June 19, 2008

Architectural critic Reyner Banham explores Los Angeles in this 1972 BBC documentary.

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January 05, 2008

From the Wall Street Journal:

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July 26, 2007

(Source: New York Times, By Alexia Brue) - "Lee Brackett, a designer and builder outside of Navada City, CA, has been making elaborate Japanese-style homes sin 1977, shortly after completing a five-year apprenticeship with a Kyoto temple carpenter. Recently, he began producing a minature version that he calls his 'gin and tonic bus stop" - a 6' x 10' pagoda, he devised on impluse.."

It is beautifully constructed - check it out at EastWindInc

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May 31, 2007

Put this in the category of "mobile housing". The Dutchman T@B trailer, at less than 2,000 pounds can easily be towed by a full sized car. Exteriors are available in colors such as 'orange crush', 'cherry red' and 'mellow yellow'. Interiors
are light and airy with beech cabinets and lounge cushions with a hip looking 50's modern patterns. Starts at $11,000

More.

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March 04, 2007

Former Apprentice Kendra Todd is at it again. In a column for Yahoo Finance discussing five home improvement projects that will add more bang for the buck at sale time, Todd makes an interesting statement at the outset:

Read the real estate or business sections of the newspaper and you start seeing the stories: reliable government or economic officials talking about the beginnings of a recovery in the real estate market. With spring coming, the time is ripe to sell. However, don't assume that because home prices are out of free-fall that you can stab a For Sale sign in your lawn and be flooded with offers. This isn't 2003. If you want maximum buck for your property, you need to make sure it makes a bang when buyers see it.

Obviously, it would be too much to expect that a shill like Todd would actually come out and acknowledge that the so-called "recovery" is far from such, but I did like the semi-explicit acknowledgement that sellers are going to have to work much harder to make their homes appealing in this much more cautious market.

As far as the recommendations themselves, there are two old sayings that come to mind. One is "You have to spend money to make money," and the other is, "Throwing good money after bad never makes you any richer."

I'll let you be the judge.

I previously discussed Kendra's reliability as a gauge of home sales here.

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October 10, 2006

I had the pleasure of attending the Festival of the Building Arts at the National Building Museum last weekend. It was a huge affair, with dozens of tables filled with craftworkers, builders, and masons plying their wares and giving kids opportunities to make and repair virtually everything under the sun.

One of the principal exhibitions at the NBM is the Green House, promoting sustainable development and eco-friendly technologies for all. Anything that promotes the ideas of renewable resources and efficient building practices among the next generations of buyers, sellers, and builders is something I support. Given that the current crop of up-and-coming architects are employing Green trends in their new designs, it's essential to impart the principles of building smartly and for the future while we can.

We can't afford a world consumed by cookie-cutter McMansions that waste land, cost thousands to maintain, and require acres of urban sprawl just to maintain living standards. We have to do better than that.

(Image courtesy of The Community Greenhouse.)

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October 02, 2006

Once again proving the theory that there are great ideas in the ether that people just pluck out simultaneously, there are a number of interesting articles on prefabricated and modular homes, all of which stress the category's growing popularity with buyers and builders alike.

ConsumerAffairs.Com's headline article this week is a thorough introduction to the modular world, complete with advice on how to choose from the right factory and comparisons between prefab and traditional modes of construction.n

The New York Times gets in on the action with a study on how savvy contractors are promoting the benefits of modular homes and pushing past the "double wide" stigma.

Here's a brief little piece about how the use of modular homes is speeding up the rebuilding effort in the Gulf Coast, and a plea for more homes to be built.

One thing that personally amuses me about the debate over modular homes is listening to traditional home owners stick their noses up at the "sameness" of prefab homes when they go to obscene lengths to buy McMansions that look almost exacly the same. Not only that, they're often pressed so closely together on the same lot of land that they might as well be trailers in their own right. ;)

I generally support anything that promotes innovation and better usage of the environment in home design, so if we can move past the snob factor, modular homes might have a place in the market by the time of the next bubble. :)

(Image courtesy of The Modular Homes Network.)

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August 29, 2006

Of the many stories you will be hearing, seeing, and reading this week regarding Katrina and her destructive aftermath, one of the most heartbreaking--and yet hopeful--involves the shape of the rebuilding effort. I think it's fair to say that we haven't seen a need for this level of reconstruction in my lifetime. The scope of the project is almost too mindboggling to comprehend, and the stories being told are at times positive and depressing, and sometimes both.

