Updated Eichler kitchens

Last week, a woman named Johnna left a series of comments here and she mentioned that she was having difficulty making decisions about how to renovate her Eichler home. She wanted to update the kitchen particularly, but in a way that honored the architecture of her home while still allowing the business of life in 2009 to proceed efficiently.

Well, the terrific website Styleture ran a story yesterday about that very thing, updated kitchens in Eichler homes. So with all attribution to and great admiration for Styleture, I'm going to talk about the same thing. But first a little background. Johnna, if you're reading this, you can skip this part.

Joseph Eichler was a post-war, California real estate developer who built homes in a Modernist style. He worked with some of the most notable architects of the time and together the style of their buildings came to be known as California Modern. California Modern was a middle class homage to Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, among others. The homes featured exposed beams, vaulted ceilings, open floor plans and they pioneered the idea of indoor/outdoor living through the use of enormous windows and sliding patio doors. California Modern is what gave the rest of the world the very idea of a great room.

Most of the remaining Eichlers are clustered in the suburbs of of San Francisco and there are pockets of them outside of LA and into Orange County. Nothing screams California to me like an Eichler and about the only thing that could get me to pack up and head to suburban San Francisco would be the chance to live in one.

Eichler homes were were revolutionary for a host of reasons that transcend architecture. Eichler built affordable homes for everyone. In 1950, Eichler Homes instituted a policy that stated that they would sell to anyone without regard to race or religion. He had a vision of an integrated, modern suburbia at a time when such views were considered to be beyond the fringe. The National Association of Home Builders refused to endorse his non-discriminatory policies and in 1958, he resigned from the group in protest. All hail Joseph Eichler.

Eichler homes never really took off while they were being built and Eichler eventually went bankrupt in the mid-sixties. He left behind an architectural and cultural legacy and today his homes enjoy a fanatical popularity he could never have imagined.

So, this brings me to the terrific piece in Styleture yesterday and Johna's comments from last week. The photo above is what a vintage Eichler kitchen looked like:

Now I want to stress that this is not Johnna's kitchen, but here are two before photos of a a kitchen in an Eichler in Palo Alto.

Here it is post-renovation and ADA-compliant.

Oh my oh my is that gorgeous or what? It does everything it needs to do while honoring the home in which it sits. I'm getting goosebumps.

And Johnna, here are a couple more inspiration photos.

If you have never spent any time poking around on Styleture, please add that site to your reading list.

***Update, noon 10/15
Styleture has an expanded look a the Palo Alto, ADA-compliant renovation and you can find it here. All of the cabinetry in the Palo Alto house is by Alno USA. 

Dyson reimagined the fan

Well take a look at this.

That is what a table fan as reimagined by Sir James Dyson and his team of crack engineers looks like. And look Ma, No blades! Amid a fair amount of hoopla, Dyson announced the launch of its new Air Multiplier yesterday. They threw away everything they knew about fans and started over.

Here's how a conventional table fan works.

Now in this conventional fan, air gets chopped up by blades and then gets shot across the room in an uneven, oscillating stream.

The Air Multiplier is different. It has no blades and air gets shot out of the loop at high speed in a single stream. It uses electrical energy more efficiently from the get go, and the circular shape of the air diffuser pulls in air from the back (called inducement) and from the sides (called entrainment). The effect of the entrainment increases the speed of the moving air by fifteen times. Remarkable! Watch this video:




And here's Sir James himself, explaining how this technological marvel works:




Amazing.

The Air Multiplier is available now through Dyson's website and Dyson's website only. Get 'em while you can!

Sears' Blue Crew; a follow up from Saturday

I wrote a post on Saturday that detailed the trouble I ran into when I was looking for detailed specifications for a Kenmore built-in microwave oven. That post set off a firestorm of commiseration in my comments section and on Twitter that lasted throughout the weekend. When I first wrote that post I thought that I was the only one who had these frustrations. To say I'm not alone in this is an understatement.

On Twitter there were numerous reTweets of my post and some loud calls for Sears to pay attention to what I was saying about their lack of clear dimensions. I hoped genuinely that someone at their HQ would respond. Despite how it may sound, I don't like to bash for the sake of bashing. I'd rather find solutions. Really.

Well, on Monday morning I received an e-mail from Michael Léger, a member of Sears' management team. He'd been forwarded my blog post and he wanted to talk to me about my experience with Kenmore. He was very clear in his e-mail that he wasn't out to make a Kenmore convert out of me. Rather, what he wanted to gain from a conversation with me was a better understanding of the sort of information design professionals need from them. I called him almost immediately.

