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05/02/10 – Los Angeles – Small Single Family <2500 sqft
February 5th, 2010  |  27 Comments

Design Project submission from Tim Jones
Design Project submission from Paul C

  • Molly K

    Comment: Good morning John and Matthew,
    Again I am honored with my runner-up status as Slow-Homer of the Week. I agree that Cat’s street view was incredible and gave me insight into the construction sight and the views beyond the Mosaic floorplan.
    I have been poking around at floorplans for next week (+2500 sq. ft.) and have a question. There are some BIG floorplans and frankly my head was swirling after walking through them and trying to mentally apply the SlowHome criteria. My question is how do extra spaces (those rooms NOT on the room-by-room section) come into play when scoring the test. My guess is that based on the test a large home may score ‘Slow’ but the other spaces could be terrible (i.e., contribute too much wasted space; cause circulation problems). Do you have any advice on how to take these spaces into consideration?
    My other observation is that I haven’t found any plans with Orientations. I’m finding developments with home plans but they are not built yet so I have no site orientation. Am I just not looking in the right place? Are there specific links I don’t know about since real estate is not my thing? OR is this simply unavoidable as we look at larger home plans? Thanks for any feedback.

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  • John Brown

    Comment: Molly K,
    You bring up a good question about next week’s task and one that I was planning on discussing in Monday’s segment.

    In the Project as a whole, we wanted to make a distinction between small single family houses and those that are bigger. This doesn’t really mean big and certainly not supersized. Our initial goal was to examine houses between 2500 and say around 3100 square feet as this is a large part of the housing market. We will have to see how this pans out next week and if we need to make any adjustments to the categories.

    In terms of orientation, you are absolutely correct that it can be very difficult to determine for single family housing developments. I suppose this highlights the very problem we are worried about. At the same time it can be a problem for the test. We wanted to monitor this over the coming week and discuss with the group what, if anything, we should do. Yesterday’s discussion about the environment also got us thinking that we may want to tinker slightly with the test as well.

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  • BradW

    Comment: I have been using StreetView for awhile now, it is fun and addictive (see yesterdays post on finding celebrity and famous TV homes). From Google Maps, StreetView is found under more in the menu associated with your point of interest. Now that you have a StreetView image please realize that they are not updated frequently. A building under construction will most likely now be completed. You can find site orientation with StreetView – a north arrow is associated with the direction cursor found in the top left corner. You can leave StreetView by clicking several times on the – button (zoom out). So there you go…

    I also want to acknowledge Tim Jones, Paul C and indeed everyone who submitted plans this week. I think we really proved Matthew’s point that builder plans can easily be upgraded at little or no extra cost.

    Finally to MollyK, I am staggered that after all your thoughtful analysis you didn’t vote for Vista Dunes…;)

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  • BradW

    Comment: John,

    You cannot limit the large single family category to 3100 sq ft. Most market housing in this category is upwards to 5000 sq ft. Personally, I do not think there should be a limit at all.

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  • BradW

    Comment: One other thing about orientation, Google Maps presents maps (either road or satellite images) with north directly up.

    Bing Maps and Google Earth present bird’s eye view images which are really very cool. An easy way to see this is go to Sawbuck Realty, find and select a listing, scroll down to find the StreetView image and select Bird’s Eye View from the menu at the top of the image.

    And BTW, my submission next week will ‘trump’ everything submitted thus far.

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  • BradW

    Comment: Here is a link to a Sawbuck Realty listing in historic Whitley Heights which I think is a great small house alternative to a condo. Scroll down and use StreetView and Bird’s Eye View to get a sense of the location. Notice the terrain, the privacy of the lot, its orientation and the architecture details in the entry and stairs.

    http://www.sawbuck.com/property/Los_Angeles_Metro/Los_Angeles/Hollywood_Hills/3075306-2075-Watsonia-Terrace

    I could move to LA in a heartbeat…

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  • MollyK

    Comment: BradW
    I’m not surprised you are staggered. Vista Dunes was my 2nd choice. IF the SlowHome Test had an area dedicated to ‘green’ and renewable resources I would have chosen Vista Dunes (eventhough I still feel the floorplans are cramped). I’m part of your average family of 4 and my view is slightly skewed toward floorplans that provide just enough elbow room (not too much since I’m sensitive to who does the cleaning) and LOTS of good function. The Vista Dunes project is phenominal–I am a proponent of THOUGHTFUL design that incorporates as many environmentally-friendly features as possible. The design and construction industries should striving to move in that direction.
    Believe me I experienced some anguish over my decision.
    PS…I enjoy your commentary–very insightful and with reason and logic.

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  • Paul C

    Comment: John and Mathew,
    Congratulations to Cat and Molly K. as this week’s Slow Homers and thank you for the hat tip. Interesting to hear John’s comments vice vie what space to put along the route to the living room. Same “internal debate” I had.

    That is quite the extensive list of towns to visit. Looking forward to seeing the regional differences. Curious that Calgary was not included in the Canadian content and I wonder given their proximity to each other would it be possible to include Seattle in the Vancouver component? I have a hunch both Pacific Northwest city’s would have some good Slow Home prospects.

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  • John Brown

    Comment: Brad,
    Your promised post for next week sounds intriguing — as does the challenge to everyone to try and best it.

    The Watsonia Terrace streetscape looks very enticing. All that green….