For example, in the focused media coverage on New Orleans, the damage to Mississippi has been glossed over or altogether forgotten, and as the Detroit Free Press reminds us, the Ole Miss is still suffering greatly under the yoke of bureaucracy, frustration, and despair. The state's economy is becoming almost wholly reliant on big-ticket casinos to bring in revenue, but at what price to its character, culture, and tradition?

The expertise of architects and designers can be found all over the place in the rebuilding effort, as in the case of Thom Mayne and his maverick designs. Mayne's argument is a good one--play to the strengths of the city and rebuild its potential as an environmental and social landmark, rather than becoming yet another glitzy City-Walk style tourist trap for rich folks.

But the devastation remains terrible, and the conspiracy of silence that falls over the rebuilding effort must be broken, particularly if that silence is due to a bored and ADD-addled media.

The rebuilding will continue. The Gulf Coast will rise again. But it will take far longer, cost far more, and force many to endure heartbreak and frustration for years to come. There is no quick fix. We need to accept that, and not let this American tragedy slip from our minds.

Our fellow Americans who suffered Katrina's wrath deserve no less.

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August 28, 2006

There's a new poll out that claims Americans are not at all sure we can handle another disaster. Of course, one of the major reasons the gov't response has been and continues to be so ineffectual is because FEMA got shrank from a full Cabinet agency and put in the hands of a man who thought horse grooming was key preparation for disaster management.

Katrina tore away any preconceptions people have about the nature of race and class in this country. I still shudder to think of some of the horrific things I saw heard, said, and done. But that horror pales alongside the everyday dramas and trials people who survived the catastrophe have to deal with. It's important that we read the stories of people like the Forrest family, or the residents of Plaquemines Parish.

Read these words, know these are Americans just like you and I, and do what you can to help. For these people, Katrina is not over, and will not be over for a long time to come.

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August 11, 2006

It's coming up on one year since I've been putting fingers to keyboard on behalf of the mighty Housing.Com. While this would normally be a cause for celebration and recognition of achievement, but it's much more somber for me, personally.

Not long after I started blogging here, what seemed to be an ordinary hurricane soon blossomed into the worst natural disaster in American history. I know people would like to forget about it, but it's not that easy.

The survivors are still struggling with the remains of their broken lives.

The opportunities to rebuild are few and far between.

The scumbags who couldn't get the evacuation and emergency services right the first time are profiting from their incompetence.

And the resources people desperately need are being buried under mountains of red tape and stupidity.

I could go on, but it is truly said that pictures are worth a thousand words:

(Some images used courtesy of National Geographic. No challenge to copyright intended.)

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July 18, 2006

The boom in environmentally-friendly living has spread from residential desires to the commercial market, as evinced by the new desire of private-equity investors to go for the green:

Whereas Rose hopes to raise funds from private and nonprofit investors, Fitzpatrick (an architect by training who hopes to make a bigger impact) hopes to gain substantial funding from public pension funds. If these funds successfully quantify the financial benefits of investing in green development, they could attract more investment, thereby mainstreaming now-unconventional forms of development.

I've been saying for years that environmentally friendly designs and sustainable building plans are good business AND good for the environment as well. It doesn't have to be a win-lose scenario. Here's a building supplier from the other side of the pond that also gets the message.

Housing Finance has a full-scale special section devoted to the principles of green living, including the still-slow pace of the green lending market.

These are all positive developments, and good reminders that in the long term, past bubbles, blowouts, and crashes, the shape of real estate is going to be affected as much by Mama Earth as it will by irrational exuberance, froth, and speculation.

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July 05, 2006

Today Ray "The Comeback Kid" Nagin introduced his guidelines for the New Orleans reconstruction effort. As the article adroitly notes, there was no actual timetable set as to what was going to happen when. I guess the bad times roll with the good in equal measure, ne c'est pas?

Architecture Week has a fantastic article that covers the obstacles faced in the massive effort to rebuild the Gulf Coast. The whole article is worth a read, but this leaped out at me:

A major problem is that some builders in the South are not accustomed to working with codes — or even with engineers, Lockwood explains, and implementing building codes is not easy.

Maybe I'm missing something terribly obvious, but why would this be?

