Archive for September, 2007

At Home With Hal Varian [Diablo Magazine]

Diablo Magazine, August 2007
A Visit With Hal Varian: The esteemed economist and writer shows us around his Danville retreat. By Tracey Taylor. Photographs by Jamie Kripke.
Hal Varian
Hal Varian is trying to remember home improvement projects he has done in his new house. “There is something. … I know there is,” he mutters. We have been talking about his workshop, with its array of fine tools, but his wife, Carol, expresses doubt that any of them have been used.
Varian admits she probably has a point: “The workshop has great potential, but there are also delusions of grandeur,” he says. Then his face lights up, and he leads me to the laundry room, where he points to a small metal bracket on the wall used for drying clothes. “I put this up. You’d be amazed how many tools you need to do a job like that,” he says jokingly.
Varian is a professor of business, economics, and information management at UC Berkeley and the author, with Carl Shapiro, of the highly regarded Information Rules. He hardly needs public acclaim for his handyman work. One of the country’s most respected economists, he is also a New York Times columnist, and he has been a key advisor to Google since 2002. Nevertheless, the easygoing, affable Varian seems puzzled that his manual dexterity doesn’t match his cerebral gifts. “I grew up on a farm in Ohio. My father did everything. I assumed it went along with the Y chromosome,” he says.
The 1939 ranch-style home that he and Carol moved into in July 2006 is perched high in the hills of west Danville. The giant picture window in the elegant living room offers unobstructed views down the San Ramon Valley, past Walnut Creek, and as far as the hills of Napa Valley. The well-established neighborhood has a history: Eugene O’Neill wrote some of his finest plays while living in the nearby Tao House from 1937 to 1944.Hal Varian

The Varians’ house, set on four acres and surrounded by forest, appealed to the couple because they were looking for a home on one level after living for a decade in a three-story house in Lafayette. They also wanted a garden. Carol is a keen gardener, as well as an accomplished botanical artist.

Varian gives me a guided tour of the recently installed solar panels on the roof of the garage and a new deck with a hot tub. He says he is partial to hot tubs and also expresses boyish excitement when showing me the steam shower in the master bathroom. But he says he is probably less attached to homes than his wife is. “It’s always nice to come back to, and I’ve enjoyed places I have lived in, but home is not as important to me as it is to Carol.”

Hal Varian

Although he says commuting is not arduous, Varian is thinking of buying a pied-à-terre in the South Bay because he makes regular trips to Google. One senses that he also likes the idea of having an urban counterpoint to his more pastoral retreat in Danville.

His bookshelf-lined study has a window looking out on the home’s swimming pool, with its dramatic rock waterfall, but the blinds are drawn to keep out the glare. It is in the study that Varian writes his monthly column, titled Economic Scene, for the New York Times. The column manages to be both erudite and accessible.

He tells me he has just filed his latest installment, a look at the economics of leisure. “I vary what I write about,” he says. “It could be something sparked by current events or an analysis of international economics. Sometimes it’s an opinion piece—but I could never have enough opinions to do a weekly opinion piece!”

At Home With Joanna Dawson [Diablo Magazine]

Diablo Magazine, August 2007

Hush co-owner Joanna Dawson’s Lafayette home is another expression of her unique style. By Tracey Taylor. Photography Caren Alpert.

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Joanna Dawson Caren Alpert Joanna Daswon’s house is hard to categorize, which is just the way she likes it. Set high up in the Lafayette hills, with jaw-dropping vistas of Mount Diablo, the house mixes a casual Mediterranean vibe, bohemian chic, and the features of an old European castle with classic Modernist pieces. It’s natural that Dawson would live in a home that embraces an eclectic sensibility.

She’s a co-owner of Hush, a boutique that opened in Walnut Creek in 2000 and was one of the first in town to offer women an alternative to department stores. With its inventory of clothes by established as well as up-and-coming designers, the store caters to women who want to move beyond a suburban look—whether it’s the mom who wants to stay hip or any woman seeking what Dawson calls that “just-threw-it-on cool look.”

“I have a business background, but I’ve always loved fashion,” says Dawson, who has the fine features, long hair, and lithe physique of a ballet dancer, and is barefoot and wearing a floaty floral peasant top and jeans the day we meet at her home.

Her ability to mix and match styles becomes clear as we stroll by a Mies van der Rohe Barcelona daybed in the living area and a Herman Miller Noguchi coffee table and Charles Eames lounge chair in the TV room. These icons of sleek, functional design coexist with funkier pieces: the cherished old library desk in her study; a 1940s-style cabinet in her 12-year-old son’s bedroom, bought at a garage sale for $40; and a pair of beatnik Moroccan patchwork poufs in the master suite.

