As of yesterday we've changed our weekly Meta MoCo survey post, we've split it into two parts; Best MoCo Architecture This Week (posted yesterday) and Best MoCo Objects This Week. Best MoCo Architecture This Week will be posted every weekend and Best MoCo Objects This Week will now be posted on Mondays.

+ Kithkin: Some rights reserved video at Designguide.tv, "a group of creative friends who form a platform to show and promote their work. Consumers are given the chance to purchase design instantly, either printing it out on their own printer or taking the file to a listed supplier for production.".

+ Core77's FreeDesigndom 2008 photo gallery, featuring images from the first edition of a new annual design and fashion event in the Netherlands.

+ Core77's London Design Week photo gallery, from the 6th edition of this highly regarded annual event.

+ Ilio's hanging bookwave book/magazine storage from their new 2009 collection. At Dezeen.

+ Viable London's Slat Shelves, "an alternative storage solution constructed entirely using rectangular section FSC pine.". At Dezeen.

+ Doshi Levien's Exhibition at Moroso USA at Cool Hunting, a collection that draws upon Indian culture for inspiration.

+ Patricia Urquiola's Purely Porcelain for Rosenthal at designboom, a new 'landscape' ceramics collection with a "pattern [that] is erratic, sometimes filling the form and at other times escaping".

+ Designband's Birdturf birdhouse design by Emilie Baltz and Ben Bearsch, "inspired by the act of throwing shoes over power lines (which is thought to be how gangs mark their 'turf')". Via design*sponge.

+ The Quooker boiling water tap, a child-proof kitchen appliance that dispenses boiling hot water instantly for tea, pasta, vegetables and more. Via Designlines.

+ The Vroom Solo built-in vacuum appliance, a "quick-cleaning tool for small clean-ups in kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudrooms and other high traffic areas of the home, the Vroom is easily installed directly into the cabinetry of a room either as a stand alone vacuum appliance or as an accessory to a central vacuum system.". Via Appliancist.

+ Debbie Smyth's 'pins and threads' electrical pylons, "each point was plotted and measured to ensure that the pylons were illustrated accurately.". At matandme.

Construction has begun on the new EcoSteel 3030 House model in Maryland. We have recieved the first progress photos back from the Owner, and we have them online to share with you. But first its time to share a little bit more information about the house.



As we described it before, the 3030 House sits on a 30ft x 30ft plus porch footprint, just under 2000 sqft, 3 bedrooms, and a nice open plan living space. It includes a generous kitchen work space and upstairs a large master bathroom, and in the case of this first one a full basement as well. It will fit on narrow in-fill lots or in new compact communities, but its size also makes it a good candidate for a weekend home as well.



The foundation is already in and steel will being rising this week. Lets look at the plans, beneath the fold.



On the ground floor you enter very near to grade level. Here you have a short stair up to the ground floor, and the stair to the basement. To the side is a coat closet and a powder room. Up the short run of steps you land in the middle of the ground floor. To one side is the kitchen island, and the workspace which continues around the corner. To the other side is the dining area. The living room sits towards the front of the house. The open plan allows you to alter the proportion, or location of these rooms. For instance the dining area can be moved closer to the kitchen island and a second seating group added to the living area. If it was me, I'd get a Wilkhahn Confair table and move the dining area on a daily basis! A sheltered terrace is beyond with doors from both the dining side and the kitchen side. In the Maryland house since grade is sloping away this will have a set of steps to grade.



Up the stairs we come to a large landing. On this landing level is a small laundry area and the shared bathroom for bedrooms 2 & 3, At the top of the stairs there is a linen closet between the two bedrooms, and a wide set of doors to the master bedroom. The master has a walk-in closet and a large bathroom with shower and tub. Doors lead out to a balcony that extends the width of the house. Here is a section view where you can see the relationship of these landing levels.



The compact cubic proportion of the house is efficient with materials, and the floor plan is also efficient with space. The open plan makes it flexible, and gives the impression of being larger than its 1800 sqft would suggest. Into that space we have 3 bedrooms - enough for a family, but not too much to bite off for a first home. See the construction progress in the photo browser below. It starts with the demolition of the existing run-down house and shows excavation, and concrete work for the foundations and basement walls.

