Category Archives: Porches

New Patio Furniture and Home Plans

Posted on May 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

Designed for Outdoor Living

Memorial Day marks the official start of life outdoors – another form of ”rapture” for many, including me – so here are a few patio furniture suggestions, prompted in part by my friend industrial designer Eric Pfeiffer of Pfeiffer Lab, who has just debuted an outdoor version of his famous bent plywood Mag Table. It’s the Metal Mag 3, made of steel in a brilliant orange and produced in collaboration with Offi & Company and Loll Design. With his steel Fire Ring that doubles as a coffee table with a resin-based top when not burning wood  – also produced in collaboration with Loll Designs and  also new — the outdoor room is definitely warming up. Other designs that caught my eye after a quick Web search include the elegant Valencia Teak Chair from Viva Terra, which is inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s famous Barcelona Chair (the name is clever, referring to another Spanish coastal city). Using wood that’s sustainably grown and harvested, the chair deconstructs to fold flat for storage. For the recycler who can’t stop dribbling — wait for it — what about this coffee table from Uncommon Goods that uses part of a gym floor for its top. Worth a free throw at least! If you are a do-it-yourselfer, why not bring back the classic picnic table-and-bench idea using reclaimed wood painted white to give a fresh contemporary twist (this example designed and built by Houseplans’ own Stephen Williamson). Paired with white-painted antique metal chairs the effect is summery and sophisticated. Classics are definitely in this year — at ICFF in New York last week (the International Contemporary Furniture Fair) the Editors’ Award in the Outdoor Furniture category went to an Eames outdoor furniture design from 1958 — for the Miller house in Columbus, Indiana by architect Eero Saarinen – retooled with new materials for today (image courtesy theoutdoorstylist.com). The chair is produced by longtime Eames manufacturer Herman Miller. 

New Home Plans that Celebrate the Outdoors

The latest additions to the www.houseplans.com inventory include a range of designs that deftly incorporate outdoor living. Plan 484-5 is a small two- bedroom house organized around what’s called a “Chill Deck,” which is really the outdoor living room.

  Plan 519-1(below) is a small cabin designed for a sloping site and

includes a view deck off the living area and kitchen. 

Similarly the focal point for Plan 449-2 is a seductive pool patio, complete with waterfalls. Time for a dip!

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Posted in Architectural Innovation, Cabins, contemporary home design, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Furniture, Home Products, House plans, layouts, modern architecture, Modern Houses, Outdoor Living, Patio Living, Porches, Recycled products, Uncategorized

Architects’ Own Houses and Regional Ideas

Posted on April 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

Homework for Professionals

What houses do designers design for themselves? A fascinating exhibition at the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley titled “All Their Own” begins to answer this question by showcasing architects’ and landscape architects’ own homes in drawings and other documents. All the work on display is drawn from the extensive collections of the Environmental Design Archives. Here is  Earl Nisbet’s compelling rendering of a romantic modern stone and glass mountain cabin. He studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and you can see this in the strongly geometric house form, the characteristic fine-line drawing style, and the nature-derived color palette with the patch below the window wall that’s highlighted a favorite Wrightian shade of orange-red. This sort of presentation rendering is unusual because there is no need to”sell the client” when you are designing your own house. The preliminary sketch by William Wurster (one of the founders of the College) for his U-shaped weekend house at Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, seems almost child-like: just a bare outline, a few scribbled dimensions and notations — like “SAND” for the courtyard. The house he actually built wasn’t very different — a kind of stable for people, with concrete floors, each bedroom opening directly to the sand courtyard though Dutch doors, and a main living/dining/cooking space — the very essence of simplicity. So in a way, the minimal drawing expressed the esthetic perfectly.

Often a designer’s own house becomes a kind of advertising for her or his work. This was especially true for folks like Frank Lloyd Wright, who never stopped adding to or tinkering with Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona; or ranch house popularizer Cliff May who took things to an extreme by designing five houses for himself and his family over the course of his career.

Some of the plans in the CED exhibit vividly show the designer’s mind at work. Here’s the first house that Jerry Veverka (who has a plan in our Exclusive Studio) designed for himself on a steep leftover lot in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Jerry documented his thought process. His notes on the yellow graph paper indicate he tried out several different schemes to analyze flat roofs vs. gables, and a central vs. an off-center garage. The upper 3-D drawing shows a later, more fully worked out elevation. See how the “full height sun porch” from the yellow trace has morphed into the big window on the colored sketch and how he has settled on gable roofs and an off-center garage. The cutaway view below shows how he has conceived of the house as a loft with the master bedroom overlooking the main living space so both rooms can share the big window wall. See the stair-stepping fireplace and the broad steps leading down to the living area from the dining space: in fact the drawing shows how the whole design is about taking advantage of stair forms and large windows to make such a steep site habitable: the architectural imagination at work!

