Homebuyers’ are increasingly interested in owning an architect designed home that’s also a green home — combining technology and materials in a way that is friendly to the environment. However, homebuyers often resist the two or three year process of building an architect-designed new home.

Steve Glenn, founder and CEO of LivingHomes, fulfills homebuyers’ desires for an architect-designed green home and he shortens the process to six months. He works with world-recognized award-winning architects to design homes built with sustainable construction. The six-month process for these modern fabricated homes includes evaluating the site, determining the design, ordering the materials, and the 24 hours it takes for the home to be assembled on the site.

TED Conference in Long Beach Featured Steve Glenn of LivingHomes

The TED Conference is an annual gathering of thought leaders and innovators. This year’s conference in Long Beach unveiled great inventions – a car for the blind, and 3D printers that can create 3D images of kidneys and bladders, illuminated global medical progress such as eradicating polio, introduced a world wide art project that will highlight the human condition, and spotlighted the way architects are changing the perception of space and form. The conference also featured the nation’s first LEED Platinum home.

LivingHomes assembled at Long Beach, Salon Held at Santa Monica Site

There is a reason TED invited Steve Glenn to assemble a LEED Platinum home at the TED Conference in Long Beach and to hold a salon on sustainability. Steve Glenn is a national leader in sustainability, green architecture and design. A Brown University graduate, Steve Glenn has a history of innovation and success. He was a founding partner of idealab, a billion dollar business incubator, and he has managed global non-profit initiatives. Fresh from the success of his entrepreneurial business and non-profit ventures, Steve Glenn turned to his passion and commitment for good architecture and sustainable design.

LivingHomes Creates Sustainable Homes With Great Design and Ease For the Home Owner

With bad design, projects with the best intentions will fail; but with great design, good projects flourish. Steve Glenn emphasizes strong architecture and good design. Every one of his LEED Platinum homes has been designed by award-winning architects. Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA, and architects KieranTimberlake, who have designed LivingHomes, go beyond engineering and emphasize aesthetics.

Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA

Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA

Architects KieranTimberlake

Architects KieranTimberlake

Home Designed Over Six Months Assembled in a Day

Working with an architect on your own home is a thrill. Waiting 18 months to 24 months for the construction to be completed is agony. Often I meet people who own a beautiful piece of property in the country, but do not want to incur the time, inconvenience or cost of a long, drawn out process to build a second home. An architect designed prefabricated home allows the site to be chosen, the design to be determined, and the home assembled within six months. Homeowners enjoy the expedited ease of having an architect designed home.

Regulation Will Not Save Our Environment -
Sustainable Design That Resonates With the Public Will Save our Environment

Race car designers introduce new designs and technology that later filter down to conventional cars. Similarly, architect-designed homes introduce design to mass home builders. LivingHomes is creating architect designed green homes that will influence the sustainability for materials and design for the broader market.

Innovations, great designers, and tastemakers enjoy bespoke and then they observe how their innovations are adopted by a mass audience.

See Architecturally Significant Modern Homes on Facebook for photographs of several LivingHomes LEED Platinum modern homes.

I always enjoy discussing architecture, formally at forums and informally at parties and gatherings. Thanks to the Internet, I’ve had the privilege of hosting an even broader conversation about architecture, with participants from around the world, by way of my Facebook Modern Homes.

For 15 years, international visitors have come to Architecturally Significant Homes and, on occasion, described the impact this site has had on something they are building or designing in their respective countries. This correspondence has been interesting and satisfying in the same sort of way a personal letter in one’s mailbox brings a smile.

Modern Homes Receives Thousands of Comments

Now, because of the ease of communicating on Facebook, the response to homes posted on Facebook.com/ModernHomes has been abundant and immediate. Readers have sent thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments discussing modern homes located in Dallas on the Modern Homes Facebook page.

If Rock and Roll Linked the World in the 20th Century, Architecture Might Link the World in the 21st Century.

