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.

I’m always looking for contemporary plans with a sense of history; that is, deft designs for modern living that also have warmth and character. Well, Eureka!  I’m very excited about the regionally-inspired designs by Peter Brachvogel and Stella Carosso for their Perfect Little House Company. These plans are the newest additions to our Exclusive Studio Collection. For example, Plan 479-6,  the Tower Studio,

is actually a 262 square -foot  “micro cottage” with a small kitchen/living/sleeping area and bathroom

over a compact one car garage. I think it’s an ideal home office/retreat. With its simple square shape, tapering shingled walls, pyramid roof, and band of windows at the top it recalls early 20th century forest fire lookouts across the rural West, from Tumac Mountain Lookout

near Washington’s Mt. Ranier (Bob Baldwin photo, above) to

California’s  Gardner Lookout on Mt. Tamalpais (courtesy California State Parks). What could be more fitting for a writer’s retreat than a lookout, anyway –  isn’t that right, Virginia Woolf?  I’ll take it!

Classic early 20th century cottages,  bungalows, and farmhouses — which were themselves usually built from stock plans — are important reference points for Peter and Stella. Their 780 square-foot Willow, Plan 479-9,

wraps a generous porch around a compact 1 bedroom 1.5 bath layout to make the house feel larger than it is. A starter home with architectural character — suitable for an infill lot in an older neighborhood or as a mountain or lakeside cabin — this plan

could easily be expanded at the stairway as the family grows and budgets allow. Upstairs,  windows on all four sides

flood the bedroom and bathroom with daylight. Now compare this modern design to the 1908 Wietzel House from Tukwila, WA, shown below,

(photo courtesy Nickel Bros. House Moving). The old bracketed eaves, L-shaped porch, and big gable (not necessarily the weedy front yard) are signature features of many old cottages and farmhouses.  Add a contemporary looking standing seam metal roof and crisp shingled corners and some color — not to mention a new open floor plan — and there you are: another Perfect Little House.  Or compare the Weitzel house to The Cove, Plan 479-2 –  shown below.

It’s even closer in appearance — as if the older house has simply been remodeled. In the  new plan

the garage is on an alley at the rear.

On a somewhat larger scale, the Perfect Little House Company’s 1,914 square-foot, 3 bedroom 2.5 bath Kingfisher, Plan 479-4

offers larger gathering spaces and cozy nooks for reading and relaxing,

and on the second floor each bedroom is designed as a large window bay

for views across the treetops. Note the free-flowing circulation pattern — you can walk through the bathroom to the closet and back through the master bedroom — which adds a sense of spaciousness.

The trellis, shed dormers, and simple gable (shown above in the rear elevation of Plan 474-4) echo features of early Craftsman style houses, like this example

in Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman magazine (courtesy Arts and Crafts Homes magazine).

Peter and Stella earned their architecture degrees from the University of Michigan and recently founded the Perfect Little House Company as an offshoot of their firm, BC & J Architects. Peter has extensive town planning experience with emphasis on project management and building technology, and teaches architecture at the University of Washington. Their Cottages on the Green at Roche Harbor,

shown here, create a strong sense of place: it’s a new community that feels as though it has always been there. Welcome to our neighborhood, Peter and Stella!

Now that we’re able to offer copies of rare mid-century modern Eichler plans, it’s important to think about how you can update and customize them — or indeed any plan — for today.  For example, adding storage space can be an important consideration. Cabinetry is one way to go:  Seattle’s Kerf Design — an especially inventive cabinetmaker specializing in sleek, vividly hued eco-friendly units — shows how, with everything from

entire walls of different sized open-and-closed compartments, to

sideboards for storage and display in the dining room or hall to

elegant and efficient vanities to

character-building kitchen cabinets, cubbies, and drawers. I like their three-pronged philosophy: honesty of material, which means revealing the beauty of the plywood edge; honesty of construction: keeping things simple with exposed   joinery, asymmetrical arrangements, inset doors and drawers, and notched hand holes; and honesty of function:  making sure there is a reason for every detail. I also love their color palette

as in this thin console, which to my eye is irresistible. And Kerf’s work is all green, using only FSC-certified plywood made with formaldehyde-free glue and finished using a process that eliminates all volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They also have a lower cost do-it-yourself product line that is shipped flat for you to assemble.

