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The State of California has announced a new wave of grants through its Earthquake Soft-Story (ESS) program that will offer homeowners small $13,000 grants to be used in seismic retrofits. The grants apply to qualified homeowners in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles and could be a... View full entry
Will L.A. continue to preserve communities dominated by single-family homes? Or will the city make a historic shift to allow for more affordable housing in areas that have long excluded it? — LA Times
City Planning officials voted on Thursday to approve the plan, which the LA Times pointed out is limited to just 28% of the city and areas that are heavily zoned for commercial and/or multifamily construction. The publication had to use a F.O.I.L. Act petition to obtain a copy of the... View full entry
New data from the U.S. Commerce Department indicates a rebound in the single-family housing starts for February in what could be a sliver of hope for the market still reeling from historically high-interest rates. According to Reuters, the data shows a positive (7.6%) increase in single-family... View full entry
There is another cause of overcrowding and homelessness. It is mansionization, the demolition of older, smaller, less expensive houses by real estate speculators who quickly replace them with spec McMansions: boxy, shoddily built houses that max out the permitted building envelope. — City Watch LA
The disincentive to build multifamily and affordable housing is made worse by the popularity of these easily repeatable home designs, which also cost more to construct while taking up more space and using more water and electricity. Certain communities around L.A. County have developed effective... View full entry
Montreal’s Thomas Balaban Architecte (TBA) has returned to a core area of its practice with a new private residence for an art-collecting Quebecois family called the Berri House. Challenged to “squeeze as much home as possible” out of a 112-year-old 130-square-meter (1,400-square-foot)... View full entry
Higher prices and longer wait times do not appear to be turning buyers away from the nation’s homebuilders. With demand still surging, homebuilder confidence in the market for single-family homes rose more than expected in November, to the highest level since last May — CNBC
According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), builder sentiment in the market for newly-built single-family homes moved three points higher to 83 in November. Readings above 50 indicate that more builders view conditions as good than... View full entry
As part of the firm’s evolving partnership with ICON, BIG has once again teamed up with the Texas-based manufacturer to design a 100-home neighborhood in the tech company’s adopted hometown of Austin. Proffered as a potential solution to the dearth of housing units in the U.S. market, the... View full entry
A redevelopment project led by Owen Development in St. Louis' Grand Center Arts District invites a group of groundbreaking architects to design homes for the St. Louis community. The "On Olive" redevelopment will be transformed by LA's Michael Maltzan Studio, New York City-based MOS... View full entry
It's no secret that America has an unhealthy obsession with size, whether it be food portions or cars, and houses are no different. The long-running trend runs deeper than the McMansion typology many Americans are familiar, according to Professor Sonia A. Hirt. In a recent study, Hirt... View full entry
Oregon legislators took a historic leap toward greener, fairer, less expensive cities Sunday by passing the first law of its kind in the United States or Canada: A state-level legalization of so-called “missing middle” housing. — Sightline Institute
In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, both of Oregon's legislative houses have voted to eliminate single-family zoning across the sate, legalizing so-called "missing middle" housing, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and row houses. If signed into law next month by Oregon... View full entry
Seattle’s upzoning plan is set to take place throughout the city, but only 6 percent of single-family neighborhoods will be affected. These neighborhoods will be rezoned to allow for smaller, denser housing, while encouraging developers to keep existing structures and turn them into multifamily housing — like duplexes — in order to preserve a neighborhood’s aesthetic. — NBC News
Since 2010 Seattle's population has seen a hike of 16%, so have the rents and the property prices. And while real estate in the city is booming, little of the development is targeted towards the growing demand for affordable housing. Today 75% of Seattle's residential land is zoned for... View full entry
How does one maintain excitement while embodying elegance? The artful tension of the Ivanhoe House, as designed by Billy Kavellaris of the Australian firm KUD, is an excellent example. Located in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe, the single-story 370 square meter house initially engages visitors... View full entry
Blending elements of brutalism and pronounced geometric framing, the Murray Music House designed by Carazo Arquitectura is technically a single family home, designed for two parents and three children. The fundamental concept underlying its design is "Living Through the Experimentation," which... View full entry
Home design is among the many subtle and not so subtle indicators of cultural norms that tell us what the ideal family should look like. But more families — through choice and circumstance — are creating families in ways that don’t match up with the nuclear family ideal. In post-World War II America, marriage rates have decreased and more children are born to unmarried parents. Today there is no one family form in which the majority of kids grow up. — PS Mag
If you could throw out all the conventions and constructs and limitations of our current understanding of family, what would you create for yourself? And what’s stopping you?For more on the politics of home design, check out these links:If you can’t stand the domesticity, get out of the... View full entry