Interest in architecture in Dallas and around the world has exploded in the last ten years. In Dallas, a traditional “house walks” have been replaced with sophisticated tours of architect designed homes.

The Dallas Architecture Forum’s lectures featuring celebrated architects, are always full, as are the Forum’s more informal panels orchestrated by architect Mark Gunderson. You can see this same enthusiasm for architecture around the world. In a short time, over 20,000 people from 5 continents and 50 countries have joined Facebook.com/ModernHomes. It is as encouraging to see young people and students participate as it is architects, professors and sophisticated adults with a fresh or long standing interest in architecture and design.

I compare this growing phenomenon of interest in architecture to the explosion of interest in wine about three decades ago. When it began, anything other than a jug wine was considered exotic. Now, virtually everyone is at least minimally fluent in discussing vintage wines.

We Can Learn From the Passionate and Informed International Community of Architecture Aficionados.

Facebook.com/ModernHomes has offered an incredible international response to a wide range of homes found in Dallas.

As a practical matter, my experience with the Facebook Modern Homes page has helped me better understand how people respond to different architectural photographs. Photographs of homes are such an integral part of marketing architecturally significant homes. It also shows the depth and range of architectural interest. Even a few years ago, there was a strong perception that, while a modern home might be great, a homeowner would have difficulty selling it later. That has all changed. Now there is a market shortage of modern homes. As I have a particular passion for Dallas homes, seeing how people from different parts of the world respond to Dallas homes has been very interesting, including the comments in languages other than English. Here a few comments found on Facebook.com/ModernHomes.

Only this photograph of the home Harwell Hamilton Harris designed in Dallas in 1958 for Seymour and Jane Eisenberg was posted. Among the very positive comments received were Smriti Sachdev ‘s: “What a lovely transition space.” Iman Fouad Sleiman added “I love corridors that are open to interior gardens, this is just bliss.” Coleman Jolley, said “Beautiful. The atrium concept needs to make a return in modern architecture!”

This midcentury modern home was designed by Jim Wiley and Bud Oglesby. It is a very primitive, inexpensive structure that only survives because of its original owner, a 95 year old inhabitant. I was curious if this modern home would receive as many positive comments as the dramatic twilight shots of recently designed modern homes. It did. Mónica del Haya wrote, “Serene, I love the openness to light and the environment.” Hashu Rahman: “Simplicity.” Alexandra Hoepfner added, “…I like the ‘original modernist look’ of the space, that with the wooden elements reminds a lot of Marcel Breuer.”

Architect Gary Olp designed this green home in 1999. The comments this modern home generated included Suha Yuce’s: “I don’t like it, I love it!” Shahina Aslam: “splendid”
Murambiwa Tarabuku: “Splendid; nature/man-made dialectic; The massing a bit like balancing rocks – with the front ones sliced; for those familiar with rock formations in Southern Africa (Zimbabwe – Epwoth o Matopos-Matonjeni). Lurv it.

Join the Dialogue on Facebook.com/ModernHomes.

Become a fan of Facebook.com/ModernHomes and comment on architecturally significant modern homes and read what others say. I am more convinced than ever that Dallas has the best collection of 20th and 21st century architecture in the world.

O’Neil Ford, along with Arch Swank, designed O’Neil Ford’s first modern home in 1936. In Turtle Creek Park, O’Neil Ford’s expression of modernism became the architectural link between his mentor, David Williams, who originated the Texas Modern style, and the current, nationally-recognized architects Lake/Flato and Frank Welch.

Texas Modern Is Early Green Architecture

One of the essential elements of the Texas Modern style was the orientation and design of the home to protect it from the environment and take advantage of the environment. At 3514 Rock Creek, O’Neil Ford created three levels of verandahs, balconies, and screened-in porches oriented to capture the cooling breezes over Rock Creek and provide views of several acres of forests that descend toward Turtle Creek. The home has been recently renovated, preserving the original style and accentuating its modernity.