Kerf’s work is especially appropriate for modern houses because it embodies similar architectural values –  but it can invigorate almost any interior. Interestingly, Kerf’s founder, Nathan Hartman, just told me that his cabinets are being installed in a remodeled Eichler right now.

Build Your Own Updated Eichler

Thinking beyond storage solutions, here are some other suggestions to get you pondering how to make an Eichler layout — or any house plan for that matter — your own unique design. Take a look at Gregory La Vardera’s  Spirit of Palo Alto,  Plan 431-11, shown below,

in a view of the rear elevation. The layout

is itself an update of  a classic Eichler atrium plan.  In fact it’s very close to our Eichler Plan 470-4, shown below:

Now, see how Greg tweaked the original plan for today. He took the washer and dryer out of the garage and gave them their own laundry room set between garage and kitchen; part of the laundry functions as a mudroom or family entry. And he opened up part of the kitchen to the living room by replacing a  wall and a door with a peninsula/buffet bar, as shown in this interior view:

The idea, according to Greg was to create a balance where “the kitchen is still a discrete room even though it may be open to the living space.” He also added a kitchen island to expand the counter space.

Another major change is in the master suite. Today most people want a feeling of spaciousness in the master bathroom, along with bigger closets. As this cropped view of Greg’s plan shows,

he reconfigured the bathroom to accommodate twin vanities, which give a more luxurious feel without adding a lot of space — in his view “bigger bathrooms = more bathroom cleaning. Yech.”  Similarly he installed closets along the bedroom’s two interior walls instead of using a walk-in closet, which he considers a space hog.

Or consider architect Robert Nebolon’s Palomino Plan 438-1, which is an adaptation of an existing Eichler: his own house. The following view is from the backyard and shows how the family room opens to the rear patio.

A key move was to divide the galley kitchen into two sections –

one for  cooking and eating, one for and storage and desk work — while connecting it to the family room and living area on either side. He also added such eco-friendly elements as low-e glass skylights, a roof that’s composed of 10.5 inch-thick Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) and is designed to support photovoltaic panels, and a fireplace insert instead of a conventional wood-burning fireplace (such units do not require a chimney).

Consider these ideas when you use our Customizer Tool. Then work with our Design Department, run by Chief of Design Nicholas Lee. We’ll help you create your own unique living environment, whether it’s modern or traditional or something in between.

Big news! We have acquired the rights to sell copies of four original mid-century modern Eichler plans — they’re the latest additions to our Exclusive Studio Collection. These rare historical designs were done in the 1960s by architect Claude Oakland for California developer Joe Eichler. It was Eichler who brought award-winning modern architecture to the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s when he hired contemporary architects like Anshen & Allen and Jones & Emmons to design his subdivision houses in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. At Anshen & Allen the principal designer for Eichler homes was  Oakland, who had studied briefly with maverick architect Bruce Goff. In 1960 Eichler contracted directly with Oakland, allowing him to start his own firm. Here’s a photo of Joe and Claude reviewing a set of working drawings:

Joe’s in the glasses. The firm became Oakland and Imada Architects in the 1970s — Kinji Imada had studied with Walter Gropius at Harvard. While most of their work was for Eichler, they also designed redevelopment housing and other projects. Oakland died in 1989; Imada in 2005.

The following image of a typical Oakland living room is emblematic (photograph by Ernie Braun / courtesy Eichler Network Archives, all rights reserved).

All the Eichler characteristics are here:  an exposed post-and-beam one story structure, floor to ceiling walls of glass, and the promise of easy indoor-outdoor living. Furnishings are casual, uncluttered, and contemporary. It remains a powerfully seductive  image of modernity for a mass market.

Our Eichler plans were designed for two Bay Area developments – one in Mill Valley and one in the East Bay Hills. Plan 470-4 is organized around an open-air atrium, a feature that Eichler made famous.

The front door is really the gate beside the garage and opens to a passage leading to the atrium. Straight ahead, the second front door opens to the loggia adjacent to the living room.

A friendly gabled street facade gives no hint of the spatial surprise — the atrium — within.

Plan 470-1 is distinctive in that it contains a so-called “hobby room” behind the garage.