In any event, I don't know what of the recent developments regarding the rebuilding effort are more frightening...the fact that KB Home is getting involved, or that Alphonse Jackson didn't think that some NOLA residents might be a little pissed off over the idea that their homes are being destroyed without any input or control from them. There's a great discussion about this at Housing Finance as well.

And just to make the subject gloomier, here's another visual reminder of what the recovery forces are up against:

The latter image is courtesy of Photos from Katrina, which I highly recommend for those who think this is just an issue of people whining about handouts.

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May 11, 2006

It would seem that the legendary journey many D.C.-area homebuyers have been making to Baltimore in search of more affordable housing and investments is coming to an end. The market's sagging in Charm City just like everywhere else now:

"The housing boom is over," Chen said. "We're seeing the down side of the housing cycle. The housing market has been overheated, and price appreciation has been very, very strong -- stronger than can be supported by economic growth. Affordability is eroding really quickly, and exacerbating that is the fact that mortgage rates are rising. These forces are making it more difficult for households to get into a mortgage."

Let's hope their wishing for "anticipated job growth" bears some real fruit.

Speaking of green leafy things (Minds out of the gutter!), Housing Finance has a killer list of environmentally friendly items you can buy from your home, as well as where to get them. That's my consolation prize for not being able to find the "Wired" article on Green living I promised a while back. :)

And in terms of needing consolation, we head back to D.C. for this great story about what happens when overzealous developers meet angry NIMBY residents in one fell swoop. That's the whole issue with the housing market in a nutshell--develop, develop, develop, without a thought to the consequences. It's hardly like D.C. has tons of free green space to spare as it is, so why cheapen it further with McMansions appearing in your backyard overnight?

Then again, they're still doing better than the working poor in California, who are being ground up under the treads because the housing market is distorting how poverty costs are calculated. It gives the phrase "House-poor in California" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

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April 26, 2006

Right now no energy issue is more pertinent than high gas prices, but don't forget, high oil means high heating bills as well, and ironically, we can thank global warming for our mild winter last year. Talk about getting it coming and going, eh?

This month's Wired (featuring resurrected eco-evangelist Al Gore) has the first of a series of articles on the affluent and increasingly eco-conscious. I'll be posting a link to that "Green Home" article as soon as it goes live.

The concept of marrying real estate development to environmental concerns isn't as weird as you might think. Building new communities isn't just about putting up sh$!boxes in any random area and hoping people take a bite. It's about innovation, urban planning, and having the cojones to say that not everyone needs fifty flat-grass acres and a winding driveway that leads into the next county. Here's a great story about how one Florida community is building for the future.

One of the reasons why homeowners are fleeing the cities is because they want nature. All the convenience in the world can't make up for the ugliness of sprawl, and people are starting to grok that. Look at this DIY guide to building your own solar power generator, found via Lifehacker.

And don't forget LH's eco-conscious cousin TreeHugger for great shopping and living tips for people who want to use their green to make the world green.

Earth Day is officially over, but that doesn't mean we should stop caring. Everything you do--from the way you build your home, to the gas you use, to the car you drive, to the products you buy--has an impact on the world at large. You can make that impact positive or negative, and either one has an effect. Not to get all Galadriel-esque on you, but even the smallest change in your life can cause change on a much greater level. Think about it.

(Image gratefully appropriated from Audobon of Florida.)

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April 12, 2006

Two quick things that taste great together:

First, has a really neat interactive walking tour of home remodeling projects. It's fun to play around with, but the text is what caught my eye:

Americans are obsessed with remodeling, expanding and generally improving their homes.
They spent an estimated $210 billion doing just that in 2005, according to the Remodelors Council of the National Association of Home Builders, which projects spending this year to increase to some $238 billion.
Why? Despite much talk about a real estate "bubble," most homes are expected to continue to appreciate at a healthy rate -- giving homeowners yet more equity to tap for renovations. Plus, if real estate markets start to cool as anticipated, more people may choose to fix up what they have and stay put instead of moving.

Wow. WOW. $238 million to remodel homes. And yet the author still persists in "What is this 'housing bubble' you speak of?" nonsense.

The problem with excessive remodeling is that it can be so trendy--if you put too much into the countertops, say, by the time you're ready to sell, you'll find people are suddenly liking whetstone instead of granite or whatever. Then you're sitting there with a HELOC that needs paying, mortgage bills soaring, and $10,000 in your kitchen that people think looks "tacky."

