Dwell on Design modern home tours begin Saturday

Tickets are still available for Dwell on Design modern home tours this weekend, in advance of the annual design exhibition June 22 to 24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The self-guided East Side Modern Home Tour this Saturday includes Simon Storey's 960-square-foot Eel's Nest, shown above and featured by L.A. at Home earlier this year, and designer-developer Jerome Pelayo's sustainable Sunia Home, both in Echo Park. Farther east, the tour will include OKB Architecture + Construction's colorful addition in Pasadena, shown at right, as well as a Buff, Straub and Hensman home in San Marino and Fer Studio's modern update of a 1980s La Cañada Flintridge residence, which we featured back in 2009. 

A Prefab Plus Home Tour on Sunday will highlight a pair of prefabricated town houses designed by Whitney Sanders, Linda Taalman's Back Yard Plug-in Module, a hybrid prefabricated structure using Blue Sky Building Systems in Santa Monica, a Ray Kappe-designed LivingHome in Santa Monica and a Venice residence by Marmol Radziner Prefab. (A West Side Home Tour on June 24 is sold out.). Homes will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tickets are $85 per tour.

Schoolyard trailers turned into modular homes

When it comes to energy efficiency, most homeowners focus on heating, cooling and lighting. But it may take as long as 15 years for a home's energy usage to match the amount of energy embedded in a home's construction.

This was the concept that a West Hills architecture firm embraced with research+upcycle, a modular home company that intends to reuse classroom trailers, transforming them into low-cost but high-style living space.

"We really need to rethink the way that we build homes," said Chase Anderson, who founded the company last year with his father, Robert, an architect and general contractor, and his stepmother, Petra, an interior designer. "With all the changes in the housing market and economy over the last several years, high-end, custom-built homes aren't selling." They started looking at different structures that would be inexpensive to transform into something chic.

Petite prefab: Six designs for a backyard office

Small prefab structures are near-instant backyard work spaces, a corner office that feels separate from home but still provides a commute measured in steps instead of miles.  We put together a photo gallery detailing six options, including the KitHaus modernist mini-manse, the Verana assemble-it-yourself studio from Summerwood and British OfficePod trying to make its way to a garden near you. For details on concept, materials and prices, keep reading ...

PHOTO GALLERY: Small prefabs as backyard offices

 

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Photo credits, clockwise from top left: OfficePod, Modern-Shed, Summerwood, Nicolas O.S. Marques for Kithaus, G-Pod, Studio Shed

 

Coming soon to California: the prefab G-Pod

The world of prefab has a new entrant with G-Pod, a prefab sphere designed as a living or entertainment space for backyard gardens. The G-Pod is designed and produced by Farmers Cottage Lamps in Birmingham, England, and it premiered at the Chelsea Flower Show in Britain last year. For the U.S. market, the G-Pod will be transported by the UK firm Leisure Shelters and distributed through Mars Lab in Redondo Beach beginning in late May.

There are four types of G-Pod. The $14,000 Lounger and Seater models are 7.5 feet in diameter. They rotate, so the entrance can be shifted to capture sun, shade or wind. The waterproof interior contains seating for at least six and a height-adjustable table. The furniture can be flattened into a full circle and covered with the cushions to make a bed. A snap-on cover closes the entrance.

The $30,000 Diner and Summer House models are 10 feet in diameter and stationary. They can be wired for electricity and equipped with solar panels. The Diner and Summer House seats up to 14 people and is made in custom colors.

All four models are made from laminated pine with UV-protected, polycarbonate tinted windows. Assembly is required and is not included in the price.

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photos, from top: G-Pod Seater and G-Pod Summer House. Credit: Leisure Shelters

LivingHomes C6 house and the promise of affordable prefab

The concept is simple: Make a modern, prefabricated home with the lowest environmental impact -- and price -- possible. It's called the C6, and it's premiering in two locations this week: Palm Springs, where it is part of a Modernism Week prefab showcase open through Feb. 26, and the TED Conference in Long Beach running through March 2.

Starting at $179,000, the C6 prefab from Santa Monica-based LivingHomes is half the price of the company's other models. The C6 is touted as the first production home designed to achieve LEED platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, and it's the first to incorporate a range of products certified by Cradle to Cradle, the environmental rating program founded by sustainability gurus William McDonough and Michael Braungart. The cost, $145 per square foot, includes 34 tons of carbon offsets. (That's the main living area of the Palm Springs installation pictured above, photographed earlier this week while workers were still staging it for tours.)