Technorati Tags: 6030 House, 6040 House, ecosteel, modern design, modern house, prefab house, 3030 House

This is just too fun not to share even though its not about houses or house plans. The Unplggd blog from the Apartment Therapy family of blogs posted a piece about our office in connection to our work on the workalicious blog about office spaces.



Unplggd has a series where they show the workplace of a blogger that they like or follow. We are very pleased that they follow our blog workalcious and asked us to share our workplace with their readers.

The workalicious blog is about, you guessed it, the workplace! We write about office design, office furniture, accessories, about office culture, and we also like to share examples of interesting workplaces.

So check out our office:
Behind the Blog: Workalicious

and check out workalicious

Technorati Tags: modern design

A real treat today. I just received an email from Sara and David Sage, the owners of a modular house I helped them design back in 2004. They have been in the house for about 2 years now, and they are well moved in and at home. They shared many pictures of the house which I'm posting here.



A panoramic view of the Sage home interior.



Sara and David's big goal for this house was to bring it in for $100 a square foot, no small task in the expensive Los Angeles county construction market. But they had a plan, to do copious research on their own, to get the most value out of every consultant they used, and every vendor and contractor they engaged, they resolved to build the house modular, to source their modules from a market with much lower labor cost in Utah, and to complete a good deal of the work themselves as sweat equity. It was their dream to have a modern house and I must say they succeeded on every count. From finding the best materials and vendors, to researching planting material and submitting their own landscape plan for permitting, Sara and David did it all and tracked it in detail in their blog on LiveModern.com. It was a tremendous inspiration and people cheered for them every step of the way. Its hard to know how many other people they inspired to dig their heels in and pursue their own dream of a modern house.



When the work was done, well, almost done, and the smoke had cleared I believe Sara calculated that their cost worked out to about 114$/sqft. This was pretty remarkable at a time when there were literally dozens of prefab house start-ups trying to get traction. The lament was how everything was costing much more than expected, and much more than hoped. In that milieu of dashed hopes Sara and David fought and struggled to make their house happen at a cost that was a pipe dream for the rest of the market.



The house is a reasonable 1400 sqft, 3 bedrooms, with an open kitchen, living/dining, family room space, it really is a wonderful plan that lives much larger than it appears on paper. The modular units in different colors tell the prefab story. You should be able to orient yourself to the photos using the plan. The house site is unusual in that the back yard of the house is really at the side, so the front porch wraps around to the side, and that is the main back yard like space. The rear and other side have proximity to neighbors, more like a house typically has at the sides.
My favorite thing about the design is the three spaces you see in the photos - the kitchen, living/dining, and family room are each small square rooms that overlap at their corners, each space well defined, and very open to one another. It really walks the tightrope between open plan and discrete rooms. David and Sara brought a rough version of this floor plan to the table when they hired me, so they deserve the credit for its design, my role being more to refine, and adapt it to division into modules, and to resolve the plan into the 3d massing and window placement. It was truly a collaboration of the best kind. More photos in the browser below.

Technorati Tags: modern design, modern house, modular house, prefab house

Awhile ago I was driving down one of our main local roads and noticed a house in the middle of it. I didn't remember a house being there and thought that I was seeing a strange mirage. The closer I got, the more real it appeared, until I was forced to slow down and drive around the thing, at which point there was no doubt about its authenticity.

A big truck tractor was towing this entire 1200 square foot house balanced on two huge steel I-beams and a bunch of wheeled dollies. Progress was slow but steady as it inexorably moved toward its next incarnation. Just that morning it had departed its original home where it had been seasonal housing for migrant workers.

The owners of this seeming mirage had searched for just the right orphaned house to adopt as their own, lovingly place it on a new foundation, and refurbish it. Many houses would not be suitable for such a trip; generally only well-built wooden structures can withstand the stress of such a move. This house had all the qualities they were looking for: charm, integrity, and affordability. The entire cost of the house and having it moved was $10,000.

By the time they have it completely fixed up with new plumbing and electric service, an insulated stucco exterior, new energy-efficient windows, a metal roof, a completely rebuilt front porch, all of the interior walls resurfaced, and miscellaneous repairs, they estimate that the total cost of the project will be about $50,000, including the land. Not bad for what in most regards will be as good as new!