There are few instances where life sucks harder, but thanks to the wonderful people at the Wall Street Journal, we found one:

"In some places prices might fall. In others, price gains will slow," says David Berson, chief economist at Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company. The price gains over the past five years, which caused home values to double in many of the hottest markets, "were not sustainable," he says.

The current slowdown reflects three broad trends, according to real-estate agents and economists. One of the most important is that many speculators have started to dump homes that were purchased as investments. In addition, high prices and rising interest rates have reduced affordability for middle-class families. Finally, the intensity of recent hurricanes has prompted potential buyers of second homes to pull back in places like Florida. Some even blame media coverage that has warned of a possible downturn for triggering a real downturn.

Wow, so not only did we single-handedly sabotage the Iraq war, but we popped the housing bubble too! :) Man, I feel the power. Someone order me up countertops made out of gold from Hungary!

(Image courtesy of In Dissent.)

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April 07, 2006

I'm going to take a page from David Lereah's and Ben Bernanke's books, and for one glorious day, pretend there's no housing bubble. Let's see how many interesting real estate items I can find that don't mention it in any fashion at all.

In New York City, housing advocates have teamed up with major banks to force landlords to repair dilapidated properties. I'm amazed this doesn't happen more often. Follow the money trail--if using legislation and advocacy doesn't work, pressure the lenders to make changes or have them be embarrassed through exposing their risky portfolios. Good on them.

In New Orleans, it seems the milk of human kindness has dried up, and residents of upscale NOLA neighborhoods are banning FEMA trailers. Unbelievable. First of all, it's a shock to me that there are any upscale neighborhoods LEFT in New Orleans. Hey, schmucks, your whole city was UNDER WATER less than a year ago. Your property values ain't exactly skyrocketing. Second of all, how dare these people turn up their noses at their fellow residents? It's inhuman and selfish to the extreme. Is it any wonder the country's all but written off the Gulf Coast, when the people right in the thick of it are more concerned with appearances than doing the right thing?

A comment over at the Inman Blog that's worth repeating in terms of the Great Immigration Debate:

mmigration legislation currently under consideration in Congress could bring about a "crisis" in the homebuilding industry, we are told by Gary Roden, immediate past chairman of Associated Builders and Contractors. "Our industry is almost desperate for new workers. If the current undocumented workers are pulled out of the industry, we will be in crisis mode," Roden said. And the National Association of Home Builders said the industry could be in danger of losing a significant portion of its labor force if immigration reform doesn't include a guest worker program and a program to address illegal immigrant issues. As lawmakers wrangle over three different immigration bills, what do you think? Click the comment button to share your opinion.

That is so true. One reason why the current housing boom....

Goddamnit. Two links in and I muffed it. Oh, well.

Anyway, the boom is so profitable for construction companies and contractors is because they've been using low-cost (i.e. illegal) labor, and pulling more money back in profit. If all of those day laborers suddenly got deported, or even better, became American citizens and earned the right to work for living wages, the market would absolutely collapse in on itself.

The whole "guest worker" idea is a cheap facade, so to speak. It's a way to ensure a never-ending pool of under-the-table workers--get them in here for a few years, have them build houses and flip burgers, and pay taxes using stolen I.D.s--which leads to identity theft--then cycle them out again with false hopes of getting a legal way into the country, while making way for the next batch.

The housing market is almost totally dependent on undocumented worker labor, and the fact that the market is tanking will only exacerbate that concern.

It's a mark of how serious the bubble is that even completely unrelated discussions end up going that way, isn't it? :)

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February 02, 2006

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is exhibiting a showcase of some of the most creative architects involved in modern modular home design.

Check out the show - Prefab is the future of homebuilding.

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January 02, 2006

Hope everyone had a pleasant and appropriately debauched New Year's Eve. I'd talk about mine, but the arrest warrants just got issued the other day, so my lawyer advised me to stay silent. Moving on...

The Wired article I mentioned earlier about the coolness of new-tech prefab houses is online. Well worth reading, just for the geek factor alone.

The New York Times had a fairly good look at whether or not homes are more affordable now. The conclusion seems mixed--you can get a lot more home for your buck, but you also need both the husband and the wife out there winning bread to get it done. And not only that, but the house is being used not only as a dwelling, but as an ATM--a "bank" to pull money out of for expenses both necessary and luxurious. Money quote:

In a nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this month, 75 percent of respondents said they thought most families in their community spent a larger share of their income on housing now than in the 1980's. Only 5 percent said the share was smaller.