The kitchen is conveniently situated between garage and the entry and can be entered from both sides. A long low overhanging gable running parallel to the street

pulls the facade into an orderly line.

Plan 470-2, for a somewhat narrower lot, puts the entry between

kitchen and garage and includes a large “gallery” that functions like a great room.

The facade combines offset flat and gable roofs in a crisp contemporary composition.

Plan 470-3, below, is an unusual two story Eichler.

The layout is wide and relatively narrow, with a generous entry to accommodate the stairway.

An efficient and graceful circulation plan on the ground floor allows each room to flow into the other without wasteful dead-end spaces.

Upstairs, airiness and outdoor living dominate with front and rear balconies and a two-story living room.

A percentage of the price of each plan supports the Environmental Design Archives at U. C. Berkeley, which preserves the original Oakland/Imada drawings and the records of other significant California architects and landscape architects.

For an architectural history of  Eichler homes see the excellent Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream (Gibbs Smith, 2002)

by Paul Adamson and Marty Arbunich with photography by Ernie Braun. Information and advice about Eichler communities is available from the Eichler Network (www.eichlernetwork.com), which publishes the informative quarterly CA Modern.

We’ll provide ideas and advice for updating these Eichler plans for today’s energy codes and lifestyles in future postings. Also see our Eichler-inspired plans by New Jersey architect Gregory La Vardera, California architect Robert Nebolon, and Alabama designer Daniel E. Bush, which are part of the Exclusive Studio Collection, with more to come.

Planters With Punch. The decorative garden container is evolving: it’s not just about terra cotta anymore. Concrete is coming on as strong in the garden as it is in the kitchen and bathroom, which we saw in the last posting. I’m a fan of the geometric concrete planters by Kornegay, from Phoenix, like their Quartz Series, below:

These hefty faceted containers range from 24 to 43 inches-wide and up to 45 inches-high. The shapes and the integrally colored sunset hues make them dramatic, creating strong focal points on any patio. Or how about Kornegay’s Ribbed Series,

whose repeating circular outlines catch the light, irresistibly drawing the eye.

The company’s newest designs are somewhat more subdued, like the Masaru line,

but are no less elegant and would work well in areas where an understated look is desired.

Or how about a planter that multitasks? Like this one from California’s Obleeek, which is made of lightweight concrete so it’s easier to ship:

It doubles as an end table. And you can have it with a bamboo top,

which adds warmth and style. This example would work well indoors.

Beyond concrete is the rise of  powder-coated aluminum, like these Skittle-colored “Pods” for indoor and outdoor use from Pad Outdoor.

Bet you can’t fill just one!

Fountains of Couth. A recirculating fountain can transform a dry gravel yard into a small oasis, and it doesn’t have to use a lot of water. Here’s an example from sculptor Peter Hanson that animates a small terrace.

It can be enjoyed from inside the house as well as as on the patio itself. Peter’s sculpting is almost invisible — he works with the natural shape of the stone to carve out the basin, making it look as though it was once part of a mountain riverbed. The boulder sits on a bed of pebbles above a pan that collects the overflow for a pump to recirculate.

Peter installed the fountain in Sunset’s Monterey Bay Idea House, where he worked with architect Thomas Bateman Hood and landscape architect Bernard Trainor.

Another example, this time from Stone Forest, known for their carved stone sinks,

sculpts the surface of the stone into delicate ripples, enhancing the fluid effect.

Open Air Cooking. If you can’t stand the heat, then cook outside the kitchen — of course a simple barbecue will suffice, but a generous counter with a built-in grill and perhaps even some built-in seating makes everything better, like this design

by Hood, with landscaping by Trainor. The simple bench seat makes this a true outdoor room. Or here’s a cooking counter and bench covered with milk-chocolate-and-butterscotch-hued Heath Tile

and designed by Cathy Bailey and Robin Petravic, who have brilliantly revived their mid-century modern Heath Ceramics factory — and recently opened an outlet in Los Angeles. (The big news this week is their invitation to the National Design Awards ceremony at The White House. Bravo Cathy and Robin!)

For house plans with grilling porches and other outdoor rooms as part of the layout click on our Outdoor Living and Porchtime collections. Here’s plan 460-3, with the amenities clearly drawn in —

grill in the foreground, planters at right. You just add water.