Dawson grew up in Quebec, and her Canadian roots mean a lot to her. She and her husband, Ken, and their two sons spend two months every year at their summer home in the Gatineau Hills of Quebec. “I like the contrast between our busy life here and the more laid-back life we lead there,” she says. “Also, there are no 16-year-olds driving BMWs where we go in Canada,” she adds.

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After moving to California in 1995 and living in Danville for a year, the Dawsons happened upon their current house. Back then, it was in a much more primitive state, even though it was fashioned after Frank Lloyd Wright, and its future transformation required ample imagination. Built as a weekend retreat in the 1950s, the construction mixed redwood with exposed rubble packed in wire mesh. “Very rustic,” adds Ken.

An initial remodel of the 2,700-square-foot home added 1,200 more square feet of space and smoothed out the exterior, but the result didn’t cut it for Ken, who suggested, after living in the home for just a short time, that they move. “I wanted somewhere more finished,” he admits.

However, the thought of walking away from those amazing, 270-degree views led to remodel number two, which completely recast the house and infused it with its distinct character. Instrumental to the home’s transformation was an importer named Franz Fritzenwallner. It was Fritzenwallner who sourced the hand-forged wrought iron balustrades on the wraparound deck. He also found 500-year-old engraved bricks and antique beams salvaged from a Habsburg castle on the Danube River in Austria. He used the bricks to create the patio, and he turned the beams into a garden pergola.

Most of the art in the house is by Dawson’s uncle, the landscape and abstract artist Duncan De Kergommeaux. A somber, untitled collage above the hearth is a favorite. “I feel really drawn to his darker, more abstract work,” she says. Although Dawson describes herself as “the Dr. Kevorkian of the plant world,” her garden is inviting. She says the family often takes blankets outside and sits on the terrace to chat. When they have company, they break out the guitars and bongo drums. Her preferred time of year is the fall, when they watch the harvest moon come up over Mount Diablo.

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Overall, Dawson is pleased with the way her home has turned out. “Not mainstream, a little artsy, and it defines what I am comfortable with,” she says, adding that her friend, interior designer Maria DiGrande, helped her steer clear of a “stodgy” look. That said, it’s a work in progress. The fireplace in the living room, for example, has never been exactly the Dawsons’ style, she says. It will have to go, to be replaced by something more modern. She is also rethinking the kitchen and exploring the idea of building a yurt in the yard. “We don’t move too fast,” she says. That’s probably a good thing, as Dawson’s schedule includes opening a second Hush boutique on Union Street in San Francisco, planned for later this month. The renovations will have to wait. “We’re not in a rush and want to do it well.”

The New Wave: Prefab Homes [Diablo Magazine]

Diablo Magazine, September 2007

Cheap, green, and gorgeous: prefab homes are becoming a hot trend. By Tracey Taylor


Prefab Homes

Lisa Gansky knew she wanted to build a green weekend home. She met with architects and contractors and at one point was walking around with a cute model of the home she planned to build on a prime piece of land at Stinson Beach.
“The trouble was, there was a disconnect between the architects’ beautiful designs and what the general contractors said could be done,” says Gansky, a tech entrepreneur who lives in Oakland. The costs were escalating, and Gansky, whose business interests include an environmental organization, was appalled at the amount of construction waste her house was going to generate—all of which was destined for the landfill—if she went ahead with a “stick-built” home.
Then she met Michelle Kaufmann, an Oakland-based architect who designs modern prefabricated homes. “Everything came together,” says Gansky. “The whole process was simple and holistic. Now I know I am going to get an affordable home with a fresh aesthetic and lots of green features, including solar panels and a green roof.”
There’s nothing cookie-cutter about the three-story house, which will grace a slope with breathtaking views of the Pacific. Gansky is thrilled with the amount of customization the design has allowed—including using reclaimed timber for some of the posts and beams and the possibility of incorporating her collection of sea glass, gathered over 20 years of visiting the beach, into tailor-made concrete countertops.
Gansky is not alone in being enthusiastic about her prefab. Dan Edmonds-Waters has created a dedicated website, www.napaprefab.com, for his Napa prefab home, designed by Missouri-based architect Rocio Romero. “I fell in love with the simple sophistication of the Rocio Romero LV Home,” he says. “I like the clean lines, the large expanse of glass, and the way this home frames nature as art.” Interested in seeing what’s so great about the prefab home? You can rent Edmonds-Waters’s for your next vacation through his website.Prefab Homes Prefab Homes
Joel Koyama
Modernist prefabs seem to inspire passion and are in the early stages of a full-blown boom. Beautiful examples, designed by some of our most exciting architects, are sprouting up in the Bay Area.