This has caused mortgage payments to rise over the last generation - especially among high-income families, according to Federal Reserve data - for reasons besides the cost of housing.

Bankruptcy expert and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren provides some much-needed contextual analysis over at TPM Cafe. Actually, the most telling bit of news isn't in Warren's article, but one of the comments, specifically this one. Granted, Orange County is one of the richest regions in America, where $300,000 a year is middle income, but California has always been a prophetess of the housing market, for good and ill. What happens there on the microscale may be what we can look forward to on the macro scale.

Of course, then you have guys like Ed Glaeser, who insist that Boston's own slowdown isn't due to insane prices, lack of land, or consumers' dwindling appetites, but those pesky environmental regulations. Never mind that those regulations are responsible for, say, the air we breathe.

This is another example of the housing boom battle in microcosm--the NIMBY attitude of suburban homeowners who want space and luxury, versus the "grow at any cost" developers and builders who want to erect junk condo after junk condo. It's a lose-lose situation, especially since the real losers are first-time homebuyers and renters who simply can't pull together the funds to meet the astronomical demands of the market. The slowdown is going to force everyone to reevaluate their stances on housing, and hopefully will produce better results than all this bitching.

Of course, if you want to bitch about the housing market, read this absolutely merciless essay on how Greenspan skewered America. Bernanke would do well to check this out--it's a look into his own future if he doesn't get things back on track.

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December 27, 2005

An interesting piece from Business Week via Yahoo about the the new innovations in Chinese architecture.

I've discussed the influence Chinese markets are having on the American economy before, specifically why John Snow is a cretin. It's fascinating to watch the nascent markets of China take on the construction craze with the same wild-eyed fervor we have.

I'm sure it would be a bitter pill to swallow, but perhaps they're taking some lessons from Japan on how to get out of a slump. What's chilling about that is that you could swap out "Japan" for "America," and that article would read no different than any recent domestic news. Money quote:

The Bank of Japan has kept its low interest-rate policy for four years to help spur a recovery after nearly 15 years of slow or no growth. Lower interest rates make it easier for businesses to borrow money to expand.

Sound at all familiar to you? I wonder how they're handling their spate of no-document, interest only loans. This may well be a portent of where our own economy is going, for good or ill, over the next few years.

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December 26, 2005

The January '06 Wired had a fascinating article about architect Michelle Kaufmann and her trailblazing concepts of prefab architecture, including the Glidehouse.

The article itself isn't on the Web yet, but I definitely recommend checking out her work and what it can offer.

One of the problems modern homebuilders face is the simple lack of usable land for designing homes. People want their cake to eat and have--affordability, luxury, convenience, and usability all-in-one. Now that the market is beginning to flatten out, people are (hopefully) going to be less interested in McMansions and mini-castles, simply because they're out of their price range. Speaking only for myself, I don't care if my house rolled off a factory line or got built by a team of Albanian sheepherders, as long as it's a nice place to live.

One advantage that prefabbers can take hold of is that the Midwest housing boom is tailor-made for them (excuse the phrasing :)). Lots of available land, not many landmarks or much congestion to deal with. If buyers take more of a modernist view and push for something a little better than trailer parks or cookie-cutter sh%$tbox condos, the Glidehouse could be the wave of the future, both economically and aesthetically.

Worth pondering over, eh?

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November 29, 2005

The Architourist is an open-source site that allows world travelers to develop and edit entries relating to architecture. It's based off a wiki, which for the uninitiated means that any reader can go in there and add any data they wanted as if they, themselves, created the site. Looks very cool, and it will be amusing to see who gets into flame wars over modern architecture trends. (Credit to Housing Finance for the link.)

Speaking of architectural trends, Business Week has an interesting story on what it takes to innovate with architecture. I have a friend who's an architect. Weird guy, stays up all hours of the night, socially malajusted...yet he's brilliant when it comes to conceiving designs and ideas that most people either never think of or take for granted. There's even a neat little slide show that demonstrates how we continue to expand our horizons and regain the engineering genius that brought us the Pyramids, the Great Wall, etc.

A foreclosure vulture predicts bad tidings for the housing market. Now, mind you, this woman specializes in foreclosures, so it's her job on the line if they don't happen. Still, some of the stuff she's slinging here is sensible. Money quote:

For example, according to a report by CNBC, 45% of all loans out there are adjustable rate mortgages. As rates rise, their payments will be going up. With little growth in real personal income, those households are vulnerable.

