USA New Wall - so called Advanced Framing

So called Advanced Framing has been promoted as a technique to improve efficiency and energy performance for house walls. But it also seems to have been designed to ensure that nobody adopts it.

First we should cover the basics - what is Advanced Framing? It is a "system" or practice of house framing that endeavors to reduce the amount of wood going into the wall, and as a result reduce thermal bridging and increase energy efficiency. It is also interchangeably referred to as Optimum Value Engineering or OVE which perhaps speaks more to the process that came up with this. Value Engineering has come to be a euphemism for cutting costs. In this case, cutting out everything but what is essential to frame a house.

Before we look at exactly how Advanced Framing accomplishes these goals let me just air my gripe. The details of the AF framing techniques are smart, efficient, and dare I say common sense. Yet taken as a whole "system" it is overly rigid, inflexible, and lacks resiliency. To follow a strict application building elements must fall on the proposed modular grid. This limits possibilities, and dooms existing house plans to significant redesign. Its lack of resiliency means its advantages can be quickly overcome by deviation from its strict use. And while it can save up to 20% in material, it really does not go far enough to create a high performance wall system. I feel this combination is a barrier to adoption that will prevent it from becoming the de-facto method for framing houses in the US. Yet many of the individual details are easy to implement, and many builders have already taken this hybrid approach. With the help of this diagram lets look at some of the key aspects of AF, the ones that are easiest to adopt.

Framing spaced at 24" on center. This is a common sense approach. As we put more insulation in our walls we move to larger studs. 2x6's are common, and I'm advocating for a move to 2x8s. These larger studs are strong enough to be spaced at 24"oc, rather than the 16"oc common with 2x4 walls. This wider spacing reduces the amount of wood in the wall, and increases the amount of insulation. Roof framing is easy to space at 24", and engineered lumber floor joists can span further than solid wood at 24" spacing. So yes, we can do this, easily, and it makes sense.

Lets look at the window and door openings. You will note in this diagram that there is a single stud at the side of the window opening. The window header, and the window sill frame are supported with metal clips mounting them to the single adjacent stud. In conventional framing there would be three studs here. A king stud that ran from sill to top plates. A jack stud which ran up to the underside of the header and supported it, and a similar stud for the sill called a cripple. By the time we reached the sill plate the jamb is three studs wide. A common hybrid is to simply remove the cripple studs and move to two studs, and for larger window openings with a bigger header this makes sense. This is easy to do no matter how the whole house is framed.

Insulated headers are another great practice here. Especially as we move on to 2x6 and even deeper 2x8 walls, we can now provide an insulation layer between the interior and exterior header members. This prevents the wall above the window and door openings from becoming a thermal bridge. There are even some products available that pre-assemble the header members with an insulation core.

Two stud corners are another easy to adopt practice. The AF wall has two studs at each corner, one oriented towards each wall panel that meets at the corner. Traditional framing would have a third stud which served to support the interior wall board at the corner. In the AF wall that is replaced by a metal clip, or a 1x nailer. This practice keeps the corner from bulking up with solid wood, and allows insulation to extend into the corner framing. Again, easy to do.

All that sounds good, so where is the problem? The problem is with the next element that AF seek to reduce. Instead of being easy to implement, it is difficult to implement, and instead of being a tidy self contained solution it is a solution that imposes on the rest of the entire house framing to pull it off successfully. I am talking of course about the "Single top plate". Perhaps the shortest note in that diagram causes the biggest trouble. Lets look at this.

The idea is simple. Walls are traditionally built with two top plates. That means in a 2x6 wall the studs are topped off by two 2x6s horizontal capping the studs and creating a bearing surface for floor framing and roof framing. Two studs are used because that gives the top plate enough strength to support a floor joist or roof rafter that does not fall directly above the stud below. But of course two top plates makes for a lot of solid wood through the wall - a thermal bridge. AF aspires to reduce that to a single top plate, cutting the size of the thermal bridge in half. But at what cost? In order to eliminate one of the two top plates we now have to ensure that the floor joists fall directly above the stud. In a two story house we also have to ensure that the studs of the wall above also align, as well as the roof rafters. Suddenly everything has to line up.

In concert with this AF proposes we eliminate the rim joist which is a solid piece of wood equal in depth to the floor joists that runs the perimeter of the wall. This rim joist aids in transferring mis-aligned loads from one floor to another. So studs in the second story wall need not align with the studs below. Without a rim joist, again, the studs above must align directly.

So how does this play out? Well its suddenly a great benefit to make all window and door openings fit within the spacing of the studs. Imagine if you have a window on the second floor that does not fall on the grid. This means a jamb stud will not be aligned to the studs below and some special care must be taken to support the load from its header. Another concern is engineered wood I beam joists. Without a rim joist hey are not strong enough to transfer the vertical loads by themselves and would require stiffeners. So either we return to using solid wood joists and the shorter spans they require, or we spend the labor to reinforce the ends of every joist. Lots of labor is rarely a good trade for a little material. We can add more studs to resolve these issues, but suddenly our 20% gain in material is dissolving.

What we are left with is an extremely rigid system for laying out a house on a grid. And all the flexibility we've given up is solely for the sake of losing one of the top plate members of the wall. This is simply not a well reasoned trade-off. In the end, its a deal killer. Designers find it frustrating and limiting. Builders are forced to completely redesign their stock of house designs. And in the end the return on performance is not that great. The wall studs still have no thermal break, and the performance is only slightly better than a conventionally framed wall.

Lets stop pretending that this is a "system". What we have here is a handful of helpful framing strategies, and one nearly preposterous idea about how to frame a house that nets a very small improvement in thermal bridging. Its time to stop patting ourselves on the back pretending we've really accomplished something with a claim of using "Advanced Framing" techniques. Some might call it "greenwashing", I just think its kidding ourselves. We need to do much more than this to build a high performance wall. We have better options.

0970 Lagom House - Design Prints for new northside Lagom House are ready

Today, on the occasion of the official introduction of a (sort of) new house plan design - the northside version of our Lagom House - I thought it would be worthwhile to review the design in its entirety to make clear how this relates to the Lagom House we've been looking at for the past year.