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  • Anonymous

    Comment: The Watsonia Terrace house is right at the end of the cul-de-sac. In satellite view it is the one without a clay roof. Unfortunately, StreetView does not go that far down the street. Which brings up a point, sometimes you have to search a bit to find the property you are looking for.

    And in case you missed yesterdays post, there is another interesting home listed. It is considerably more expensive but then it is by an iconic 20th century architect. Check yesterday’s last posts for the link.

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  • BradW

    Comment: Terri – here is a link to a site with views of famous TV houses

    http://www.zillow.com/howto/FamousBirdsEye.htm

    You can also try sites like Virtual Globetrotting and Wikimapia. Also, if you have a house in mind that you want to see just do a Google search.

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  • Terri

    Comment: Thanks, Brad, for that address. I may not remember famous TV houses off the top of my head, but will be reminded if they’re pointed out to me.

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  • Terri

    Comment: John & Matthew,

    Street View is interesting, but it isn’t always accurate when it comes to finding exact addresses. However, for a big development like Mosaic, it gets one close enough to see how it looked on the date of the roaming camera cars.

    I found that the Slow Home’s mapping this week didn’t indicate any yellow or green flags–only the orange and red ones came up on my system. I figure that’s why I couldn’t find the loft I’d entered during the first week in the list or on the map.

    Also, it would be great, and more streamlined, if the city in question is already in the map window instead of the whole continent, so that we don’t have to waste so much time trying to find the place. If you zoom in more than a couple of increments, you get stuck in the middle of the continent somewhere and have to find your way out–either by starting over or moving, moving, moving the hand…

    Or does anyone have any useful tips for zooming in more efficiently? I’d sure like to know before I club my computer!

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  • Anonymous

    Comment: Terri – Thanks for your feedback about the mapping and Google Street View. We are still in the process of refining our programming, so try again – the map should be showing all the colored flags and also should also zoom into the City scale automatically. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to have the flags show up on the map after your have analyzed a property using the Slow Home Test. We appreciate your input as we work along on the Project!

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  • Matthew North

    Comment: Sorry the last comment to Terri was from me!

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  • Creo

    Comment: I just found this site a week ago and I absolutely love it!
    Thanks so much for putting this together and I am looking forward to the conquest for the slowest homes :) I think I have learned more from your explanations/mini design projects for home design than the last four years in Architecture school!

    -Creo

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  • Terri

    Comment: Matthew,
    Thanks for your answer. Maybe I’m not following the right course of action, but when I zoom in on the Slow Home map window, I get to all the LA districts okay, but there are still no yellow or green flags.

    Is anyone else having this problem?

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  • Terri

    Comment: I see that Tom Legrady posted on the 1st that he’s using IE7 and getting no markers at all. Perhaps this is partly why I’m having my problem…

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  • Anonymous

    Comment: I use FireFox – no problems and the map loads zoomed in on LA.

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  • Anonymous

    Comment: When I use IE I have the same problems as described by Terri and Tom.

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  • Mid America Mom

    Comment: Welcome Creo! Thank you for joining the project. We look forward to your participation.

    Are you done with school yet?

    FYI to the webfolks. I can see our yellow and green markers as a firefox user, tonight at least! But I did notice that it looks like none of the plans from the developments over in Irvine are not showing up. Do you have to have a physical street address for these to register?

    thanks!
    Mid America Mom

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  • Mid America Mom

    Comment: OOPS! “none of the plans from the developments over in Irvine Are showing up.”

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  • Mid America Mom

    Comment: John and Matthew three things.

    Regarding late day submissions on the design project exercise. I am not surprised as people may be at work or unable to work on a redesign until the evening… But then our participants, be it passive or active, are in different time zones and maybe continents? May be difficult.

    If you do not already have it in place you may want to explore tracking our participants various statistics- geographical location, length of stay on site, how many times they visit, etc. It can be another tool in your decision process and included in results.

    I cannot recall what my search words were in google but when looking for this weeks focus properties I found OUR URL on the front page of results! I had to laugh. We must have been quite busy as a group. Wonder if some LA home buyers found us. I think it would be fantastic to try to capture some homebuyers out there in the markets we are analyzing.. maybe some result placement work would help.

    Thanks for reading this and I look forward to our addition next week.

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  • Matthew North

    Comment: Hi Mid America Mom – As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Yes, we get viewers from all over the world, so I shouldn’t be so “surprised” about late day design project submissions! We currently use Google Analytics to track our traffic – and I agree I would love to reach homebuyers in the cities we are looking at and get them involved in the Project – another great resource to tap into.

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  • James Scott

    Comment: I know that the focus is on 9 specific cities, but I would be saddened to not see what was happening in other cities, particularly smaller cities, across the US and Canada.

    As an example we see a lot of green focused news in pop media from smaller areas such as Ithaca, NY or Portland, OR, etc.

    Not that I would want to see you endlessly travel the continent but possibly the Slow Homers have wind of other properties that they would appreciate the opportunity to post. There may be some gems out there that deserve our support and encouragement.

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  • Terri

    Comment: James,
    I second your suggestion (above)–to post other cities’ that further the Slow Movement. For example, I knew we had a LEED project here in Victoria, but until recently hadn’t thought much about it. But after seeing that the LEED projects are the ones winning our Slow Home of the week, I’ve looked more closely at the advertisement for this flagship project in our communitiy. Apparently Phase One is the highest rated LEED Platinum building in the WORLD, let alone Canada or North America (docksidegreenvictoria.com).

    So, it seems there are probably lots of places out there that deserve more attention.

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