Architectural Details of Texas Modernism

Ford introduced his pyramidal capped newel post and thin rabbit joints to embellish the modern woodwork, doors and stairs. You can see architectural details introduced in this home that were used two years later in the Bromberg home on Wendover and in Frank Welch designed homes built 60 years later.

O’Neil Ford Had Uncanny Ability to Select Best Sites For Homes

Whether the site was perched on top of a hill at Stonebridge overlooking Turtle Creek, or placed down and hidden along White Rock Creek in Preston Hollow, or deep in the woods of Lakewood, O’Neil Ford had a penchant for finding the greatest places for the homes he designed. The location of 3514 Rock Creek is my favorite. It is at the top of the hill in the middle of Turtle Creek Park, the secluded neighborhood framed by the Katy Trail, Rock Creek and Turtle Creek. Virtually every room has an expansive set of windows and glass doors on three sides of the room overlooking several acres of forest as Rock Creek plunges towards Turtle Creek.

O’Neil Ford Home in Pristine Condition

For 40 years this architecturally distinguished home had been kept in pristine condition by the most prominent engineer in Texas. Hidden, private and sublime this recently renovated significant and historic home welcomes modern furniture and Texas grace. It is one of the true great Texas homes. Making some home buyer very lucky, this O’Neil Ford designed home will be coming on the market and offered for sale.

D Magazine has just unveiled their special Green Issue at a celebratory reception at Barney’s. Just five years ago, green architecture suggested hay bail and subterranean houses.  Now, appreciation for green architecture is sweeping the country. 

Even the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free market think tank published an article recently, showing how energy usage could be curtailed (Electricity Deregulation:  Taking the Next Step:  http://ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba592/ ).  The article references studies that showed not only did electricity costs go down 20% with smart metering, but electricity usage went down on average 40% when smart meters, smart thermostats, and smart appliances reacted to real time pricing. 

The D Magazine special issue highlighted a green house designed by architect Gary Olp that would great modern architecture and design without the green emphasis.  Corporations, the city and the community are all embracing this movement towards preserving our resources and aesthetically improving our environment.

The Institute of Classical Architecture celebrated the formation of it’s Dallas chapter with a lecture by Quinlan Terry at The Highland Park House on Preston Road, a home he designed with Dallas architect Larry Boerder. Modern architecture dominates the discussion of green and environmentally sound building techniques and materials and yet, Quinlan Terry makes the argument to a room full of the best Classical architects in Dallas, designers, contractors, and architectural patrons that the centuries old techniques of solid stone masonry is, in fact, the most environmentally sound in design and construction.

I always thought Classical architecture had great merit but it never occurred to me until he discussed the design of this home, it’s materials and structure, that true Classical architecture could result in the greatest conservation of resources. I suspect that others join me in being distracted by the quickly built, faux-Classical and eclectic homes made from generic materials that deteriorate as quickly as last year’s trend evidenced by so many 1980s homes already being torn down. This is the reason it was refreshing to be in a spectacular Classical home that conserves energy and our resources. Classical architecture is the forerunner of Modernism in that there is an honesty in the design and how it relates to the structure: the ornamentation has a purpose that adds to the structural integrity of the building, the solid stone walls cool the house in the summer and radiates heat in the winter.

The house is sited to capture the breezes through the tall, operational windows.

Quinlan Terry also made an interesting structural point to always lay the stone as it lays in the earth for it’s greatest structural strength. Often, stone is cut vertically to achieve long pieces. Not every home owner can afford a home built of this magnitude but every home owner and architect can benefit from the reminder of great Classical architecture. The discussion in this classic home and the legacy of this home will contribute greatly to the future of Dallas architecture.

I found this project particularly interesting because an accomplished Dallas architect designed this Texas modern home for another architect, one that is the president CEO of the second largest architecture firm in the country.

Dallas Modern Home in Bluffview
Architect’s Design for Architect

Stephen Chambers, AIA, designed a Texas modern home in Bluffview for Ralph Hawkins, FAIA, and his family.