This new version of the Lagom House features the same smart plan layout. At just under 1500sf, and with 2.5 baths and 3 bedrooms, it delivers an open living/dining room with separate but connected kitchen, a small home office area, and a homework area for the kids. It is a very family friendly yet very compact home. This is a house that is small enough to be a first home, a "starter" home if we can still use that term in today's world, but lives large enough for a family of four.

read on for the complete history of this house design

A little history is in order. I had been standing on the sidelines of the green revolution in housing for many years, mainly because I was not convinced that any of the strategies I had seen forwarded on many fronts would be a true viable solution for building better houses in the US. No doubt many innovative things were being tried, but I also knew from my exposure to everyday builders that they were unlikely to adopt these practices until they were "standard". Thats the anonymous term builders use to mean "everybody is doing it" and essentially to the builder it means "risk free". I know there are plenty of builders out there marketing themselves as green, eager to try new building tech. Unfortunately their numbers are dwarfed by the legions of average contractors, builders, and small developers putting up untold thousands of houses across the country. We needed a solution that came to them, not met them half way. I just was not convinced that I had seen that.

Then in 2007 came the revelations of the housing industry in Sweden. Not only did we have an example in them of a mature prefabrication based housing industry, but their practices were to build homes that outperformed US houses by a wide margin. Energy efficient practices were deeply ingrained in their process, and everybody from customer to timber cutter had bought in to the process. Their houses were built in a way very similar to ours, and they lived in largely suburban settings just as Americans did. What we had in this was a proven model for green building practices that could be widely adopted in the US, albeit if properly adapted.

example of a typical Swedish house: Anabyhus Lygnern

A further inspiration was the kind of homes that Swedes choose to live in. If you are reading this you know our focus on modern, and yes, in Sweden modern exists easily alongside traditional homes with none of the stigmas that exist in the US. But aside from styles and taste the Swedes lived in remarkably well planned and efficient house designs. And by well planned and efficient what I mean is that their houses are a lot smaller than ours, and everybody from every walk of life seems to be happy with that. There is almost none of the "my house has to be bigger than that other guy" kind of mentality there. There are plenty of writers who could tear in to what is wrong with America on this basis, but from my modern stand point this just speaks to the desire for a simpler life, and a life free of the kind of baggage that comes with historical styles as a signifier of social position. As a state of mind, modern puts you free and clear of that. In Sweden style does not matter, because you are in fact free and clear of all that. And in such a culture home designs, efficient and smartly planned just flourish. Its hard not to admire it.

So fast forward to the end of 2009, a house design contest for green and sustainable homes were announced, and it felt like the moment was right to bring all these lessons together. Time to think about how we build better houses that builders will actually be open to building. And time to challenge our expectation of space and size. And what better way to do it than during a contest where we could make much publicity around the synthesis of these ideas. And so into that moment was concieved our Contest House - the Lagom House. The name is taken from the Swedish term "lagom" which means "just the right amount" or "just enough is best". And living up to this value our entry actually undershot the square footage requirements for the contest while fitting in the entire requested program of rooms. Why build more space when just the right amount is enough?

Part of the proposition of this house design was that the floor plan and massing of the house was easily reconfigurable to orient the the roof for solar collectors. The contest entry was based on the house configured for the south side of an east/west running street. Over the past year since the contest ended we've spent our time studying the wall construction from many Swedish factories until we felt we could make a more thoughtful proposal for how to build contractor friendly high performance walls. We feel we've reached that point this winter so now it was time to flesh out the Lagom house for the other side of the street - the northside Lagom House which we are happy to now to introduce.

Now we will move on to the Construction Prints for these two designs. This will be the first houseplan set we offer to be designed specifically for our new high performance wall system - our new wall for the USA. Moving forward all new house plans we develop will utilize this new wall design. And our existing stock of plans will be adapted on an individual plan modification order basis as requested by customers. In 2002 we offered the 0237 Pretender 4, our first house plan. Today in 2011 we mark a new beginning with the 0970 Lagom House. This is the way forward. This time you were there.

0970 Lagom House - design print progress

Progress with the Lagom House lot visualization.

0970 Lagom House - northside version underway

If you recall any of the details of the 0970 Lagom House that was entered in a green house design contest last year, you may remember that there were to be multiple versions. The initial version posted to the catalog was configured to be on the south side of a street, with the roof facing south for solar exposure. Soon we will also have design prints available for the north side configuration.

The south side version faces the sloping roof towards the back yard, while the north side version faces the sloping roof towards the street.

Once this second versions design prints are ready we will move on to prepping the Construction Prints for this efficient house design. This will be the first plan set to be documented to use our New American Wall system for high energy performance.

USA New Wall - a proposal for a high performance commodity wall system

We've been kicking this idea around for about a year, ever since we created our 0970 Lagom House for a design contest. Inspired by our study of Swedish construction we wanted to create a high performance wall for the US market that lent itself to panel fabrication, and was accessible to any builder using the skills and experience they already have.

Why not use new materials and techniques? How can you make a New Wall that everybody is going to know how to build? We want to create a wall that can be widely adopted, something that any builder can start building tomorrow without any new training, without finding any new suppliers, with out changing the way they run their business. If we want the greatest number of builders to build more efficient houses we need a wall they understand immediately, we need a wall that they can purchase materials for from their existing suppliers, use their existing sub-contractors, and a wall that is familiar enough for them to reliably price and schedule. New materials and new techniques throw off all of this and become barriers to adoption. We don't want barriers. We want everybody to start building more efficient houses. Continue reading for a detailed explanation of this simple but robust wall.

We proposed an initial version of this wall when we designed the Lagom House, but now we believe we've made significant improvements. Gone is the exterior foam insulation layer. Foam insulation is expensive, and it is difficult to place on the exterior without creating an unwanted vapor barrier. Instead we rely on lessons from the Swedish wall to replace the thermal break that foam offers.

