Archivist
Senior Member
I'm pleased to see this little contemporary house at 328 Euclid has received some attention (Levitt and Goodman).
It is the (indirect) subject of todays column by John Bentley Mays in the Globe:
U.S. venture suggests the future of new housing may be small
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
August 8, 2008
While most real estate news coming up from the States these days is gloomy, leave it to a couple of American entrepreneurs to make a fortune in the otherwise soft new-housing market.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal tells the interesting tale of Seattle-area architect Ross Chapin and developer Jim Soules, the two men I have in mind. A decade ago — when the monster home was all the rage in the United States — Mr. Chapin and Mr. Soules decided that the future of new housing was small. Accordingly, they began to develop bungalows around Seattle that were only 800 to 1,500 square feet in area, each cast in the charmingly retro craftsman style of the 1920s.
The dozens of little houses Mr. Chapin and Mr. Soules have successfully brought to market in the past 10 years are not cheap: A two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,000-sq.-ft. cottage in Redmond, Wash., the home of Microsoft, sold for a stout $600,000. (The median price for a single-family home in the neighbourhood: $542,500.) But brisk sales show that exurban Washingtonians are satisfied with the price, style and size of what's on offer.
What can Toronto learn from the Seattle example? I asked Toronto architect Janna Levitt, the small-house advocate who brought The Wall Street Journal article to my attention.
"It's generally the antithesis of what's going on in this city," Ms. Levitt said. "From a sustainability perspective, the ground-zero, entry-level gesture is to build small. It was interesting that someone would twig on to that, and, in a very American way, would make an entrepreneurial model out of it. It's really positive. It's the design for a community."
The small urban house opens toward the neighbourhood in ways that encourage a sense of social fabric, Ms. Levitt believes.
"It's a different model, a different recasting. The smaller the house, the more you use the city. When you get into very large houses, there's a kind of privatization of things that used to be activities that got you out into your community, such as a gym or movie theatre or any kind of amenity space. But when you have smaller houses, even in a middle-class neighbourhood, you move out, go out to the community centre, the gym, to the public school. Such houses speak volumes about ideas of civic life now. It talks about that hankering for a sense of community."
Three years ago, Janna Levitt and architect Dean Goodman, her partner in life and art, had a strong practical experience of what it means to build and live small, when they designed and constructed a new 2,200-sq.-ft. residence for themselves and their two teenaged children on a Victorian-sized lot on downtown Euclid Avenue.
"We downsized 1,500 square feet from our last house, so we were nervous about whether we would have enough room. But having lived there a couple of years, I feel we could take off another 100 square feet and not even notice it."
The green roof, especially, has brought breadth and richness to living in the house. "It has given us so much pleasure, and it's made us think differently about land in the city. I don't think about our place as property — I think of it as my land. I love what happens every day on the roof. … It's really a work in landscape."
The little house on Euclid is also an exercise in a kind of sociable living Ms. Levitt believes has been lost in many big city neighbourhoods.
"I think it's a recapturing of the way we lived up to the post-[Second World] War period. In Europe, people still go out into the city more to satisfy their needs, play in the front yard, play in the street. This says a lot about what we think of civic life."
While the article about Ross Chapin and Jim Soules, and the small craftsman cottages they are supplying, struck a sympathetic chord in Ms. Levitt, it also brought news of what she believes to be a lost opportunity for stylistic adventure.
"We could do the same thing with much more contemporary architecture. We can learn from a certain idea of urban planning — a small house that meets many needs — but create a representation of the house that is more accurate for our own time."
And it also won an award from the OAA last year.
I'd love to see more small contemporary houses on our streets, but they are rare when compared with chipboard chateaus.
It is the (indirect) subject of todays column by John Bentley Mays in the Globe:
U.S. venture suggests the future of new housing may be small
JOHN BENTLEY MAYS
August 8, 2008
While most real estate news coming up from the States these days is gloomy, leave it to a couple of American entrepreneurs to make a fortune in the otherwise soft new-housing market.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal tells the interesting tale of Seattle-area architect Ross Chapin and developer Jim Soules, the two men I have in mind. A decade ago — when the monster home was all the rage in the United States — Mr. Chapin and Mr. Soules decided that the future of new housing was small. Accordingly, they began to develop bungalows around Seattle that were only 800 to 1,500 square feet in area, each cast in the charmingly retro craftsman style of the 1920s.
The dozens of little houses Mr. Chapin and Mr. Soules have successfully brought to market in the past 10 years are not cheap: A two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,000-sq.-ft. cottage in Redmond, Wash., the home of Microsoft, sold for a stout $600,000. (The median price for a single-family home in the neighbourhood: $542,500.) But brisk sales show that exurban Washingtonians are satisfied with the price, style and size of what's on offer.
What can Toronto learn from the Seattle example? I asked Toronto architect Janna Levitt, the small-house advocate who brought The Wall Street Journal article to my attention.
"It's generally the antithesis of what's going on in this city," Ms. Levitt said. "From a sustainability perspective, the ground-zero, entry-level gesture is to build small. It was interesting that someone would twig on to that, and, in a very American way, would make an entrepreneurial model out of it. It's really positive. It's the design for a community."
The small urban house opens toward the neighbourhood in ways that encourage a sense of social fabric, Ms. Levitt believes.
"It's a different model, a different recasting. The smaller the house, the more you use the city. When you get into very large houses, there's a kind of privatization of things that used to be activities that got you out into your community, such as a gym or movie theatre or any kind of amenity space. But when you have smaller houses, even in a middle-class neighbourhood, you move out, go out to the community centre, the gym, to the public school. Such houses speak volumes about ideas of civic life now. It talks about that hankering for a sense of community."
Three years ago, Janna Levitt and architect Dean Goodman, her partner in life and art, had a strong practical experience of what it means to build and live small, when they designed and constructed a new 2,200-sq.-ft. residence for themselves and their two teenaged children on a Victorian-sized lot on downtown Euclid Avenue.
"We downsized 1,500 square feet from our last house, so we were nervous about whether we would have enough room. But having lived there a couple of years, I feel we could take off another 100 square feet and not even notice it."
The green roof, especially, has brought breadth and richness to living in the house. "It has given us so much pleasure, and it's made us think differently about land in the city. I don't think about our place as property — I think of it as my land. I love what happens every day on the roof. … It's really a work in landscape."
The little house on Euclid is also an exercise in a kind of sociable living Ms. Levitt believes has been lost in many big city neighbourhoods.
"I think it's a recapturing of the way we lived up to the post-[Second World] War period. In Europe, people still go out into the city more to satisfy their needs, play in the front yard, play in the street. This says a lot about what we think of civic life."
While the article about Ross Chapin and Jim Soules, and the small craftsman cottages they are supplying, struck a sympathetic chord in Ms. Levitt, it also brought news of what she believes to be a lost opportunity for stylistic adventure.
"We could do the same thing with much more contemporary architecture. We can learn from a certain idea of urban planning — a small house that meets many needs — but create a representation of the house that is more accurate for our own time."
And it also won an award from the OAA last year.
I'd love to see more small contemporary houses on our streets, but they are rare when compared with chipboard chateaus.
)