I'd written some unflattering things about Sears and I expected the conversation to be a bit awkward, but it wasn't at all. This wasn't a matter of a big company trying to schmooze me so that I would take back the mean things I said about them. Rather, he was genuinely interested in what a kitchen designer needed from a manufacturer. I stressed to him that I wasn't alone in my frustration and he listened. He asked if I'd be willing to talk to him and a couple members of his team and of course I agreed. I don't want anyone to fail, whether I'm a customer or not.

I was so impressed with the conversation we were having that I volunteered to ratchet up the level of discourse by an order of magnitude. I told him that I would assemble a team of my own, a group of kitchen designers. My team would have a mega conference call with his team and together, we'd tell Sears what we need from them. Again, this is not an attempt to sway brand loyalties, but what it is is a rare opportunity to communicate directly with a very large player in the appliance business.

So I need some brave volunteers to participate in this conference call. Jamie, Susan, Kelly, Pam and Clarity; as commenters on Saturday, I'm starting with you. Whattya say about taking the opportunity to do something about our complaints? These guys are willing to listen and all we have to do is pick up the phone. I'll arrange everything so that it happens at an appointed time some time in the near future. Think about it, they want our feedback, how cool is that?

I'm opening up this invitation to any kitchen designer who deals with appliances. I'd like to get a list of participants and their availabilities to them by Friday. So designers, spread this around to your colleagues.

This not an opportunity to complain, but rather a chance to build something. Come on gang, let's do it!

The new issue of Design Commotion is live

Yes, the October issue of Design Commotion went live yesterday. Design Commotion is a monthly magazine that's devoted to world design. DC is chock full of images and articles and the October issue has the added bonus of a collaboration I did with Saxon Henry, Design Commotion's editor. Check it out, it's like an Apartment Therapy for adults.

The second story in DC demands special note. Take a look at this room.

This is the new Apsleys restaurant in London's Lanesborough Hotel. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful restaurant dining room in my life. Wow.

Why why why Delilah?

That's the name of a Tom Jones song and it has nothing to do with this post. Well, I suppose I'm about to shake my fist at the sky and shout "Why?!" The similarities stop there though.

I am spending the better part of this weekend drawing my heart out and coming up with great rooms for clients. As I'm wont, I have the TV on low in the background to provide white noise. I'm working on another floor plan and the project in question is the back end of a house. We're removing a bunch of the interior walls and creating an open floor plan to replace the rabbit warren of hallways and small rooms that are in the space now. When this is all said and done, the family room, the kitchen and the dining room will all be in one big space. Even though I don't sell furniture or carpets, I usually end up specifying the furnishings that go into the rooms I draw.

So as I was sitting here, drawing away contentedly, I heard a commercial for Rooms to Go that jarred my out of my reverie. Rooms to Go is a chain of cheap furniture stores in the South that specializes in selling entire rooms of matching furniture at once. It's all bad --poorly designed and poorly constructed imported garbage that will end up being thrown away in five years. They are running a special this weekend where they're giving away a 40" flat screen TV with the purchase of one of their $1900 living rooms.

Because I'm drawing a living room, I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to living room assaults right now and the $1900 living room they're pimping is just that, an assault. I mean, look at this thing:

My eyes burn when I have to look at stuff like that. Sheez-oh-man, I get it that there's plenty of room in this world for everybody's tastes, but this stuff is beyond the pale.

Here is is again from another perspective:

And here it is with no people in it so you can better imagine yourself reclining in this luxury.

Imagine, drink holders and snack trays built right into your sofa! No wonder Americans are so bloody fat. They ought to call this the Lethargy Sofa. It gets worse though.

To the left of the guy in the second photo is a white table lamp.

This is it. Again, ouch. They are throwing this in with the $1900 living room suite as a bonus.

I don't understand what would prompt someone to waste money on crap like this. In addition to being poorly made, it looks terrible. That Lethargy Sofa up there retails for $1199.99 when it's purchased on its own.

For 99 cents less, you can have the 84-inch Eugene sofa from Room and Board. The Eugene is made in the US, it's tasteful, it's well made and will last forever. Finding reasonably-priced, well-made furniture is not difficult but it does require a little legwork. You don't have to chose between Rooms to Go crap and a $10,000 heirloom-quality sofa. Really. There's a nearly unlimited number of options between those extremes. When it comes to furniture, how it's made is more important than who made it. Do a little research, find out what makes a good sofa a good sofa. I wrote a piece on sofa construction back when I was just starting out as a blogger. Check out Sofas, Sofas Everywhere but not a Place to Sit from February, 2008. And now that that's out of my system I can get back to work.