First we are starting this with a wall design for northern climates. Designs for southern climates are different, particularly in the vapor profile. So keep in mind this design is for a heating centric climate. We are planning this wall for 2x6 or 2x8 versions. The 2x8 versions offer a greater insulation level for those that desire it. Starting from the interior here are the layers of the wall system.

• Interior finish is assumed to be gypsum wall panels, the commodity wall finish in the USA.

• Next we have an electrical and plumbing furring space. This space is created with 2x2 furring members, and is insulated with fiber glass batts, 1.5" thick for an insulation value of R6-6.5 depending on the product chosen. This insulation is typically more rigid than batts and is sold as a fiberglass "board". This actually facilitates cutting openings for electrical boxes and other penetrations. The horizontal furring allows the insulation layer to break the thermal transfer of the main stud wall in the same way exterior foam insulation does, but it does so with out creating a problematic exterior vapor barrier, without expensive foam insulation, and with the added benefit of a dedicated wiring chase space that allows us to build a tighter primary wall. Thank you Sweden.

• Next is a continuous vapor barrier - a plastic sheet that runs continuously from top plate to floor plate. Because all of our wiring is in the furring space there is no reason to penetrate this vapor barrier allowing for a very air tight wall to be created.

• Next is our insulated stud space based on 2x8 or 2x6 studs, 24"oc will suffice for these strong studs. Un-faced batt insulation can be used since we have an independent vapor barrier layer. And since there is no wiring or other obstacles in the wall the batts can be installed neatly, and completely filling the voids. Batts have a bad reputation for sloppy insulation. One thing the Swedish walls show us is that its not the batts, but the obstacles that are the problem. These walls can be as tightly filled as any highly insulated wall without the wires and piping to struggle against. Now what insulation to use? The major insulation manufacturers in the US offer two densities. Always choose the higher density with the higher R value. For a 2x6 wall that will be R21 batts. For the 2x8 wall we have quandary - US manufacturers do not make batts for 2x8 walls. 2x6 walls, yes. 2x10 ceilings and floors, yes. 2x8s you are out of luck. Until they begin we have two options. We can use 8" R30 batts, and compress them 1" into the 7.25" space of a 2x8. This will diminish their R value somewhat - don't count on more than R28. Or you can do two layers: a 1.5" R6 + a 5.5" R21 for a total of R27. In the meantime, Owens Corning and Certainteed - WAKE UP! We need wall batts for 2x8 walls.

• Last but not least is our sheathing and exterior wall system. This remains open ended. Commodity builders are going to want to use their composite Zip sheathing and cheap vinyl siding. Green builders will use a sophisticated rain screen cladding system. And everything in between. All will work here.

Once accounting for total wall R values that take in studs and solid framed portions of the wall you can probably expect the 2x6 wall to come in R23-24, and the 2x8 wall R30-31. This is clearly enough to contribute to a Passive House, but even if you are not looking to build a certified house you have an easy to build high performance wall using commodity construction products. If we can get builders making houses with walls like these then soon we can forget about certifying standards and just build every house to a high level of performance. We can do this now. Its time to demand it.

Letters from Sweden - PreFab is DEAD

Shocking headline intended to get your attention? Guilty. But its true.







Modern PreFab burst on to the scene 10 years or so ago. Before we knew it everybody was a-buzz about PreFab. Magazine articles, newspapers, cable tv shows. Lots of ideas were being tossed out, and some houses were being built. Everybody was hopeful - this is it! We might finally see modern homes priced competitive to standard production homes, all thanks to PreFab. And then just like every PreFab cycle that came before, it was over - again - with little to show for it. Yes, some nice houses were built, and yes, a few are still being built. And capping it off MOMA had a PreFab exhibit, one that should have embarrassed any architect. It was the crown jewel to announce that PreFab had arrived! But was actually more of a postscript on why it had died, again. So here we are on the other side of the cycle and what have we learned? The housing industry is largely unchanged. Design of status quo homes has not improved. Modern is still not readily available. This time around lets just see it for what it is. Call a spade a spade. PreFab is dead.



Colin Davies has given the best account of this repeating cycle in his book The PreFabricated Home. He examines a dozen attempts by architects to reinvent housing via PreFabrication. Consistently the architects conceive of brilliant "systems" which defy established standards and fail to achieve a sustainable volume. While the architects repeatedly flailed at reinventing house building the modular industry quietly reached a sustainable market share. But architects have always discounted this industry because they did not consider it architecture.



Was this round any different? Again we've seen marginal use of several unconventional construction methods. I myself have been involved with pre-engineered steel building systems applied to homes, and shipping container based houses. Others have adapted aluminum industrial framing systems. Others have made houses cast of concrete in forms CNC milled from blocks of styrofoam. And incredibly we've seen puzzle like houses made from little pieces of plywood proposed as a solution. All very endlessly clever, and all hopelessly fated to not change the way houses are built. They fight established building codes, they confound local tradespeople, they frustrate the very people who build houses. As you would expect builders are mostly disinterested in learning a new way to build a house, and their customers are mostly unwilling to pay them to learn it over again too.



But there were other approaches - those that attempted to leverage the existing modular industry to build a new kind of house. There was some success here, and I too worked on some projects in this realm as well. Here we saw modern designs using modular construction, for the first time factories building a house that was modern or green or both, using the tried and true method of off-site assembled modules. But it was no panacea - here the problem was different. The designers struggled against the momentum of the industry. They wanted to introduce new materials and new methods, but the factories and their economy of scale wanted to do what they had always done. It was possible to very carefully find common ground and make a new and modern design, but then at the heart of it little had changed. Costs were not equal to the rest of the factory's conventional output, and the result was largely superficial. Many potential customers walked away disappointed. Another option they could not afford. Owning the factory seemed like an option that would enable the architect to make the factory be dedicated to this new kind of modern house. However the risks were great, and the economy not cooperative.



