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.”

Spacious house on tiny lot? L.A. architect aims high in Echo Park

Just 15 feet wide, architect Simon Storey's new Echo Park house feels much larger than its 960 square feet. With oversized windows and skylights, the two bedrooms and one bathroom built above the garage are filled with plenty of light and air. On a clear winter day, the rooftop deck with olive trees and native grasses provides views of the snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains, the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood sign.

But the biggest accomplishment: All of this has risen on a lot that's just 780 square feet.

“Every single person at the building department had the same reaction when they saw my plans,” Storey said. “They would shake their head and laugh.”

Given the challenge of building on a lot with such extreme constraints, the architect managed to get permission to build three stories high, essentially doubling the interior square footage. The house is now a live-work space with Storey's office, Anonymous Architects, in the second bedroom.

The interiors are helped by 11-foot-high ceilings and simple white walls that help to create the illusion of spaciousness. The result is a surprisingly livable home that manages the property's limitations and retains some quirkiness. Situated on a hill, in the crook of L-shaped, one-way Fairbanks Place, the house and its custom windows let Storey know exactly when visitors are approaching. “The cars look like they're coming straight toward you,” he said.

PHOTO GALLERY: Simon Storey's Eel's Nest, inside and out

Storey bought the lot and its tiny 1929 house in 2007, at the height of the boom, for $270,000, nearly 10 times its selling price a decade earlier. He essentially tore down the home in early 2010 and rebuilt from the ground up.

With a construction budget of just $110,000, he had to abandon his original plans for the exterior once he discovered that fire-treating wood would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, the tall house is sheathed in black stucco. Storey dubbed it Eel's Nest, a term inspired by the long but narrow buildings common in urban Japan.

In Pasadena, Wallace Neff's last remaining 'bubble house'

When we asked L.A. at Home contributor Jeffrey Head to adapt part of his new book on the so-called "bubble houses" of iconic L.A. architect Wallace Neff, Head reminded us that the last remaining bubble house in the United States can be found in Pasadena. The house was the subject of a Times feature back in 2004. Owners Sari and Steve Roden, right, noted at the time that Neff may be best known for Spanish Colonial Revival mansions, but they adored their petite bubble house and likened their experience to living in modern sculpture.

Almost eight years later, are the Rodens still there? Turns out they are, and Steve said he still "can't imagine living anywhere else."

We've posted the full text of the 2004 article below. You also can read Head's adapted excerpt from "No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff" and browse the related photo gallery, which includes more images of bubble houses, past and present.

The rise and fall of Wallace Neff's bubble houses

Wallace Neff (1895-1982) may be best known for the Spanish Colonial Revival homes he designed for Hollywood stars including Judy Garland, Groucho Marx and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., but Neff considered his most significant contribution to the field of architecture — his legacy — to be a type of construction called Airform.

Airforms were often called “bubble houses” because a gigantic inflated balloon was used to create their round form. They were Neff's solution to a global housing crisis, and in the 1940s and '50s, Airforms went up around the world — Airform houses in South America and Africa, Airform schools in Mexico, Airform wine storage facilities in Portugal, even Airform grain bins in Jordan.

PHOTO GALLERY: Wallace Neff's bubble houses

Among the structures that were completed locally: a 1942 bubble building for Vernon swimsuit maker Cole of California, who used the Airform for war-time parachute manufacturing, and 1944 projects at Loyola Marymount University, which used one bubble house as a dormitory for university employees and a “triple igloo” (three bubble structures combined) as a work space for engineering students. Neff's largest bubble structure, 100 feet in diameter, was an industrial laundry facility constructed in 1944 for the Pacific Linen Supply Co. in downtown Los Angeles.

Artist Emily Green's playful L.A. home

Emily Green's Los Angeles home is all about art and childhood. “It's a house where you can play with everything,” Green said. “I want kids to feel like they can be themselves here.”

The playful interior of her small apartment is filled with handmade objects. A puppet hanging in the kitchen has coffee cup lids for eyes, a Gatorade cap nose and forks for legs and hands. In the bedroom of daughter Daisy, 10, tooth fairy boxes have been crafted from tinfoil, bright paper scraps and other throwaway items, pictured below. In Green's bedroom, a portrait of her was painted by a former student on the back of a ukulele.

PHOTO GALLERY: Artist Emily Green's home

“My house is filled with things that inspire me,” said Green (not to be confused with L.A. at Home's gardening columnist of the same name). “These are my resources. I want to make heirlooms using things that are simple to have around.”

That also means pieces of nostalgia as decoration. A bookcase in the living room is stacked with relics from Green's childhood — “Madeline” books, a cash register, board games and Richard Scarry titles. There is no TV set, only her “imagination bucket” filled with scraps of fabric, toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners — you name it.

Small-space furniture for shoppers with bigger budgets

Space-saving furniture has been a trend for years, but most offerings have been aimed at budget-minded apartment dwellers and loft lovers. North Carolina designer Linda Lane's novel new series of sleeper sofas for Jessica Charles, however, was created with a different niche in mind.

"I have a keen interest in products that not only look good but serve a dual purpose," Lane said. "In addition to the silhouette, I was also thinking of the multipurpose needs of people who are downsizing -- a growth category I firmly believe will take hold in the ensuing years.”