Why be surprised? In many ways this new generation of high-quality prefabs—with their sleek, contemporary styling—represents the holy grail of housing that frustrated Bay Area residents have been seeking. Prefabricated homes are invariably cost-efficient, fast to build, easy to customize, and environmentally friendly.
Prefab Homes
John Swain
Prefabs are defined as homes that are partly or almost wholly manufactured in a factory before being assembled, sometimes in a matter of hours, on-site. In the bad old days, the only nice thing you could say about prefabs was that they were cheap. Now, homes designed by prefab greats such as Michelle Kaufmann at MKD or San Francisco’s Clever Homes bear no relation to the functional but undistinguished tract houses that used to be associated with prefab methods. And prefabs still offer an attractive price point in an inflated property market. Both companies say their preconfigured homes cost about $200 to $300 per square foot, or more if the site presents challenges or the homeowner opts for customizations—some sandblasted glass, a lap pool, or bamboo flooring, perhaps. The average price paid per square foot for resale single-family homes in Contra Costa this year was $398.

Charlie Lazor, designer of the Flatpak home, estimates his models are 20 to 30 percent less expensive than comparable stick-built homes and take half the time to design and build. “We provide a much more controlled process and product,” he says.
Costs tend to be kept low through economies of scale, short build times, and reduced waste rather than compromises on quality. Indeed, advocates of prefabs would argue that factory-controlled manufacturing, which includes precision cutting, often means lower margins of error and higher standards of craftsmanship.
Developers, motivated by the economies of scale, are jumping on the prefab bandwagon. But in some ways, the very nature of the process is blurring the line between architect and developer. MKD, for instance, is building dozens of single-family homes for clients across the Bay Area, but is also in the planning stages for a development of 24 multifamily homes in San Leandro.
In Southern California, the architectural firm Marmol Radziner has three assembly lines creating steel-frame prefab models at its factory in Vernon, California. The homes are literally shrink-wrapped and delivered to their site complete with walls, plumbing, cabinetry, and appliances. The company’s prototype in Desert Hot Springs is also the beautiful home of Managing Principal Leo Marmol.
Prefabs are also in tune with the times in that they boast impeccable green credentials. Steve Glenn, founder of Los Angeles–based LivingHomes, says that about 40 percent of the construction material for a stick-built house will end up in a landfill. This compares with about 2 percent for prefabs.

Prefab Homes
CJ Berg/ Sunshine Divis
Glenn’s home in Santa Monica, the first model for LivingHomes, is a marvel of sustainability and was the first residential project in the country to be awarded a LEED Platinum rating by the U.S. Green Building Council—the organization’s highest rating for “leadership in energy and environmental design.” Given that 30 percent of waste output in the United States—136 million tons annually—comes from the construction of buildings, this is not a bad thing. LivingHomes has five homes under contract in the Bay Area and considers the area one of the company’s biggest potential markets.

Many of the companies making prefabs are aiming for LEED status for their homes. Ratings of sustainability extend to the materials, finishes, and fixtures chosen for their models. “Our goal is to make thoughtful, sustainable design available to more people,” says Kaufmann. “If one of our designs doesn’t meet that objective, we won’t make it.”
The flexibility afforded by modular homes means you can tweak a house to suit your site or particular tastes before it is built and reconfigure it to meet your needs a few years later—moving a wall to open up a bedroom once the children have flown the coop, for instance, or adding an outside deck by putting in a new floor plate. Prefabs appeal as much to first-time homeowners as to empty nesters and to those, like Gansky and Edmonds-Waters, seeking the sanctuary of a weekend retreat.
It may be preconfigured architecture, but there’s clearly nothing bland or inferior about the prefabs that have been championed in recent years by magazines such as Dwell and websites such as fabprefab.com. The Bay Area has long shown itself to be open to new ideas in architecture—be it embracing an idiosyncratic Bernard Maybeck craftsman in Berkeley in the early 1900s or an envelope-pushing modernist home by Clarence Mayhew in Orinda 50 years later. Twenty-first–century prefabs look likely to find their place in that honorable tradition.
Tracey Taylor is a freelance writer based in Berkeley.