If this was not success, then what was? Well lets return to our roots for a moment. Remember our primary goal was to reach a point where anybody who wished to buy a new house could have a modern home as one of their choices. Whether that means modern in style, or green and sustainable, in most reaches of the country if you go out to buy a home in the usual places you still can't find anything like this. All that is offered is the usual 32 flavors of McMansion. So if the big goal was making modern homes available, to create choice where none exists, it was simply not met by the recent PreFab movement. To do this we need to make a housing industry that is style neutral, an industry that wants to build you a house no matter what kind of house you want. You want modern? traditional? They need to serve it up any way you want and all energy efficient. That will only happen here when it is truly just as easy and just as profitable for a builder to make you a modern house as it is to make any other house. PreFab always promised to do that, but it could not because either the proprietary building systems were too limited, or the existing PreFab industry exhibited the same stylistic bias as site builders. So we still can't visit our local home builder and choose our modern house. PreFab has not rushed to the rescue. And now PreFab is dead.



Have I shattered your hopes and dreams? Don't despair. Remember, you're reading the Letters from Sweden. Right? In Sweden they are building houses in factories and anybody who likes a modern house has a wide range of choices from their catalogs. The houses are built to a high level of quality and they use a fraction of the energy consumed by new houses here in the states. And these modern and efficient houses in Sweden are being purchased by average folks - every day people. Not just the rich guys with money to pour into a unique PreFab. Almost everybody gets their house this way. Its like they have a supermarket for modern houses over there and everybody gets to take advantage of it. You might think - but Sweden is a whole country! True, but not a market any bigger than a small portion of our states. There is scale there, yes, but not any amount that we couldn't easily pull together here. So what are they doing that we've not done in our PreFab efforts? Why have they managed to make it happen for everybody, meanwhile here we are trying to squeeze drops of blood out of a stone called PreFab?



The difference has been laid out in this series of posts, Letters from Sweden. The Swedes used to build houses much like ours, but in the 1970s they made a uniform effort to completely revise their entire home building industry. The results as you read here was a complete reinvention of nearly every step of the building process to facilitate off-site building. They did not simply start building indoors. They looked at every step, adapted all of the building materials, and revisited the way everything went together so that it worked for off-site building. They changed things to eliminate waste, to make assembly easier and faster, and they invested those savings back into the house to gain more energy efficient construction standards. And they continuously refined these practices, adopting automation and using it to the same ends. And all that effort brings us to today where they are willing to build modern or traditional because it truly makes no difference to their process. When they build a house the essence of the design is reduced to digital instructions so there is no carpenter leaning over a set of plans for a modern house and rolling his eyes. It comes from breaking the house down into assemblies. For example you have workers building wall panels - this is all the same to them whether it goes into a modern house or traditional house. It all looks the same, and it is in fact the same on the factory floor. Same digital info in, same wall panels out. Every step of the process is de-contextualized in this way, from the CAD operator that turns a floor plan into discrete wall panels, to the field installer craning the panels off the truck. Just like a auto-worker making brake pads in an parts factory has little care for whether that brake pad goes into an SUV or a hatchback. The Swedes are not building houses modern or traditional - they could care less. They are running a house building machine the size of their country that will happily churn out modern as readily as traditional, at the same cost, and the same profit. It would be foolish for them to not offer modern if they have a buyer willing to pay for it.



So this is the significant point for us. This is a construction method that finally puts modern house buyers on equal footing with the rest of the market. Its a model for a world were we can walk into any home seller's showroom and have a choice of a dozen modern homes. And we can buy that home anywhere in the country and it won't cost any more than the guy next door who wanted a traditional design. This method is so much more than PreFab. My correspondent Scott and I have taken to calling this Modern Methods of Construction, or MMC. It speaks to treating home building as a mature industrial process. After all you can be sure that all of the makers of the components that go into a house, from furnaces to windows, all use the most modern assembly practices in their factories. MMC brings that same intelligence to building houses. And that's what will ultimately deliver choice to modern house buyers. PreFab will never do that for you. PreFab is DEAD. Long Live MMC.

0751 RS House - NJ version vs the two story plan version

There has been some curiosity about the differences between the two story house plan version of this design, and the one story, with daylight lower level. Here is a comparison of the floor plans.

The main living level is much the same - NJ on top, Two story below:

You'll note that the NJ version has a library area along the living room where this is a second floor space in the other version. The entry vestibule is also removed from the NJ version and it relies on the vestibule at the side of the house where the majority of comings and goings will take place.

Then for the two story version we go upstairs, and the NJ version downstairs.

Upstairs there is a walkway that surrounds a two story living room. The home office is to the top above the kitchen. In the NJ version you go downstairs to a hall that connects the bedroom to the home office below the kitchen. The two story space is replaced by a basement storage room. The bedrooms in both schemes are much the same, but the home office in the NJ version connects directly to the side entry by a short stair. In the two story version there is a door to roof deck above the entry, and a spiral stair down to the main deck.

Plans for the two story version of this house design are available through the Better House Plans catalog page.

Plat House 3 mod - side porch goodness

We are working an interesting modification of a Plat House 3 plan that will include a screened side porch. This is an easy modification to the standard Plat House design in either the 2 or 3 bedroom configuration.

You simply extend the side overhang rafters to a new beam, and create your screened enclosure wall. This is a plan mod that we can do for you, or you can work through this easily with your builder. In fact one of our customers from Arkansas did this very thing to make a screened porch off the master bedroom of their home.

The contest is over, the Lagom House is just beginning

Well we are sorry to report that the Lagom House did not make the cut for the 12 finalists in the design contest. However we are very happy to note that the Lagom House did finish in the top 30 and earned an Honorable Mention from the judges.

All in all we are thrilled with the results, and must confess we are glad we did not have to spend another two weeks begging for public votes! Another disappointment however was that none of the designs I highlighted during the voting made the final 12, and only one other made it into the top 30 with the Lagom House. That design would be the Simple House design by Bob Swinburne. Correction: the Transition House by Studio Interpretation Design also made it into the top 30, so including Lagom House 3 of my picks made honorable mentions.