PHOTO GALLERY: LivingHomes' C6 prefab house

“When we started in 2006, we wanted to bring homes to a class of consumers who value design, health and sustainability in the products they buy,” said LivingHomes chief executive Steve Glenn, citing Prius-driving, Whole Foods-shopping, iPhone-wielding, Patagonia-wearing consumers as his target. “Production builders haven't historically targeted those people. LivingHomes does.”

Function, style merge in emergency mobile homes at Little Tokyo Design Week

The victims of Hurricane Katrina would have benefited from the mobile emergency housing unit on display during Little Tokyo Design Week. Called the EDV-01, the self-contained mobile home not only provides  shelter but generates its own electricity and water for two adults for an entire month.

The stainless steel container is 18 feet long, 6 feet wide and 6 feet tall. With the flip of a switch, a hydraulic pump raises the walls to form a second floor with fold-away beds and an office space. The ground floor contains a shower and bio-toilet, as well as a kitchen that cooks food with induction heating.

                                                           Equipped with a rooftop solar system and a fuel cell to generate power that's stored in lithium-ion batteries, the emergency house can also pluck enough moisture from the air to collect about 5 gallons of drinkable water per day.

"We are extremely proud to ... [show] how design can be used to create function in adverse emergency situations which can be utilized in an efficient and self-contained unit," said Hitoshi Abe, chair of Little Tokyo Design Week and director of the UCLA Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies and UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Designed by the Japanese firm Daiwa House, the EDV-01 is making its U.S. debut during Little Tokyo Design Week. It's on display in the plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A. through Sunday.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: EDV-01. Credit: Daiwa House

Mountain View Mobile Home Park goes green with Marmol Radziner Prefab

Marmol Radziner Prefab, the offshoot of the L.A. architectural firm, is best known for high-end modular homes, some of which cost upward of $2 million.

But its latest project takes a different tack. Marrying the often disparate concepts of "green" and "affordable," Marmol Radziner has partnered with Golden West Homes and the city of Santa Monica to install 20 prefab units in the Mountain View Mobile Home Park.

The units range from 400 to 1,000 square feet and can incorporate green features such as rooftop solar panels, solar hot-water heaters and Energy Star appliances, as well as Solatube and compact fluorescent lighting, rain barrels, compost bins and vertical green screens for small-space gardening.

In their basic configuration, the units cost $60 per square foot to manufacture. Add the full complement of green upgrades and the price doubles.

The first prefab home arrived last month. Two more were delivered Tuesday. All 20 of the homes will be installed by the end of March, officials said, and residents will be moved in by April.

"For prefab to really work as a concept and as a business, you need to do it on projects such as this one with repetition and multiple volume," Marmol Radziner Prefab Chief Operating Officer Todd Jerry said. "Combining prefab at an affordable price point and doing it with green features, in our opinion, is the ultimate application of prefab. It's the opposite end of the spectrum from where we've been working."

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo and illustration: Marmol Radziner Prefab homes in Santa Monica's Mountain View Mobile Home Park. Credit: Marmol Radziner Prefab

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Pro Portfolio: Proto Home smart home debuts in Baldwin Hills with Web telemetry and iPad control

Every Monday, we post a new home whose design is presented in the designer's or the builder's own words. This week:

Builder: Frank Vafaee, CEO and founder, Proto Homes, Los Angeles

Landscape designer: Sean Knibb, Knibb Design, Venice

Location: Baldwin Hills

Builder's description: Proto Homes uses a hybrid construction method where the efficiency of prefabrication meets the flexibility of site-built,  resulting in construction completion time of under 16 weeks.  All Proto Houses have a basic architectural anatomy in common: "Hyperspace + Core" (patent pending). The wall panels and the roof deck of the hyperspace, as well as the utility core, are prefabricated and are then assembled at the site.

Proto Homes was conceived in the spirit of making modern architecture more accessible, without shortchanging quality or architectural integrity. In fact, this particular neighborhood was selected to test our thesis: An architecturally significant modern house can be produced in about four months, and can be offered at the neighborhood's average sale price per square-foot. (The 2,600-square-foot Sunlight Residence is currently listed at $850,000 -- that breaks down to $327 per square foot, below the low end of the $350-$400 per square-foot comps for the neighborhood.)

In pursuit of efficiency and flexibility, we invented "Hyperspace + Core," which makes up the basic anatomy of every Proto House. The Hyperspace is the flexible fuselage, while the core is its efficient engine. Using "Hyperspace + Core" as the foundational chassis, we are able to accommodate different sizes and features for each Proto House.