This modern home in Bluffview, recently completed, exemplifies a great relationship between an architect and client. In this case, architect Stephen Chambers designed a home for architect Ralph Hawkins. As one might imagine, designing a home for an architect might seem an imposing task. Now imagine designing the home for the CEO of the second largest architectural firm in the nation, HKS, responsible for the W hotel and the new Dallas Cowboys stadium under construction.

An architect designed home is only as good as the collaboration of the client and architect. Here, the client expressed the desire for a home and the architect articulated that vision with the resulting design. In the case of this very successful project, the client had a clean vision of what he desired; a regional modern home that was environmentally sound, sensitive to the neighborhood, dramatic in design, taking advantage of the site, public spaces for entertaining, family spaces that were informal, and related to the covered veranda.

While Ralph Hawkins is an expert in designing hospitals, downtown revitalization and large commercial structures such as the American Airlines Arena, the W Hotel, and Texas Stadium, he turned to Stephen Chambers, an established residential architect, to express his vision while still relying on his firm, HKS, for engineering, quality control, modeling, sun studies, and other structural details. Stephen Chambers was a brilliant choice to interpret Ralph Hawkins’ vision. Stephen Chambers created a dramatic design that is kind to the neighborhood, and reflects the sensibility and scale that one would associate with a nationally prominent architect.

Let me first mention the site. Framed by Briarwood and Shadywood, the two gently sloping acres with dozens of mature trees provide a serene natural environment with which Bluffview is associated. A person enjoys the continuous green horizon as the street trails off in the distance down the hill. The topography and deep setbacks give each of the substantial neighboring homes, whether they be Colonial, Italian, or Neoclassical, a lovely and important presence.

Chambers designed a stone and glass house with a standing-seam metal roof fulfilling the first tenet of modernism; the structure should submit to the environment. In this prestigious neighborhood of trees, creeks, and stone outcroppings Chambers designed a home that resonates with the environment and created a front facade mimicking the mass of the neighboring homes. Their effort makes this significant modern home a contributing component to the architecturally diverse neighborhood rather than being stylistically self-indulgent. As a result, both modernists and traditionalists applaud the addition of this home to the neighborhood.

When you step through the front door you will feel the importance of the space – the tall walls of rough-cut, large blocks of Texas Lueder limestone with two horizontal bands of polished limestone continuing through to the visible exterior walls of the same material. The mass of glazed openings and glass doors provide light and long views of green as well as a transparency that contrasts so effectively with the solidity of the stone.  The bamboo floors create a subliminal delicacy to this majestic volume of space. Going deeper into the home, the family rooms become more informal and intimate. The open kitchen and living area, looking onto the covered veranda and backyard, is surrounded by the horizontal overlapping planks of wood which emphasize the expanse of land. Along with the visional continuity of the interior and exterior walls, the ceiling plane continues, creating the porch roof, rectangular stone fire box, and chimney which is visible from the interior and exterior.

Both the bedroom balcony and veranda capture the southeast breezes, the deep roof overhangs, shade the house in the summer and allow the low sun in the winter to warm the stone and radiate heat. The extensive modeling and sun studies helped determine the subtle shift of the structure from the north to the west. One of my favorite elements of the home is the outcrop corner window, perfectly placed to direct sun and illuminate the tall center wall stone, but not disperse direct sunlight across the room. Even during the day a lantern effect begins as the stone is illuminated with natural light. In the evening the low voltage lighting gives a more prominent lantern effect as the stone glows in the illuminated rooms.

Stephen Chambers is an architect known for his attention to detail and dedication to the function of the house as it pertains to his clients’ desires and needs. This modern home in Bluffview is an exciting example of Stephen Chambers’ talent and an example of collaboration of client and architect at its best. In this case, an architect and an architect.

For additional photos on this property please visit: http://www.dougnewby.com/Neighborhoods/Preston_Hollow_&_Estate_Neighborhoods/Bluffview/Default.asp

For more information on the architect please visit: http://www.dougnewby.com/Architecture/Architects/Practicing_Architects/practicing_steve_chambers.asp