Another image captured my attention –  a 3-D drawing by Charles Moore for his own house in Orinda. This image shows the concept: treat the small house as a series of four-poster pavilions under one roof, like nested boxes. The bigger four-poster was for living; the smaller for sleeping and bathing. The idea probably came from Moore’s time as a teaching assistant for Louis Kahn — Kahn’s Trenton Bathhouse, shown below in a model (courtesy Wikipedia and not in the CED exhibition) is a famous example of pavilion design. Moore made the idea his own by miniaturizing it and packing everything into a single volume: a sort of architectural wardrobe.

One of the most revealing items in the CED exhibit is this letter from Moore to landscape architect Lawrence Halprin while both were working on the plans for The Sea Ranch community on California’s North Coast. Note the hourly rate in 1965 that Moore charges for his own time: $4! So…What will you have: a decaf latte or the services of an eminent architect for an hour?! (I guess coffee then must have been about a nickel a cup…) Though we cannot match that rate at Houseplans.com we can be very reasonable; and we even offer the plans for historic Sea Ranch Cottages designed by Charles Moore’s partner Bill Turnbull. Hold the java and hire us!

Be Regional

One of my periodic rants is about regionalism in design — that is, the need for a connection to a place, culture, or time. Though I am a fan of Modernism in all its variations I also want to see a little regional relationship to help me know where I am. That’s partly why I’m so enamored of porches you can really live on — they allow outdoor living on balmy days and shelter from the weather on stormy days; they respond to the climate. Think of the houses along the Florida Panhandle, for example, like our Plan 443-10, with its expressive screen porches and sun shades over the windows. The outdoor spaces are designed to catch the breezes in a humid climate. To me it evokes a Florida style of building, while the interior layout is open and contemporary. Regionalism also has to do with materials — building traditions grew up around whatever materials were easiest to come by: bricks or concrete block in some places, wood in others. One of the exciting things about observing how home design is evolving is to see the ways modern and regional ideas can be combined. Look for more reporting on this topic. Welcome spring!

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Posted in architectural history, Architectural Innovation, Architectural Styles, contemporary home design, House plans, layouts, mid-century modern homes, modern architecture, Modern Houses, Porches, Regional design, Uncategorized

New Houses in Older Neighborhoods

Posted on February 1, 2011 | 5 Comments

Urban Farmhouse and Roman Villa

While at the International Builder Show in Orlando I toured two new demonstration homes that were built in established neighborhoods. One, designed by architect Ed Binkley for Southern Traditions Development as Green Builder Media’s Vision House,

sits on a long narrow lot not far from downtown. I think it expressed a green sensibility very well in the use of eco-friendly materials like fiber cement siding and ICF construction (insulating concrete forms using Arxx blocks, example below: reinforcing bars are added, then concrete).

However, energy-efficient materials alone do not make a house green. The key for me is how this design thoughtfully maximizes the tight infill site (house photo above by Andy Frame courtesy Green Builder magazine) and deftly incorporates outdoor space. It does an excellent job.

With its generous double decker front porch facing the street

and the semi-detached rear garage/studio shaping a small courtyard, it allows  the house to live larger than it is. The welcoming and usable front stoop, simple gable profile, and backyard garage are all elements found in New Urbanist communities like Seaside, Florida or I’on, South Carolina — as well as the late 19th and early 20th century neighborhoods that New Urbanists emulate.

The innovative twist here is the lanai connecting house and garage:  it’s a private summer living room and barbecue center. The roof deck is accessible from the upstairs master suite.  The lanai opens to the family room beside the handsome island kitchen (Andy Frame photo, below). Ed Binkley calls his design an “urban farmhouse,” and that seems an apt description. Various details play up the rustic theme,

such as railings fabricated from hog wire fencing (I also like the bright, well-situated and multi-functional laundry/study just off the stairway) and

a trough sink for the kids’ bathroom (Interior design by Patricia Gaylor).