Ain't that the truth. (Credit to Patrick.net for the link.)

As gas prices fall, consumer confidence rises. Here's a cosmic irony...heating bills may not be as high this year because of unseasonably warm temperatures. In other words, the thing that's saving families from going broke due to high oil prices...is global warming.

There are no words.

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October 21, 2005

Courtesy of Housing Finance, it seems that the National Multi-Housing Council has finally caused FEMA to reevaluate its stance on housing Katrina and Rita evacuees in expensive hotels and nasty trailers while affordable housing sits vacant. While I'm fairly certain that the loud mainstream media outcry over this had a little something to do with it, kudos nonetheless go to the NMHC for spearheading the charge. Now we can finally get our fellow Americans into real homes, real apartments, with real chances to rebuild their lives and futures.

If you want a good first-hand look at how bad FEMAville life can get, take a look at this story from the path of Wilma. Just awful. And one valuable point--the influx of contractors to rebuild the businesses and homes is actually contributing to price increases of housing in the area, thus locking residents out. This absolutely needs to be watched as the building effort to get New Orleans and the Gulf Coast back on their feet begins.

I mentioned New Urbanism when discussing the possibility of a housing slump reviving dormant urban markets. Well, it seems that the architects of the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort have gone me one better, as the plans for the massive reconstruction project are advocating urban design principles for the construction.

And what's holding up the actual rebuilding itself? I'll give you a four-letter guess, and the first word is "F," as in "Eff you, Mike Brown!"

The money quote:

While the overall mood at the conclusion of the forum - at the Isle of Capri casino hotel in Biloxi - was upbeat, some architects expressed frustration that clear guidelines for rebuilding were not yet available from FEMA. During the forum, the architects had only advisory maps of so-called high-velocity zones to work from. "We spent a lot of time trying to understand the new FEMA rules," Mr. Duany said. "That has not been a satisfying experience."

"They say the rules will not be ready for 18 months," he added. "That's half of World War II. Forget it - you can't wait that long."

Unbelievable. This whole agency needs to be gutted and rebuilt from the bottom up if it is to have any credibility and usability in the future.

Builder Online finds September housing still on a roll. I guess it's this kind of rosy "Screw the bubble" thinking that leaves bubble watchers in a perpetual state of "Is it or isn't it" suspended animation. There's a larger picture to consider, however.

I posted on Wednesday that new housing construction is focusing on the Midwest, and even the most wildly divergent market reports agree that the markets are cooling in pricey regions like the Bay Area, the D.C. Metro area, and so on. Now, bear in mind that the President's Tax Reform Panel wanted to take a shot at limiting the mortgage-interest deduction to the highest levels of FHA-insured loans, somewhere around $312,000.

That would body slam the most expensive markets--which are mostly in "blue" states, Northern Virginia notwithstanding--and accelerate the drive for homebuilding in the Midwest. On the other hand, this would lower the rates for housing overall, which might reopen the market to priced-out buyers in red and blue states alike.

I don't think that there's any deliberate collusion at work here, but the patterns are fascinating to witness nonetheless.

Back to Builder Online--while perusing one of their "sister sites," Remodeling Online, I came across a little gem on how contractors can cancel building contracts. This is hilarious. Did you know that contractors can get out of the "right to rescind" notification rule if you sign a contract in an office, a showroom, or a store?

Whenever employing home improvement contractors, make sure to read up on both the FTC guidance and your own state's rules for contracting agreeements, and definitely do the actual signing in your home. Oh, and make sure to avoid any of those terrible mandatory binding arbitration clauses. They're pure poison.

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October 12, 2005

Now in its second year, the TED prize, an initiative of the legendary TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design), grants its recipients one world changing wish which they present to attendees of the conference, a group of more than 800 catalysts for change, ranging from Fortune 500 executives to dedicated non-profit professionals. This unique community then seeks to make the wish come true.

Cameron Sinclair is cofounder and executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a six year-old charitable organization seeking architectural solutions to humanitarian crises and providing design services to communities in need. Sinclair is working on a wide range of projects, including school building in India, issues of homelessness,tsunami reconstruction, developing mobile medical facilities to combat HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa and rebuilding communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

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October 03, 2005

The first of the "trailer park communities" for Katrina refugees could be up and running today. I'm sure that the ongoing contracting process will be handled with the same attention to cost and strict guidance as the job so far. If you're going to make people live in trailers, the least you can do is ensure that their (and our) money isn't spiraled down a funnel of no-bid contracts for slipshod work.