Every Proto House will be compiled from the collection of predesigned and tested components which would profoundly shape its unique architecture. Some of the predesigned components that have been used in Sunlight Project are "Hyperspace + Core," "Flex Zone," special slab edge, seasonally adjusted air flow, networked control system, zero penetration roof, efficient kitchen and replaceable exterior panels.

Our vision is to create a house that can accommodate the changes in our lives and the advances in technology. We hope Proto Homes' DNA, which is founded on efficiency, flexibility and innovation, will result in houses that will be perpetually less expensive to build while fostering sustainability and environmental consciousness.

For a look inside the Sunlight Residence, keep reading ...

Dwell on Design: Q&A with the man who runs the show

Dwell on Design opens to the trade on Friday and to the general public Saturday and Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Earlier this week we checked in with the man behind the show, Dwell on Design Brand Director Michael Sylvester. We asked what it takes to pull off what's billed as the West Coast's largest design event.

Question: Dwell on Design involves more than 200 exhibitors, dozens of speakers and two days of home tours, among other attractions. How long does it take to organize each show, and how many people are involved?

We start planning next year’s Dwell on Design before the current one has taken place. Our 2010 exhibitors will re-sign for 2011 while the current Dwell on Design is still underway. Programming of onstage content and home tours takes shape about six months before show. Our attendee marketing ramps up over several months and hits full speed in the last few weeks before show.

The production of Dwell on Design involves everyone working at Dwell Media in some way or another. Our core event team is supported by our editors, who provide content programming; our design and production specialists, who produce a huge volume of print and online material; and our marketing department, which takes on a diverse range of communications and operations tasks. We also have a passionate network of sales reps around the country who are great at selling integrated advertising and exhibiting packages. It's a team effort!

What’s the most difficult part to plan?

Managing the growth is a challenge. Our show has been growing rapidly, and making decisions about resourcing months in advance can be tricky. Also on another level, coordinating 120-plus presenters for a three-day show is a bit like herding cats. We have a small team dedicated just to that task.

The home tours are always popular. How do you go about selecting which homes will be featured?

I like to present a diverse selection of homes that represent thoughtful examples of modern design in a variety of aesthetic styles. In programming the tours, I like to develop some contrast, for example, by selecting a polished high-budget project that is starkly different from a more modest, small-scale home. Once I commit to one home, that house has an impact on the next selections. I like to balance new construction with remodels, if possible. There is so much great architecture in this city, it is sometimes challenging to keep track of all of the new work.

What are you most excited about this year?

I enjoy seeing Dwell Outdoor take shape -- the full-scale prefabs in a garden setting -- you can forget you’re inside the convention center. Also our Asia Now exhibit curated by designboom will be popular this year, I am sure.

When the show closes on Sunday, what’s the first thing you’ll do?

Start packing up the show, which takes a couple of days. Then I’ll go home and sleep for a week.

-- Craig Nakano

Photos: Architect Rebecca Rudolph's remodeled Atwater Village house, part of Dwell on Design's Eastside Home Tour on Sunday. Credit: Los Angeles Times.

Event: 'Wexler Weekend' focuses on Palm Springs Modernist architect

Donald Wexler, one of the innovative architects who define the midcentury desert modern look, will be celebrated at the the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation's"Wexler Weekend" event starting Friday.

Wexler's work included projects for celebrities such as Dinah Shore and Frank Sinatra. He is particularly notable for an enclave in the north end of Palm Springs that includes the 1962 butterfly-roofed Steel house, shown above. It is one of seven prefabricated steel structures designed as an alternative to wood frame construction for the developer, George Alexander Homes. The houses featured floor-to-ceiling sliders and fixed windows and could be assembled in three days. The 1962 price: $13,000 to $17,000. 

 Wexler -- shown here in a vintage photograph at the original Palm Springs airport, which he designed in 1965 -- worked briefly in the Los Angeles office of Richard Neutra before moving to the desert in the early 1950s. In a career spanning five decades, he designed more than 200 structures including schools, office buildings, a country club and the tract houses of Rancho Vista Estate. 

A tour of Wexler-designed homes on Saturday (including the 1960 residence of Lynda Keeler and Bob Merlis that was featured in Home in September 2006) is already sold out. There are still $35 tickets available, however, for a Sunday morning viewing of the Steel houses. 

Wexler will be attending the festivities, which also include a screening of the documentary "Journeyman Architect: The Life and Work of Donald Wexler" on Friday, and his 84th birthday brunch on Saturday.

For schedule and ticket information, click here.

-- David A. Keeps

Photo credits: Steel house by Barbara Marshall, portrait from the Wexler family archives