The Basic Design

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I have books on the house. I have a DVD that includes "House: After Five Years of Living." After some serious thought, I think I know what it is that makes it my favorite.

* Light. Light moves through the house but first must pass through the leaves of the Eucalyptus trees and the grid of windows. The pattern of shadow and the quality of light are extraordinary.

* Courtyard. I cannot describe why, but courtyards are awesome. I think it has something to do with being outside, but in a private room.

* The living room. Although there is something dramatic about double height spaces, living rooms with such high ceilings can leave you feeling a bit too exposed. The Eames house avoids this by having the sitting alcove. So you can sit in a protected space, but have a great view of a great room that is incredibly versatile. And for parties, the room would be awesome.

* The sleeping loft. I just love the idea of a cozy little sleeping area that opens up to that great room.

* Simplicity. In all ways, the house is beautiful without looking designed. I love that. Also, in your mind you can take in and contemplate the entire house. The same is true for most of the world's great Modern houses.

I had several discussions with Nathan Wieler about buying a Rapson Greenbelt 2. (www.wielerhomes.com). What a great house, and it meets most of my criteria for what makes the Eames house so great. In the end, putting a 5:12 pitch on that design would be a tragedy. The only other problem with it was that there was no good place to put our piano.

So with the Cube House and the Greenbelt out of the running, we were down to hiring an architect to help turn one of my schemes into a buildable plan.

I interviewed a couple of Dallas' upcoming modernist stars. Three problems, they were more expensive, they were booked up for a while, and they probably wouldn't want me to be as involved as I wanted to be. I also talked with an architect neighbor of mine, Guy Brown, who has worked on lots of big budget Dallas mansions and had never done a modern house (but not for lack of desire). He is a friend of mine and I knew I could work with him, but his modernist credentials were lacking. I also talked to LiveModern's own Mark Meyer of designSTUDIO. Every time there was a reply on the Dwell boards the really impressed me, I would look over and it would be either Lavardera or EamesDadelus (aka, Mark). I love his style, he is as passionate about building modern homes as I am, he understood our budget and what we wanted, but he lives and works in Austin. So, what to do?

I hired Guy and Mark. Mark for getting the basic design right and making the house modern and Guy to focus on the construction docs and oversee construction. Guy was already going to be out of his comfort zone with a "low-budget" modern house. After the zoning requirements became known, I guessed Mark was going to be doing something a bit different than he was used to. I really liked that. No one was going to be able to put on the autopilot.

Over 2 years I had refined the Eames house into a 2800 sq. ft. L-shape. Mark made it ten times better. Straightening out the L, he came up with a 100' long and 20' wide rectangle with a 12'x14' courtyard in the middle. He also added a 14' x 35' long private walled garden. The roof was a simple gable with no eaves and the living room opened to the yard with glass on two sides. Unfortunately, for budget reasons, the double height living room was history.

A house in the book "World House Now" had also caught my eye. It was a two-story square (about 30' on a side) with a 10'x'10' open air atrium in the middle. It was not the most useful house with four 7'x10' bedrooms and one bathroom on the first floor. I started doodling and found that by expanding the grid from nine 10'x10' squares to nine 13'6", I could get lots of function, light into the interior, some drama, a private courtyard, a sleeping loft of sorts and simplicity all in one design.

I sent the plan to Mark who took care of a few awkward elements which made it look much more like a house someone might build. Now we had a real competition. Mark and Guy and I went to the lot and staked out the two houses. For simplicity, we started to refer to the plans as the longHOUSE and the squareHOUSE. I think that if the lot were 80'x170' instead of 60'x170', the longHOUSE would have won. The fact that it was oriented more to the side with future possibly ugly McMansions just 35' from the expanse of living room and kitchen and bedroom windows didn't help. In the end, when my wife said, "I could really get excited about the squareHOUSE." that was it. We had our basic design.

As soon as I figure out how, I'll get some of our preliminary images.