I enjoyed preparing the Lagom House design for the contest, and reaching out to all of my followers and friends through many mediums was a great experience. If FreeGreen organizes another contest we will certainly participate again. However I don't think we will enter with quite the same determination to win as we did this time around. In my correspondence with other entrants and supporters watching from the side there was a palpable frustration with the voting. Designs that seemed contrary to the spirit of the brief collected many times more votes than better designed houses, and other designs that were extravagantly detailed or represented with what would be prohibitively expensive materials seduced a public that voted for what simply looked best. Yet sensible, well designed proposals languished at the bottom of the listing unseen by visitors that began at the top.

In the end the voting was like a microcosm of the real housing market! Popular choice driven by gratifying image is not a formula for discovering the best of design. Honestly I'm surprised the Lagom House with its stark facade placed as well as it did. To that I have to credit the faithful supporters of our house plans that turned out to vote and kept us near the top of the pile. The value of the contest and the reason we will participate again was in the exposition of so many ideas, and the exposure of our work to so many people.

We took a stand with the Lagom House - to design a house smaller than requested in the contest brief, and to adhere to a minimalist aesthetic that lent itself to affordable construction from common construction materials. It was a lesson in doing more with less, making a great floor plan that shaved hundreds of square feet from the program, and making a strong design statement that by that fact turned off some viewers. The Lagom House is a real solution, something that can be built tomorrow. Its proof that practical affordable houses can also be energy efficient as well as a strong and even polarizing piece of architecture. Its proof that housing could be so much better than it has been in the recent past. Its the way we should build moving forward. No, we did not win, but consider the high placing of the Lagom House a cannon shot across the bow of the status quo.

Contest entries to vote for - our recommendations

In our last installment of our House Design Contest blog entries we described what we thought were the important characteristics of a good house plan product. Lets look at some of the entries that live up to this. I believe they are significant because they roll together the best aspects of creating a product and creating good architecture at once.

Of course our first choice is our own design entry, the Lagom House.

The Lagom house is pushing the boundary in size, coming in several hundred square feet less than most other 3 bedroom homes in the contest. Obviously this will limit its appeal for some, but also extend its reach to many who can not afford to build an extra 300 sqft. Please vote for the Lagom House here.

See the rest of our choices after the link below.

Moving on to my favorites I would like to have you look at the Duval design by Content Design Group. This understated design is successful on many levels.

Here is a modern house that fits well in existing traditional neighborhoods as well as sets out a pattern for developing new neighborhoods of similar scaled and priced homes. In fact this would be an ideal neighbor to the Lagom House. The Duval makes good use of the site by creating a central outdoor space, a courtyard enjoyed from the main living space in the center of the house. The rear of the property is reserved for work - parking from an alley, gardens, and yard work tools. Have a look at it, and vote for it here.

Next take a look at the design by freelancer Tim Brennan. He has created a small 1136 sqft home, one of the few designs in the contest smaller than the Lagom House. Two bedrooms with a garage within the footprint, his subRural House design has a scandinavian austerity to it that really appeals to me.

I like this design, I like its restaint, and I like the way he has represented it in a range of situations. This house design is a good house plan product, and a size that is sorely lacking in the market. Give it a vote here.

Next I'd like you to take a look at the equilibrium house by the same named design office in the UK. In some ways this house breaks some of my rules. The dense placement of freestanding homes is a pattern once common in our cities, has largely fell out of use. More common in the US are attached "townhouses", or detached homes with wider spacing. But the pattern suggested by the equilibrium is so nice its well worth my endorsement.

The staggered footprint of the house makes great use of the site. It allows for shallow lots, and therefore narrow blocks, yet wide frontage and rear gardens that is great for integrating the driveway and cars. The floor plan is smart, and even though a UK design they seem to have pegged US expectations. I think more study of US house industry could yield more feasible cladding and construction. But I'm cutting slack here because I so like the overall design. Check it out and vote for hit here.

Next I invite you to take a look at Rober Swinburne's Simple House. Sinburne is from Vermont and his design takes into account many of the issues faced by homes located in colder climates, and as a result energy conservation is definitely on the plate here.

The Simple House is a good blend of modern and traditional sensibilities, such that a home buyer looking for a traditional house, or a home buyer looking for a modern house would probably both be satisfied by this design. I think that says a lot for the reach and appeal this design could have - I think it would be a very successful product. Construction is very conventional, and any builder could make this house without a blink. None of the edginess and design in your face of many of the other entries, but I can guarantee you that this design would outsell the other swoopy ones by a long shot. A contest winner? Maybe not, but a product winner, yes. Vote for it here.

Next have a look at the Transition House by Studio Interpretation Design. This is a house I could see existing comfortably in many US neighborhoods of homes of similar size. Its modern, it fits in a traditional neighborhood, and basically has its cake and eats it too.

It has a really nice, smart, rational floor plan, well configured for a narrow deep lot. The house would fit perfectly on a street of other homes oriented in a similar way - narrow and deep. This house could have easily been articulated with overt gestures, green lattice on the walls, wishful edgy technology, and other bells and whistles to win green points. Instead the design shows great restraint. It telegraphs the designer's understanding of what might really get built and widely adopted. This is a house that an average Jane and Joe could afford, and an average builder would have no problem building. Support it with a vote here.

Next is the Passive Solar House by Jason Roan. This was designed for the retirement house profile, so its only two bedrooms within its 1800 sqft. But its a simple and well laid out design.

Clearly something any average home builder can execute and do a fine job with. View it here, and vote.

Next have a look at the O-House by Modaby Design. This house has an interesting modular layout that allows the house to be reorganized to take advantage of sun exposure on different lots. Very clever.

The design does include a number of diagonal wall surfaces that could drive the cost up, but it would also turn out just fine if these were simplified by the owner and builder to meet a budget. The design of the house can stand up to that kind of tinkering. See it here, vote for it.

The next entry you should look at is Windswept by David Cox. This house has a great plan layout, with a car port that doubles as a shaded outdoor living space. The home office is also divided from the home which is a great feature if you find a home office distracting.

The scale of the house is realistic, and it just feels like something that can really be built. Vote for it here.

Next is the Nock House by Red Dirt Design. At a glance it appears too big for a starter house, but when you look at the plan it is composed of discrete part that could allow the house to be built in phases. The core of the house with living and bedroom spaces is a very reasonable size.