Of course new is not what they wanted; they bought this early twentieth century house (it's actual date of construction is unknown) precisely because of its special vintage quality. It reminds one of the owners of the house his grandmother lived in, with 9 foot ceilings, three smallish bedrooms, tongue and grooved fir flooring, cast-iron radiators, built-in cabinets, drawers and even ironing board, and the intangible quality of a by-gone era. They plan to retain the original floor plan intact, only altering a walk-in closet to become the mechanical room and turning a room off the kitchen into a dining space.

The house made the entire trip with just a few places where the plaster cracked in one corner, which is easily repaired. This is one very solidly-built house, made from the sort of fir that no longer can be bought. There was only one place under the kitchen sink that had suffered leak-induced rot over many years; everything else is as straight and true as any carpenter would want.

Another late twentieth century vintage home of about 800 square feet came from property leased from the Federal government and the house needed to be moved. With local help, the buyer of this little home added an additional room onto the original to comply with the homeowners' association square foot minimum. She has thoroughly enjoyed the process of remaking this simple cabin into her charming home, imbued with the wonderful quirky qualities that spring from her fanciful mind.

Once a house is moved it must comply with current plumbing and electrical codes, so these elements were completely redone. Most of the windows were replaced with second hand units that gave her just the views that she wanted. The exterior was resurfaced with rough-sawn lap siding and a new metal roof was installed. The original interior plastic paneling was replaced with sheetrock, and decorated with lots of natural wood trim. The whole feeling of the place is one of lovingly crafted touches wherever the eye lands. The new owner says, “I would much rather live in something recycled than buying something brand new which has no character. I let this house come together…it just evolved!”

Creating new life for old or abandoned houses has got be one of the most sustainable ways of making habitation. This is the ultimate form of recycling, where most of the basic components of a house are utilized intact instead of being tossed into a landfill or burned. There is a tremendous savings in the embodied energy of the house (in both materials and labor), so that all that needs to be done is to repair and polish the original dwelling to create a whole new life for it. Hoorah for these people who have the vision and willingness to take on these projects!

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MAJORCA - "Modern lifestyle studio in SE Mallorca (Majorca). Superb daylight. Open plan. Internal and external studio spaces. Props and lighting."

I just wanted to take a minute to share a little furniture shopping experience I had this week. I have two small children, Owen (5) and Parker Jane (3). P.J is way overdue on getting out of her crib, and Owen needs a bed frame to spruce up his room. We've been putting off a lot of other furniture purchases in order to save up and buy some nice beds for the kids. The time had finally come.

We wanted something modern and cool, and a little more substantial than a regular "kids bed." There are a lot of neat beds on the market but the modern offerings tend to be really pricey and are too often the kind of thing that will look silly in your kids' rooms by the time they're ten. My wife and I finally settled on a pair of these great-looking platform beds from TrueModern. They cost more than we wanted to pay, but were priced reasonably compared to a lot of other modern offerings on the market (many not as nice), and I think they look great, look well made, and will last the kids a long while.



Now, you can get these from a lot of places but for whatever reason we ordered ours from Design Public. I'd never bought anything from them before, but I'm one of those people who shops online a lot and it's not a really big deal for me to try a place completely new, even for a big purchase - throw caution to the wind, reckless abandon, all that jazz. I really don't recall why I picked them for my order.

So anyway, the beds get ordered, it takes about two weeks for them to ship, and then I get the call from the freight company who will deliver them. Long story short, there is a problem, possibly some confusion, and I am concerned about it. The problem was the freight company, not Design Public or TrueModern, but rather than tackle it solo I decide to call Design Public for help.

I must say, I was absolutely impressed by the extremely friendly and helpful response. I won't get into the details, but I thought that the Design Public staff went above and beyond the call of duty in helping me. I spoke to Jonathan, who was unfailingly courteous and diligent in his follow-up on my issue. I felt like they really cared, that I was valued as a customer, and that Design Public genuinely wanted to take care of me. It was really nice!

Like I said, I shop online a lot without giving it much thought. And I guess I've learned not to expect too much. But really, I thought Design Public were wonderful to deal with. If you want some really cool modern stuff, check out their site. It is loaded with amazing furniture, accessories, lighting, gifts, etc. - you name it. Very nice. It's a small company that's really living up to its mission. I was totally impressed.

Bravo and thanks!

Image credit - Design Public site