This house reminded me of designs in our inventory that would also work well on in-fill sites, like Plan 443-9,

which includes a carport beside the front porch or Plan 464-1 — suitable for a corner lot with wrap-around verandas. The other Orlando demonstration house told a very different story. Part of a long running program called The New American Home, it’s all about showing the latest products to builders. This year, to ensure completion in a tough economic climate, the organizers found willing clients (most demonstration houses are built before finding a buyer). The very large classically-inspired house was built on two lots near a lake — also not far from downtown Orlando.

A real estate columnist friend remarked, as we stepped off the media bus: “It looks like Embassy Row.” To my mind it recalls major classical monuments,

like the New Pavilion by Karl Friedrich Schinkel at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin of 1824 (shown above) or possibly the Huntington Library in Pasadena. The designer of the New American Home is classically trained  portrait artist and polymath Michael Curtis, who knows a lot about Greek and Roman precedents in architecture and sculpture and offers a range of scholarly American classic home designs as part of our Exclusive Studio, like Union Springs 492-4,

with its stately portico.

The New American Home was designed to reflect the client’s requirements (for health reasons all the building materials had to be hypoallergenic; hence the concrete and stone for walls and columns) as well as to showcase builder products — it’s not meant as an exemplar for future home designs, despite its name. So I overlooked the size and scale and concentrated on the very carefully articulated and beautiful architectural details, like the columns

near the rear patio, with their elegant and  accurate composite capitals; or the outdoor kitchen nearby,

with rustic stone as the backdrop, and used as sheathing for the base of the serving island. Now you might note the two flat screens — perhaps a case of product placement acceding to the law of symmetry — not necessary but certainly enthusiastic. You can watch the Super Bowl while I channel surf.

In any case the grand rooms, high ceilings, and pool courtyard (photo by James Wilson via Residential Architect) were fun to experience — like touring a very well preserved Roman villa, or was it the eastern wing of the Malibu Getty Museum. For complete design and supplier credits see the TNAH website.

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Posted in architectural history, Architectural Innovation, Architectural Styles, Building Materials, Classical houses, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Green Design, House plans, layouts, Idea Houses, Kitchen and Bath, Porches, Uncategorized

Martha Stewart and the 2011 Home Builder Show

Posted on January 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

With apologies to Charles Dickens, the International Home Builders Show (IBS)  in Orlando last week was the worst of times and the best of times. Worst because of an economy that meant fewer exhibits and lower attendance and snowstorms in the southeast that closed airports and highways. Best because the smaller  size — only one vast convention hall

and a thousand exhibits to cover — made it easier to see everything and find time for several especially interesting show homes, like the net zero energy concept home produced by KB Home and Martha Stewart. The 2,667 square-foot, 3 bedroom, 2  bath subdivision house is slated to sell for $380,000. As you would expect from these folks, it’s full of great ideas and products, from the invisible glass-front, gas living room fireplace (Montebello by Lennox)

under the elegant round mirror that brings the entire room into focus (showing the media tour in progress), to the kitchen at the opposite end,

where cabinets, open shelves, and cubbies by Merillat allow for multiple storage and display options to make the rear wall both functional and visually compelling. The Dupont Zodiaq-topped island, 7 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6 inches,

includes a wide, deep Kohler apron-front farmhouse sink, a convenient “drop-in” stainless steel compost canister by Blanco (want it!) instead of a disposal, pull-out recycle bins (to right of sink, not visible here),

and ample room for books. Nearby is the pantry,

accessible through glass-fronted double doors beside the microwave and wine storage. A built-in desk to the right of the pantry has space for a laptop.

Ten foot-tall sliding glass panels by Windoor open the kitchen/dining area to a spacious lanai,

with its own fireplace,

allowing the house to expand for entertaining in good weather.

At the media conference I asked Martha Stewart what her greatest challenge was in shaping the interior. She said it was “to keep it gracious, with good proportions, and high 9 foot 4-inch ceilings.” I would elaborate  that her team’s simple but sophisticated decisions — such as adding chest-high, white-painted horizontal wainscoting, setting windows low in the wall, using stone-like ceramic tile floor tiles and a refined pastel color palette (with AkzoNobel’s  Martha Stewart low VOC paint) throughout — made this house feel custom-designed.

Martha also said she was excited at the opportunity to make a production home so green that it uses less power than it produces — thanks in part to photovoltaic roof tiles (by SunPower)

and a solar water heating system (from Velux).