My favorite part of the plan is the slight angle between the bedrooms and the living spaces. Have a look and vote.

No doubt there are more good designs, but I've not been able to scan them all. But I want to encourage you to keep the points I described in my last post in mind when you vote on the site. Don't be fooled by wishful and fancy drawings. Lets reward the house designs that point a way to actually getting good design into your hands.

A critical look - what makes a good house plan.

As the voting in the Who's Next contest carries on I'd like to call attention to some of my favorite entries and make an appeal for you to vote for them as well. But before I do that I want to explain how I am looking at the entries and what I thought was important for a good design. The purpose here is to create a stock house plan - something for which I've strong prejudices. At the root of it a house plan is a different thing than a custom design. Here is what I think are important characteristics for a successful design for a house plan.

- A house plan ultimately is a product, and a good product must satisfy more than one customer. Architects are more accustomed to singular commissions, houses as very personal expressions of a client's vision of home. Predictably they have difficulty stepping back from that situation and approaching the design problem from the standpoint of creating a product. A good product has a target customer and aims to create strong desire in that profile. It can not be too general - balance is needed. Neither too esoteric, nor too bland to create strong appeal within a segment of consumers.

- A good house plan design must be feasible to build at market rates. If customers are to succeed in building the house then the design must anticipate realistic budgets. A small house intended as a "starter" can not require elaborate craftsmanship or expensive materials. Beyond feasibility the design must be resilient enough to retain its most important characteristics when built without the expensive details the designer may incorporate into their renderings. The salient properties of the design must transcend budget. When the builder substitutes vinyl windows for mahogany sash the qualities of a good design must still come through.

- A successful design must challenge and conform to american expectations, both at the same time. That sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. You have to know the rules before you can break them is the classic way of expressing this. The way this plays out is that interesting designs often push the boundaries of convention, open your eyes to new possibilities, and propose compelling situations for living. When a designer does not grasp these boundaries the designs can seem random and out of left field, the intention unclear.

- The house plan design must be suitable for common site scenarios. Again, Architects are trained to look to the site, the orientation, local influences to guide the design and make a unique solution. While this can enrich a custom design, it also can make it unsuitable for sites with different conditions. A house plan needs to be flexible and adaptable to a variety of site conditions, particularly the ones that are common in the US.

- Enabling people to understand the qualities of a house design is very important for a house plan. Drawings need to be clear and accessible. Hand drawing, or computer drawing does not matter. Some people will respond to the romance of a hand drawing, but that is of little help if the drawings don't do a good job of describing the house, or worse if the "artistry" of a drawing contributes to making false representations. Hand drawings and computer drawings are both susceptible to this. I don't mean to single out hand drawings here, but I've never heard anybody express passion for a computer drawing. A hand drawing does not a winning design make. I'll just close this with the thought that obfuscating a drawing via indulgent complexity or color coding that adds no insight to the graphics should be avoided.

These are tough lessons, and run counter to many of the fundamental lessons of architects training. With all these things considered many of the most dynamic design examples in the contest miss the mark for being a successful house plan. Yet with the great number of people in the country its not out of the question that these could find a perfect match in somebody. Such is the world of house plans! In our next installment we will look at some of our favorite designs from the Contest and ask for you to vote for them.

could not have described it better...

First day of voting, first comment on the Lagom House contest page, and it hit the nail right on the head. I could not have described it better, more clearly, or more convincingly. I just don't think these words would carry the same weight coming from the guy who designed the house.

3/2/2010 James: I voted for this home. After spending a lot of hours over the last few days pouring over the houses, I kept coming back to Lagom. There are a lot of really cool houses on this site, but most don't stand up to scrutiny. They aren't designed for real people in real families living in a real neighborhood. And given the number of exterior corners, floor-to-ceiling windows, high-end finishes and innovative (read costly) construction details I see, many of these “starter” homes would cost at least twice what Lagom would. This house offers the versatility needed in a starter home for young professionals. It's innovative, yet eminently practical and livable. It's inexpensive to build and maintain. It nicely combines public, semi-public, and private spaces. It easily provides more context than any other home in the contest. Other contest houses are probably more likely to be featured in Dwell and unhappyhipsters.com (check it out), but this home is the one that I could have afforded and enjoyed most when I was starting out. Good work, Mr. La Vardera!

This is a person who gets it, who understands what we are doing with the Lagom design. They understand that the point is not to design the house that has the most "Design" in it, but rather to design a house that people can actually build, that they can actually afford to build, and yet still inspire with its design. That's what we've set out to do, not only with the Lagom House, but with the entire Lamidesign House Plans venture. Its very gratifying to see somebody understand and appreciate it. Thank you James.

The time has come to Vote Lagom House!

The voting has begun, and now is the time we humbly request your support. If you are a reader of our blog, a fan of our house designs, a customer past and present, somebody waiting for their chance to have a modern home, then please lend me your support with a vote for the Lagom House!

And after you have voted then please, a friend or family member that is also a fan of design - drag them in on this too! Send them a link and tell them to vote for your favorite modern house plan vendor, you know that cool house I was telling you about!

If you've not gotten plans yet, are still waiting for your modern house, or you are hung up with the economy, whatever stands in your way, this is a chance to be part of the story now - no waiting!

In the end this is just another bid by us for bigger voice in the housing industry, another step towards making the modern house more accessible to the people who want one. What we want to see is for small builders and developers across the country to witness the support for this cause, to see the fans and followers of a modern house plan vendor to receive such passionate support from people who are struggling to someday have a house like these. We want those builders and developers to sit up and notice that there is strong and passionate demand for this kind of house, and it would benefit them to serve this market. Every single modern design entered in this contest can help in that regard, but we sincerely believe that we have the strongest voice - because of all of you.

So please - go and vote for the Lagom House. And browse all the entries and vote for all the ones you like. There are so many cool house designs here, it will make your head swim!

Voting is simple - click the button near the bottom of the page, enter your email and the captcha spam buster, you'll get a confirmation email with a link to click, and you are done!

