Recycled House by DRW

I love writing about little house plans, or residential architecture in general. Yet it takes some research, on my part, to find new home designs, links to great sites, and then time for me to organize my thoughts into legible paragraphs. I keep thinking that I’ll set aside one day a week for house plan posts, but with my limited amount of time, this isn’t going to happen any time soon.

But with that being said, I did find time this week to research some ecofriendly house designs that I thought were interesting.

• Circular home designs - Deltec Homes: I’ve never been a big fan of octagonal or circular homes. I just didn’t understand the purpose to them. However, I found the Deltec site that explains it. In so many words, the point of them being there are no “load-bearing” interior walls allowing for just about any floor plan layout. Their roof acts as the supporting beams, so the modifications to the interior are endless. I can see this being a huge factor if one wants a very open floor plan. The only drawback I see to circular homes is that many of the walls are curved. This would drive me crazy placing furniture against them.
• Passive Solar Designs – The Plan Collection: Passive solar is a up and coming word these days. Basically, if you design the house with enough light and windows pointing in just the right direction, you can heat your house naturally. This would save money on your gas bill during the fall and winter months. Though, I would worry about the summer months in warmer regions, like say, Arizona! You don’t want your house acting as a sauna.
• More Passive Solar Designs - SunTerra: I like the fact that SunTerra explains the point of a passive solar home and includes the importance of overhangs for shade. They also calculate how much money could be saved on heating a house passively, approximately 1/3 overall. Their home plans include explanations of how each home’s architecture reinforces green building ideas such as a zero energy home and an earth sheltered home. I also learned the purpose of a flatter pitched roof:  it decreases the interior volume improving the energy efficiency.

As a more critical consumer, many house plan sites I come across boast about “green building.” But to put things in perspective, green building really boils down to being resource efficient. The more recycled materials, the less stress is put upon the environment. My all time favorite home builders is Phoenix Commotion: taking one persons junk and turning it into another person’s treasure.

Reminiscing about my first obsession with residential architecture, I remember the copious details I added in the exterior of a house I drew on my chalkboard. Drawing with colored chalk was half the fun, but the house itself best identified with a ranch-style layout: it was horizontally long as opposed to vertical in height, I added a brick trim to the base of the house, and large windows to the front. The reason this was the house I decided to draw was based on my reality, all the houses in my neighborhood were modified ranch-style homes.

Now that I’m hoping to become a home owner in the near future, I’m researching homes for sale. And what style house am I finding? Mostly modified ranch…shocking. Living in suburban Southern California, the ranch-style home became the norm. Its design was based upon Frank Lloyd Wright architecture: low roof lines, horizontal fronts, lots of windows to let the outside in. Many communities in my neighborhood were designed by some well-known ranch-style architects like Joseph Eichler, Cliff May, and Gilbert Leong. These homes were known for their open floor plans, many contain atriums, and some have radiant heat under the flooring; quite modern for their 1950’s and ’60’s build date.

In my neighborhood, the majority of the homes were built between 1940 and the 1960’s. The architecture tells quite a story and I can almost see how the shape of homes morphed from one decade to the next. For instance, my block was built in 1951 and 1952. Using an online digital library, I found an old brochure advertising our community called Meadowlark Park. I’m pretty sure that most of my neighbors have no clue that they live in a community with such a name. There’s not a single placard anywhere stating that this is Meadowlark Park. Yet, the brochure went on to describe the houses as ranch-style homes with “massive chimney’s” (they are really very small in today’s standards), a “garage-and-a-half” (these single-car garages will barely house a mid-sized SUV) and “country living” in the valley. Oh, if only they developers had known that the valley would soon turn into a little city unto itself!

But these homes were larger in comparison to those built 10 years earlier and 3 miles south of where I live, a difference of 300 square feet. The ranch-style home was in the making; 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, it was a home owner’s dream come true. As the 1960’s approached, the true ranch-style homes emerged through Joseph Eichler and Cliff May, taking on architectural attributes similar to Frank Lloyd Wright. These homes were gigantic in comparison to the homes built in the 1940’s and ’50’s, almost twice the size in square feet (around 1,800 to 2,400 sq. ft.) They included an open floor plan, large patios with sliding glass door entries into the back yard, and many even incorporated atriums to really bring the outside in. The idea was to incorporate outside living in temperate Southern California.

The 1970’s homes are similar to the 1960’s, there is still a “modern” ranch feel to the architecture, think the Brady Bunch house. However, the homes of the 1980’s, mainly found on the perimeter of the valley, began to stray from the ranch-style floor plan and design. They became more heavily stuccoed, the features are larger and a little heavier in feel, many of the homes of the 1980’s have wood shingles or tile roofs. Over the past 20 years, residential architecture has moved far away from the ranch homes of the mid-century. Today’s homes are modified Mediterranean style homes with red tile roofs, two story floor plans, and a more vertical use of land, mainly because land is so limited in our urban-suburban neighborhoods. The ranch floor plans are still preferred by many, however they can only be found in older homes that often need more work than a newer model.

Here is a sampling of homes for sale ranging in age:

Ranch Style Homes

As I continue my house hunt, I’m sure I’ll see many variations of the ranch style house. I have to admit, it wasn’t my favorite style until I researched the architects and ideas behind the design. Now, I love ‘em!