The Theodore settee, pictured above, and the Theodore sofa, shown below, premiered last month at the High Point fall market in North Carolina. (A Theodore sectional is pictured at the bottom of the post.) Inspired by the clean, midcentury designs of Edward Wormley, the pieces are slightly smaller than traditional sofas and come in six stain-resistant fabrics from Crypton Home. The fabrics are not only soft but also "amazing" when it comes to cleaning, Lane said. "A magic marker or crayon can be removed easily with simple directions.”

The settee, a twin sleeper, is 57.5 inches wide and costs $3,720. The sofa, which has a queen pullout mattress, is 81.75 inches wide and costs $4,575. The three-piece L-sectional is 89 inches wide, comes with a twin mattress and costs $8,670.

495-square-foot house: a bit of smart, modern living

John Oddo once dreamed of having a three-story house with postcard views of downtown Los Angeles. Hamstrung by the recession, he ended up with what designer Louis Molina calls “the smallest new house in Echo Park.” The building is only 495 square feet, but thanks to its creative design, Oddo's tiny gem feels positively inviting.

Broad expanses of glass and high ceilings allow natural light to flood the interiors. Doors and windows are framed in warm wood. Splashes of color add a sense of playfulness. Sleek built-in cabinets and wood paneling conceal appliances and clutter, and every room opens enticingly to a view of the garden.

“The drive was not how to make the most affordable house,” Molina says. “The drive was to make the biggest experience in a small amount of space — enriched living, not impoverished living.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Modern living in 495 square feet

In 2002, Oddo bought an 1897 Victorian that, after losing its second floor to a fire, had been converted to a one-story duplex. He remodeled the duplex but decided to tear down and replace the shoddy, termite-ridden 1950s rumpus room grafted on in back.

“I was going to build my wonder space — a split design with a stairway in the middle and rooms on both sides staggered every half floor,” Oddo says. “This was at the top of the building boom before everything got too expensive. When I couldn't get a construction loan, that put the kibosh on the whole thing.”

Small Schindler house in Inglewood remodeled for a new era

Architect Steven Ehrlich is sitting in the front garden of a 1940 Rudolph M. Schindler home in Inglewood that he recently restored for daughter Onna Ehrlich-Bell and her family. Forty-foot-tall liquidambars line the street of mostly post-World War II houses. It's a real Ozzie and Harriet neighborhood, traditional to its core except for this low-slung piece of modern design. For two years, this is where Ehrlich spent much of his time — “channeling Schindler,” he says with a chuckle.

As Ehrlich tells the story, it was serendipity that he came upon the home by the renowned midcentury architect whose iconic Kings Road House in West Hollywood is often considered the big bang of California Midcentury Modernism. Ehrlich and his wife, Nancy Griffin, had been invited to dinner by friends Kali Nikitas and Richard Shelton.

"I'd never been to their home before," Ehrlich says, "but as soon as I walked through the door, I asked, 'Is this a Schindler?' "

PHOTO GALLERY: Side-by-side Schindler houses in Inglewood

It was. And so was the house next door, and, incredibly, another down the street. As fate would have it, the Schindler next door was the subject of a probate sale the next day. “He built three houses on the same street in 1940 for a developer on spec, which was very unusual for him,” says Kimberli Meyer, director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Kings Road House, where Schindler explored the relationship of space, light and form, as well as communal living.

Ehrlich toured the Inglewood probate house the following day, then put in the winning bid: $265,000.

A little genius: Reviving an L.A. master's modestly sized house

It was October 2007, the height of the real estate frenzy, and Kali Nikitas and Richard Shelton had all but given up on owning their own home. “We were spending all our time looking at houses, then bidding on them and never getting one,” says Shelton, who, along with his wife, is an academic administrator at Otis College of Art and Design in Westchester. “It was driving us crazy.”

Around midnight of the day they called it quits, Nikitas went on Craigslist for one last try. She typed in “Westside” and a price range of $450,000 to $650,000. The first house to appear was a modern home. She clicked on it. That's when the screaming began. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! It's a Schindler!”

PHOTOS: Side-by-side Schindlers in Inglewood

She called at 8 the next morning, and at 2 p.m. she and Shelton met with owner Grace Berryman. "You're suppose to play it cool. We did not play it cool," Nikitas says, laughing. "I told her, 'We're going to give you everything we have. We want this house.' "

Asked by Berryman what they planned to do with the house, the couple answered in unison: Restore it. “That must have been the right answer,” Shelton says.

Two hours later they shook hands on the deal. They were the new owners of an authentic two-bedroom, one-bath, nearly 1,000-square-foot house by one of the most renowned architects of the 20th century, Rudolph M. Schindler. Price: $580,000.

“Never in our wildest dreams,” Nikitas says, “did either one of us ever think we would be living in a home by such an important architect.”

Great divides: Room screens for the space-starved

Room dividers, screens, backdrops. Whatever you call them, we've got a roundup of some the newest designs: notched cardboard, patterned Tyvek, felt panels, earthy bamboo, solid walnut and leather. Whether you want to turn one room into two, increase privacy, add storage or absorb some noise, these pieces might do the trick -- or at least provide the inspiration for a DIY fix of your own.

Photos: The great divides -- 12 novel room screens

   

 

 

 

 

 

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-- Craig Nakano

Photo, top: Zeitraum's Struktur, cardboard pieces that fit together for an airy backdrop (Credit: Zeitraum).

Photos, bottom, from left: The Spanish studio ABR designed Feel-Thru, felt panels connected by magnets and set on a ceiling track (ABR); Loop by the Yard, patterned Tyvek from the design studio Mio (Mio).