0970 Lagom House with front porch

The front porch that everybody has been calling for has arrived. We are in the process of readying the Lagom House Design Prints, and the catalog page, and as promised the version sold through our own site will include a front porch.

The front porch is much the same as front porches present in many of our other designs. I like the standardizing of these architectural elements across our range of offerings. The repeated construction of like details is what offers builders predictability and familiarity when they are building multiple houses.

The Design Prints will depict the Lagom House layout for the south side of the street. We will eventually expand this to include Design Prints of each of the configurations. But for now this will represent the range.

Contest House - taking the mystery out

There is no mystery to building a high performance house. You don't need unobtanium, you don't need the next greatest clever building material, and most of all you don't need to ask builders to reinvent their material stream and their business model. This is something we can do today.

I've mentioned the "Swedish wall system" numerous times as we've worked on the contest house. Its no mystery - we've shown how they build their houses in multiple posts here. So it is no big reveal to show how we are using this approach in the Lagom House. The principle is straight forward - deeper studs = more insulation. We are increasingly moving towards 2x6 studs in the US, so in the Lagom House we step up to 2x8s. This also gives us the opportunity to use staggered interior and exterior 2x4 studs as another step up of performance by eliminating the thermal bridge of the studs. Into this wall we will cram R30 roof insulation. It will need to be compressed slightly to fit, but its the best size readily available to fill the 2x8 studs. We top that wall off with a layer of foam insulation between the sheathing and the siding, again to break the thermal bridge and raise the total R value. Total estimated insulation value - R38.

Now this is not quite what is happening in Sweden. Their stud sizes are not the same as in the US and it appears they use something between a 2x6 and 2x8. Their insulation appears denser than our readily available batts. They omit the sheathing and instead are using a thick dense insulating board which appears to be able to take and hold nails from the siding. This along with heavy thick solid wood siding panels replaces the plywood sheathing that we use on our houses. This kind of panel is not available here, nor is heavy wood siding the norm. In its place we put readily available foam insulation panels over normal sheathing - nothing unexpected for the carpenters.

At the foundation we employ the "super" insulated slab on grade type system that is being used in Sweden. This is not used on every house there - again this is considered a step up from their normal slab on grade preparation. But the system of pre molded EPS foam forms is the same, and you can see how this is a progression of what they do on a daily basis. The perimeter grade beam is now separated from the floor slab yet still insulated. The entire slab now receives a thick layer of EPS foam below ensuring that the radiant heat goes into the home and not the soil. Considering the way we typically build foundations in the US, and how much effort and money goes into dumping concrete into a hole in the ground, I am very hopeful that some day we can redirect that effort and money towards a highly insulated slab as we see here.

How about frost and foundation heaving? This is always the concern and what has led the US to require footings extend below frost. Yet in Sweden where the winters are longer and more harsh than most of the US they build their houses without the foundations extending below frost depth. Why is that, and what are we missing? I had a conversation about this with an architect visiting from Norway where they use a similar technique. He said plainly that the ambient temperature of the earth below the frost line is much warmer than the winter air. This is well known - go down a few yards and the earth is about 50 deg, all year. Geothermal heating leverages this. Placing a home on top of the earth in fact shields the top layers of earth and permits that warmer ambient ground temperature to extend up to meet the house, and in fact prevents freezing of the earth directly under the foundation. Its plane and simple - the house insulates the earth from the cold and the natural temperature of the earth prevents freezing and heaving of the foundation. The house raises the frost line. The crushed stone bed that is laid as prep prevents wet soil and freezing from occurring directly below the slab, a well known principle even here.

But why not use SIPs, or ICFs, or straw bales, or any other number of promising building tech? Because 99% of the people building homes right now have never worked with any of that stuff. If they do it forces them to work with new suppliers that they have no track record with, it forces them to estimate time and schedule for work they have not done before and don't know how long it will take. It forces them to work with new subcontractors and learn new techniques. In the long run all these things are good, but in the short run it makes houses more expensive and greatly slows the distribution of energy efficient construction. What we are outlining here preserves all of the know how, the supply train, the business relationships, everything that is already in place. We already know how to do this, and we can begin building homes with near Passive House performance right now.

So there it is, a strategy for building high performance houses, TODAY. What are we waiting for?

Contest House - new contest images

We've created more progress images of our Contest Graphics, this time showing the front and rear of the house with people, and spinning wind generators!

The front yard much as we've shown it before, except for the owners talking with their neighbors that stopped by.

And the backyard again much the same except for the owner firing up the grill while the gals check out the garden.

We have also created a tile that discusses the ideas surrounding the layout of the yard, and our assertion that backyards should become useful again.

And we have added a tile to show the neighborhood, and introduce the plan variations for alternate street orientations for the house.

Contest House - caving in to the romance of wind power

Its growing on me. I've got a fever, and the only cure is more wind power.

Yes - I am finding it harder and harder to imagine presenting the house without the wind generators. They just send such an overt message whether it makes complete sense or not. I have to get them spinning in the image.. Well anyhow here is the current state of the front yard. A large light has been added to call out the front door, and hold off the calls for a porch roof.

And here is the current state of the back yard. The rain collection barrels have been added at the right. The clothes line is already in use. And the veggie garden is going gang-busters. Unfortunately you can't see the compost bin in this view. Ok, time to fire up the grill. You can take those empties out to the recycle bin - rubbish court behind the garage.

Contest House - progressing on site, stay with me

I know I'm going to lose some people here I'm sure, but this is where we insert real life into the modern house picture.

The lot model coming together. Still with the rough massing model but the major elements in place here. House is close to the front, minimizing front lawn and making more space in the back. A veg garden or chicken run if you will is along the back, along with our small drying yard with our favorite suburban icon - the whirly clothes line. Not visible behind the garage is a small work+rubbish yard. The wedge shaped garage sports a basketball hoop, and we have a decent size lawn for play or space for gardening. Immediately against the house and partly under the shelter of the deep overhang is a small terrace. Table and chairs can live outside the kitchen here, and a grill of course. Some more lounge like chairs by the living room completes the back yard.