And one thing that is absolutely essential--which I think a lot of pundits are going to overlook--is that the people buying these homes need to have the right to dispute if they turn out to be lemons. Binding arbitration clauses can rob a homebuyer of any chance to have a case heard in court, and the expensive fees for arbitration put it well beyond most cash-poor homeowners' reach. Now, if this happens in a healthy, booming housing market, imagine what's happening in a maelstrom of chaos and money like the Gulf Coast.

Bankrate has a piece that sings the praises of pre-manufactured homes. On the other side of the coin, Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings has a blistering collection of information regarding the dangers of buying a prefab home.

Now, obviously, both sides have their inherent biases which I shouldn't need to spell out. What bothers me is that manufactured or prefab homes may not just be the only hope of ownership for disaster victims, but that they're increasingly becoming the only avenue for middle-to-low-income-buyers who are being priced out of a still-boiling market in some areas.

And yet, the New York Times reports that people are buying smaller homes. Perhaps this will entice a greater oversight of the pre-fab industry, where space and economy are much more of a consideration. You can change the dimensions of a built house to fit the space you need, but a prefab home comes "ready to order," so you have to get it right the first time.

We can but hope. This could very much be the new dimension our real estate economy has to take in order to survive, and how it helps the survivors of Katrina and Rita will be the acid test.

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September 26, 2005

The Globe and Mail had a fascinating article on Friday about the new swell in demand for prefab housing in the wake of Katrina.

This is heartening in some respects, and it speaks to a lot of the current debates about housing trends and their effects on the economy. It seems that we're moving more and more towards a paradigm of modularity and interchangeability that allows us to customize our lives as we see fit. Everything from designing downloadable playlists to customized health plans for individual needs, so why should housing be any different?

Now, the tech geek in me thinks this is fabulously cool, but I wonder...if we create a world of apartments and houses that can be assembled on factory lines, plugged into developments or buildings, and removed (or replaced) when it's time to move on, what are we losing? Are we giving up a sense of community, of place, of respect for architecture, beauty of craftsmanship, and tradition? Are we becoming a nation of prefabrication and modularity, not connected to anything, to be plugged and unplugged as the need requires?

But at the same time, looking at what orgs like Habitat for Humanity are doing gives me tremendous hope that everyone can enjoy the American Dream of home ownership, even after incredible tragedy. If that can spur innovation and charitable goodwill, I'll take that as good a form of "community" as we can get.

At least they won't be living in trailers. And speaking of FEMA, today's "ROAD FROM FEMAVILLE" installment finds the Los Angeles Times taking aim at the Bush Administration's undercutting of efforts to aid the hurricane victims.

Oh, really, that's brilliant. Instead of utilizing the HUD-backed vouchers for the FEMA trailers, FEMA is paying for them directly at a cost of $6,000 more. And who foots that bill? You and I.

It would appear that removing Mike "Arabian Stallion" Brown from the top spot has not changed what is a watershed of poor organization, poor planning, and political cronyism at its worst.

Here's a particularly killer line or two from that story:

Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.

"The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

You know that when Mr. "Contract With America" thinks your plan is bad, it's time to call it a day.

Posted at 04:42 PM | TrackBack

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September 16, 2005

Seminal book written by urban planner and architect, Denise Scott Brown, and architect Robert Venturi on signage in Las Vegas and its effect on the city's architectural vernacular:

Amazon book description:
Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.

Posted at 01:27 AM

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Las Vegas (New Your Times)In a powerful reminder that big-name architects have become big business, the casino operator MGM Mirage has enlisted a celebrity roster - Rafael Viñoly, Lord Norman Foster, James KM Cheng, Cesar Pelli, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates - to design various parts of a $5 billion, 66-acre development in the heart of Las Vegas.

Continue reading "Making the Desert Bloom"

Posted at 01:14 AM | TrackBack

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September 01, 2005

Hundreds of free 3D walkthough architectural computer models at the Great Buildings Online web site, linked with free DesignWorkshop Lite (FREE DOWNLOAD) architectural 3D walkthrough software for both Windows and Mac!

Continue with 3D Models of Great Buildings

Posted at 10:41 PM

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