My only reservation about the house was with the exterior — I think the important lessons about simplicity and strong indoor-outdoor connection could have been expressed on the street front. But overall it’s an exciting project that shows how to be green, gracious, and give good value. A full description is at Builder Magazine Online; and a  virtual tour is at Builder Concept Home 2011. More idea houses and new product sightings from the Home Builder Show will be in my next post — so stay tuned.

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Posted in Appliances and Fixtures, Building Materials, Cabinetry, Decorating Ideas, Design Ideas and Inspiration, Green Design, Home Products, Idea Houses, Kitchen and Bath, Porches, Uncategorized

Desk Design, Jefferson, and Siting Help from Don Lyndon

Posted on January 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

Looking In and Looking Out

I should have taken a “Before” photo of my desk and the surrounding area, with its sea of loose manila file folders crashing against reefs of brochures, books, magazines, and rolls of drawings. The new year seemed a good time to clean up my act: now the tide of paper has receded, if only briefly,  and the desk is visible again. So work surfaces and paper storage are on my mind, like the handsome bent bamboo  K Work Station by the innovative design firm MisoSoup:

It creates a serenely efficient corner office, though I would need space for conventional non-computer files (not to mention a waste basket).  Older desks often have more storage compartments — for a more paper-dependent age no doubt — such as this stair-stepping antique from the 1920s by designer Paul Frankl (image courtesy the very informative interior design resource Design2Share).

It takes inspiration from the signature silhouettes of New York’s Art Deco skyscrapers and is all about storage, as if Rockefeller Center were really one big filing cabinet above an ice skating rink  — which come to think of it, it is (I love those morphing metaphors!). The simplest way to deal with clutter is not to organize it but to hide it, which is what the rolltop desk does so well. The famous example by George Nelson for Herman Miller from 1964

simply pulls a tambour door across the low work surface, like a wooden blanket (image courtesy1stdibs.com and Gueridon). But I’m afraid if it were my desk the cover would never completely close. Then again some designers appear to be “embracing the clutter,” as this example does,

with built-in bins for rounding everything up (I found this image on Dornob, a website full of fascinating design and furniture ideas). Room and Board’s Eames File Drawer Desk

remains a classic and would meet some of my needs. But I think my favorite example of a great desk is the one Thomas Jefferson designed in 1776 for use while traveling between Monticello and Philadelphia:

(both images courtesy The Smithsonian). This is the original lap top/I-Pad for writing occasional notes and the odd Declaration of Independence. In the end all you really need is a wide flat surface, good lighting, storage drawers, and inspiration.

The first weeks of the year are also a good time to look outward and for me that means thinking about siting. I asked the eminent architect Donlyn Lyndon — one of the designers of Sea Ranch (and author of the definitive book about it),  co-author with Charles Moore and Gerald Allen of the influential The Place of Houses

and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at U. C. Berkeley — for advice to share with prospective house plan purchasers. Here’s what he very eloquently wrote for me: “Siting is about Making Places. Siting is about making connections — to the ground; to the sky; to neighbors; to existing vegetation; to water and its flows, both natural and channeled; to the sun and the wind; to transportation. Siting is making the most of your surroundings; finding the best places to be for various activities, inside and out.”

He wants you to think creatively about the site even before you start looking for a house plan. He continues: “The first step is to examine your site, imagine being in it in various ways and at differing times of day and season. Make careful note of levels and change/slope of the ground. Get a sense of its dimensions by positioning yourself in ways that you expect to interact with people and measuring the distances.” I would add that a way to start thinking about such connections would be to find a few plans that already show some sort of site relationship,

the way Ross Anderson’s Ranch House Plan 433-2 wraps around a courtyard;  or the way Peter Brachvogel and Stella Carosso’s Whitehall Plan 479-8

uses porches and dormers to capture views; or the way Daniel E. Bush’s Modern Living Plan 460-3

opens to a variety of outdoor spaces.

Donlyn sums up his recipe for siting success: ” Choose a house plan not just on what looks good to you, but on what plan will do three things: Make rooms in the right places on the site; Make best advantage of your site and its views, outlooks/connections; Make sense with your neighbor/neighborhood, add value to the place. Then start imagining how that plan can best fit on the site, given the findings above. Make several different arrangements of the house on the land and imagine what might eventually be added to the site.”  (You can find more detailed analysis of siting principles in his Place of Houses book.) I think Donlyn must have been using that Jefferson desk — we should hold his truths to be self-evident.

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