Meanwhile out front we are tapping a host of domestic stereotypes without irony. A white picket fence lines the sidewalk. A useful divider I think when the front yard is fairly shallow. A front porch - terrace really gives you a place to watch the neighborhood, and yes I know this is begging for a porch roof. It will get one in our catalog, but do without I'm afraid for the contest. Some Adirondack chairs on the porch look welcoming. A few cars in the driveway - a thrifty Honda Fit, and a pick-up for those DIY projects and just moving stuff. Since this is just a progress image - screen grab, I am showing the wind mills just to amuse myself. I will be omitting them in the final images. But love their contrast with the rest of the domestic scene - ultimately this is the way it has to be, right? Our solar panels and flower boxes with have to live together, and more and more that is what will represent a complete domestic picture.

People - we need to populate the model with people. More about that coming.

Contest House - a compact siteplan to match a compact house

As I am mocking up the site now, simply to serve as a background for exterior images of the house, I turn to some inspirations for suburban site planning that I think are still very relevant today.

Many years ago when I was still an architecture student I did a self-defined design studio project for designing a suburban subdivision. You have to realize how out of step that was with studying architecture. The suburbia, particularly residential suburbia was an architectural desert. Yet I took a semester to study how we carried out suburban development and the way we made houses, and suburban infrastructure. It was 1984 and most of my naive work as a student predated the New Urbanism movement. My project book is probably still on the library shelf in the architecture school library at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Go look it up if you are curious.

Anyhow back then I dug into a few dozen "pattern books" - that would be catalogs of stock plans - from the library published in the 1940s. Just like today they were full of current as well as reasonable recent designs - things from the 30's and 40's. I was taken with the way they presented the houses, usually with all the plans and elevations presented on one tidy letter size page. Often the ground floor of the house was presented with a rendered site plan - hypothetical - but significant as it demonstrated how the house could be integrated into the site. In a word the site plans were wonderful. These were different days and suburban lots were much smaller than normal today, and the middle class expectation was smaller as well. Yet these siteplans presented a rich and functional environment for these house plans. I had copied some of my favorites from those books all those years ago, and this morning I dug them out of the file in my basement as they were on my mind as I worked up my site plan model. Lets look at them:

The first comes from a house plan simply titled Design for a Six Room House. How great is that! It is a 3 bedroom house. The first thing I should point out is the size of the lot is 35ft wide, and 125 ft deep. That is a small lot, unheard of today. The house has a front loaded garage, unusual for that time, but its near impossible to pass the house to a garage out back. So what do we have brewing in the yard? About half of the yard is dedicated to a Walled Garden. This garden is off the living room and is shown with some stone paving. This would be the extend of the pleasant outdoor living space. Directly behind it is a smaller yard, divided by the garden wall called a Playground Truck Garden or Poultry Run. Dig that - either a small yard for the kids to crash around in, or someplace for your chickens! Very practical. The other half of the yard is taken up by a long space simply called a Drying Yard. Two long clothes lines are shown with a paved walk between them. Again, how practical that you would dedicate nearly half your outdoor space to productive outdoor uses. I won't go on right now about the vilification of clothes lines in suburban America - its been looked down on as lower class and this is a grievous injustice. We all need to save energy, and experience the joy of fresh line dried items. Behind the drying yard is a small space set aside for rubbish and yard work implements - and horrors - a home incinerator! We actually have a relic of one of those in our own yard! All in all I love the purposefulness of these structured yards, and the way they serve the home - not as a burden to maintain, but as a working part of the household. The front yard is very small by comparison - just enough for some street appeal because after all that land has a job to do.

The next is called Design for a Five Room House - surprise! This time on a 30ft wide lot, again 125ft deep. But this design benefits from an alleyway with rear access to a detached garage. Again we have a main garden space, this time shared with play space. Behind it is a poultry or dog run. Yes, not that long ago many of us kept chickens! The other side is again dedicated to a drying yard, and a rubbish and work space behind it. So useful, so civil, so well considered. What has happened to us? A home bought today comes with graded dirt in the yard, if you don't spring for the extra sod. We have certainly lost our way here - all that land to tax your time, to maintain, but never giving anything back. And we all know that it so wants to! Chickens, or a small vegetable garden, enough lines to really dry all your laundry, a discrete place for tools and trash, and a limited area to enjoy as well as a limited area to manicure.

The last is a more familiar proportion lot at 50ft wide by 100ft deep. Nearly the same as our contest house presumed lot. Here they manage to pass the driveway by the house - much more willing to squeeze the driveway against the house than we seem to be today. In the back the drive widens to an Auto Court serving a two car garage at the back of the lot. Again we have a walled garden, a drying lawn, and a playground truck garden or chicken run. The front yard is very small, and the rear yard is maximized.

I think the practices we see in these old site plans suit our sustainably trending present. Living in the suburbs is a luxury, and a luxury that we can begin to pay for by using the given land to reduce our load on the world in other ways. Line drying clothes is a no-brainer. Composting kitchen scraps, and yard waste to use in the gardens, chickens sure, but perhaps a small vegetable garden will come in less conflict with regressive zoning regulations. A working space in the yard for trash and work bench and yard tools - and DIY projects. We can do this people. Its not some horrible sacrifice to live more sustainably. It is an incredibly rich, rewarding, and satisfying choice. And it comes with a backyard that Rocks!

Contest House - building context

The next step is creating exterior images of the house, in a schematic context - that means we need to build a little neighborhood.

The individual lot, compact, small front yard in order to maximize the rear yard. The detached garage provides some alternate storage in the absence of a basement. The house I grew up in sat on a lot this dimension - 60ft x 100ft, so I feel very familiar with the scale of this density.

While a neighborhood full of Lagom Houses is unlikely to start we'll present an idealized context. The houses on one side of the street are the second plan variation for the proper street+solar orientation. We will be replacing the lot in the center with a more detailed site model that has the more detailed house model plugged into it. This part should be fun. As the modern house is so often cast as aloof and minimalist we will strive our hardest to present it as domestic and lived in.