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Best in American Living Awards Forum, Part 1
December 17, 2004
HousingZone
Excerpts from the BALA judges' roundtable discussion on trends after the judging for the 2002 awards. Participating judges were Georganne Derick, Victor Mirontschuk, John Thatch, Jean Neumann, Elizabeth Falconer, Wendy Ney Manley and Meghan Stromberg.
Surrounding Communities
Stromberg: What we're saying is that the houses seem to relate more to not only their site, but to the surrounding community than they have in the past?
Ney Manley: I think it's a discussion we've always had, but it seems to be front and center now. You can't just like a house because of the way it looks.
Neumann: It's how it works with the community.
Falconer: No — this is going back five years — we certainly didn't talk about community. We talked maybe in the context of the lot or the footprint or whatever you were forced into, but not as broad a perspective as today.
Mirontschuk: One of the things we didn't see —that was some of the criticisms with some of the urban solutions — really we had a lack of private space.
Thatch: How can you address that, other than maybe making the public spaces nicer spaces, which they're doing?
Windows
Falconer: Can we talk about window trends for a second? Five years ago it was, "How many different kinds and shapes and forms of windows can we cram into one plan?" One of the things I was refreshed by was the simplicity of the windows this time. We've cleaned them up. We've straightened them up.
The other thing I saw there — especially in some of the urban product and actually in the California product as well — was a lot of what I call bullet windows, the real high ones that give you a great deal of natural light but don't interfere with privacy. Or energy. I really thought the window placement was much, much nicer.
Thatch: I think there was much more thought as to how windows are done. It wasn't just "put one here when you find a great window composition. Well, let's use that window composition you saw in the catalog and put it there." It's sort of overbearing, but really looking at how the windows relate to the design.
Derick: The population pressures and the environmental pressures I think were truly reflected in your talking about the window choices also in the product design that we ultimately picked. We're really feeling the crunch of all of those things, so we're choosing the more judicious windows that allow us to maximize the light but not lose the efficiency.
Whole-House Design
Mirontschuk: Another thing is the rear elevations. There were some that elevated all the way around. But there were still some projects that had great front elevations or even side elevations, but they fell apart in the back. So again, the house needs to be more totally designed.
Thatch: One of the things I guess I'm seeing a lot more, and I guess it's reflected in some of the things you're talking about, there's a lot more design guidelines out for projects. Rear elevations or floor-area ratios that are aside from government approvals. They're just project approvals.
Neumann: Those are the things that were really being depicted by builders going into it. When you go into a community, and you go in for approvals for an overall community, you've got to do all-over design.
Falconer: You've got to do four-sided architecture, especially if you're in a really dense project where your neighbors' front side may be looking at your back. We're seeing a lot of that even in Texas.
Thatch: Especially in California, we have to get these approvals — especially in Northern California. It's like the first thing to do: How are you going to get your approvals? Not, "How am I going to finance it?" Not, "How am I going to do everything else?" It's getting more prevalent in Southern California also. "How do I get it approved?"
Neumann: That's not just California.
Ney Manley: No, that's the Northeast, too.
Thatch: And Seattle. It wasn't a trend in Southern California until I think the last few years.
Color Schemes
Mirontschuk: What is the trend — and I guess this is something I haven't seen a lot of — but it seems like the use of darker interior colors, heavier. Whereas several years ago it was lighter, and now it's darker. Does that have something to do with post-9/11 being more cozy or anything?
Thatch: It was before that. It is richer colors, not bright colors.
Ney Manley: I think it's pretty basic — people were afraid of color. I don't think there was confidence when it came to color. In the way you would talk to merchandisers: "Let the architecture shine through. Don't do anything bold or colorful because we're selling the house, not individual pieces of furniture." And I think people responded by saying, "But that's not the way I live. I want color in my house. I paint my home." I think it became more averse because when we were seeing color, it was done very poorly. And we're seeing that reflected on the exteriors, which I was really glad to see this year, too. There's some very bold coloring occurring on the exteriors, which I thought was really neat.
Falconer: I think merchandisers still struggle with the good use of judicious colors. But my theory about individual color is that it's completely driven by consumer confidence. We see people when they're building houses, when the economy's clicking along good, they will paint every wall in the house. They'll put in colored carpet … and they'll do wild and crazy things in their own personal house's color when the market's good. When the market's not good, it's like: "I've got to do builder beige. I might lose my job tomorrow."
