writing and for its tactile leather binding. Most of these libraries are organized by subject or architect so the juxtapositions aren’t unusual. But it’s an intriguing idea for a book and just makes me want to know more about the sources of architectural imagination.

These volumes can be found at the usual Internet sources but bookstores that specialize in design are especially rewarding places to browse, including Mrs. Dalloways Literary & Garden Arts, Builders Booksource, and William Stout Architectural Books. Happy reading and Happy holidays.

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).

I met up with a developer friend at the Urban Land Institute’s Fall Meeting and Expo in San Francisco this week (more about this event in a later post), and he said he was looking for what he called “Micro Cottages.” It made me think about plans that might start small and grow over time when circumstances and budgets allow — which seems a practical approach to home building in the current economy. So of course I looked through our inventory and created a collection of plans that are 1,000 square feet and under. For example, Plan 466-1

shown here, is 400 square feet

and is basically just one and a half rooms: a studio with a kitchen alcove and an enclosed bathroom. The front covered patio is an outdoor room for use in good weather. I can see adding onto this plan in various ways, such as turning the patio into an entry hall with added bedrooms and bathrooms opening off it.

Or take one of Bill Turnbull’s Sea Ranch Cottages (mentioned in an earlier posting), like Plan 447-1,

somewhat grander at 650 square feet. Again, the porch is an important expander in good weather.

A simple way to enlarge this plan would be to add more bedrooms and bathrooms off the living room and turn part of the front porch into a glazed hallway leading to them. Then the main living space could take over the original sleeping area.

Plan 471-1, below, is a 500 square-foot  module.

Designers Sarah Ascolese and Misty Weaver designed it to be a kind of multiplier.

Add up (literally!) — to 1,000 square feet — and you have two stacked modules, like Plan 471-3:

with sleeping area now on the second floor. Or expand to the side as in Plan 471-2

and you have 1,000 square feet in a horizontal configuration. The space between could be glazed to become an entrance hall. For more “Start Small” home ideas see our Micro Cottage Collection. Each could grow up to be a larger home someday.