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’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!

I am always struck by how important frames are, visually and virtually, in helping us see. Take this very simple vignette by artist Spy Emerson that caught my eye recently at Flora Grubb, an exceptional garden design nursery in San Francisco.

The wood box — no bottom, just sides — focuses the eye on the blue bottles and the small plants, creating a vivid still life. The rough wood and the way the plants extend beyond the frame reinforce the naturalness of the arrangement. So sometimes thinking inside the box is more important. Flora Grubb is a talented designer/entrepreneur whose sense of composition is especially strong. She is most famous for her dramatic vertical succulent gardens — framed in sturdy boxes like this one

on the patio of her plant gallery. Each of those tiny plants comprising the mosaic grows out of a small soil niche that’s set on a slight diagonal. The frame literally holds everything together while the strong outline contrasting with the busy field of green is visually compelling in its own right. The surprising vertical placement is the clincher, making us look again — and again.

All of this rumination is by way of considering how we design or reinvent the boxes we inhabit and call home. The shape and character of the frame — walls and windows, their depth, height, materiality, proportion, and placement — are the keys to good design. One frame that has always appealed to me is the barn door. I like it because it’s a space saver (no extra feet required for the door swing — I like pocket doors too for the same reason), and it makes the opening simple and dramatic

as in this marvelous house by Turnbull Griffin Haesloop Architects (photo courtesy the architects) where one outside wall opens through a series of elegant contemporary glass barn doors. Here the door becomes a feature in its own right and also disappears as one slides across the other.

It’s a form of architectural magic.  Barn doors always seem to harbor an element of surprise when they’re used indoors, as in this more rustic example  by Johnston Architects of Seattle.

Here they open to reveal the bedroom, as if it’s on stage (photo courtesy Sunset Magazine). In many cases there are latent or obvious references

to real barns with elements like exposed diagonal bracing and expressive hardware. The example above is by Hutker Architects of Falmouth and Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts (photo by Brian Vanden Brink). The rustic aspect can become a signature feature and is used to dramatic effect by Faulkner Architects of Truckee, California

and seems especially appropriate for a rugged ski country home (photo courtesy Sunset Magazine). There are almost as many examples of sliding barn doors as conventional swing types because almost any solid door can be hung on barn door hardware.

Hardware choices include spoked flat track

(shown above), heftier barn-evocative type

as in this U-shape example, and elaborate stainless steel systems

as shown here. All three tracks are from Barndoor Hardware.com.

Though a very simple architectural element, the barn door — like the box frame — can become a defining feature.

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.