Ney Manley: I think that's also why you saw much more modern, much more out-there, contemporary stuff because that also seems to be a reflection of the strength of the economy. People will take the risks.
Thatch: I might give a simpler statement. One of the reasons I think color got so much bolder was because of Southern California. It sometimes models our theater and especially in Southern California, where it's recreational to go look at models.
Falconer: That's been a transition that's only happened in the past several years though — or not several, but maybe eight. Eight years ago in Southern California, you walk the models, and everything was white on white on white on white with the primary color accents. I think people got sick of it.
Derick: We also grew older. We're appealing to an older market now with more "discretionary income," and our sensibilities are for more complex colors as opposed to the primaries. So our industry is a little older. We're appealing to what we like.
Simplicity
Falconer: I think that, overall, the thing I would have to say is five years ago, it was overdone, and the more glorious and huge, the better it was. Just a tremendous trend toward simplicity. You know, a lot of these interiors were very simplified, and I was kind of amused to see the judges' response to the overdone stuff. It's like, "Overdone. Get it out of here." So things that probably would have been house of the year five years ago we nixed on the first round this year. It was overplayed, overdone, overworked and too extravagant. We actually pooh-poohed extravagance, whereas just five years ago it was the word of the day.
Mirontschuk: A lot of the houses seem to be a lot simpler on the inside. They weren't as fussy with a lot of detail and crown molds and coffered ceilings and so on. And I wonder if that lends also to the older market where what happens is you have sort of an empty nester, move-down market, and they have a lifetime of things they've collected that mean something to them, and the house basically becomes the backdrop to show those things rather than the house that has a lot of nooks and crannies and frou-frou built into it. Maybe for the young buyer, they like to have that because they don't have a lot of things, and they want to show the wow and pizazz, but the older market wants a little more maybe simplistic lines. Is that true?
Ney Manley: I don't know. Our active-adult buyers buy more options than anybody.
Derick: They buy options. But are they ornamentation options?
Ney Manley: Oh yeah, they're spending money on finishes left and right. The built-ins and the features and ...
Mirontschuk: But that's OK, too, though. It gives them places to display some of the things they have, but to me a lot of the art niches seem to not be there, and we did see a lot of the stuff in, say, some of the Florida houses where there was a lot of these nooks and crannies and niches and all that. We all sort of went, "Oh that's just overdone." We all sort of threw it out because it was too much.
Thatch: I think it's also richer furniture. Maybe we are getting away and are getting simpler spaces, and it's more in the textures of the fabric, the furniture.
Derick: Texture.
Thatch: It's like all the stores that are out there now. We have Pottery Barn. We have Restoration Hardware. They're all selling furniture, and then Ikea on, say, the entry level. I mean everybody talks about Ikea, and they're doing well. It's sort of furniture-driven almost sometimes.
Mirontschuk: But you brought up texture. That's an interesting thing because all the houses, the big custom houses — the Colorado house, the California house — it had really rich texture and natural materials.
Thatch: Bringing them inside.
Derick: Simple lines.
Technology
Mirontschuk: There seemed to be a lack of technology, which is interesting.
Stromberg: I noticed that, too. People didn't seem to be designing for technology very much.
Falconer: I read a lot of the technology statements, and a lot of them, even in the lower-end houses, said they were completely Cat-5 wired.
Mirontschuk: But that's old technology. That's like standard now.
Neumann: But there's no design specific around it.
Thatch: I think part of the design now is you have your house wired, and basically it's convenient. It doesn't show. I mean you plug in your laptop wherever you go, and you have a plug on your deck where you can plug your laptop in.
Mirontschuk: So, basically, trendwise, space doesn't need to be dedicated to that. It's basically any space.
Ney Manley: It's already incorporated. It's a standard feature almost.
Mirontschuk: What I mean is that I didn't see any rooms that were dedicated to the home office.
Ney Manley: There were quite a few studies with a lot of built-ins and obviously a place for the computer.
Falconer: We had a really nice example in one house where they had wrapped part of an oversized hall for the kids. It had dual kid computer space. I thought that was a really nice use of that otherwise wasted space. And there were some other ones. But I don't think as far as the smart house kind of technology or any of that stuff — I don't think the consumers are really embracing it because it's changing so quickly. By the time you hard-wire a house to the extents that that stuff costs, is it really worth it to be able to push a button and turn on your whirlpool tub upstairs? Is it really worth it?
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