Curbed LA: Curbed LA Goes to LivingHomes House

Curbed LA Goes to LivingHomes House
Monday, December 18, 2006, by jwilliams

Saturday afternoon we were joined by an especially chipper co-editor Marissa and Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG (which was just named a Yahoo! Pick of 2006), along with his charming wife, for a personalized tour of the LivingHomes prefab installation in Santa Monica. As you know, we have discussed the home repeatedly, good and bad, so the opportunity to see the interior up close and in person could not be missed.

We arrived in the afternoon ready to meet Steve Glenn, the owner and founder of LivingHomes, only to find a busload of Dutch tourists swarming around the home in their non-wooden shoes, taking pictures and asking questions. We noticed that they stared at us with dead, inhuman eyes, judging us silently. Stupid Dutch. The home is really quite attractive. Many of the modern and prefab homes we've visited recently have sort of an IKEA-ish feel to them, so we were surprised to find the LivingHomes house had a nice comfy lived-in and livable feel to it. After the Dutch left, Steve sat down with us for a nice chat. Among the many things we learned was that LivingHomes has several other units in production in SoCal and sales are going well. A redesigned Web site, scheduled to launch soon, will provide potential buyers with the ability to customize their homes. He also showed us some things which we were not allowed to take pictures of. Whatever. More pictures and words after the jump.

As the first LEED Platinum certified home built in the United States, the LivingHomes house featured an array of enviro-friendly features including solar panel thingys and some sort of water heating system. Jesus, we should have taken notes.

Among the more whimsical features of the home was Steve's collection of LEGOs, including this stash in the middle of a coffee table - a custom piece, he assured us.

And leave it to a bunch of blogger nerds to obsess over the built in cappuccino machine, which naturally we all congregated to. Screw sustainability, we like shiny metallic built in wall appliances!

Kudos to Steve for a house well done. We look forward to visiting your future installations.
· Curbed LA Interviews: Ray Kappe [Curbed LA]
· Letter to LA Times Editor on LivingHomes [Curbed LA]
· Getting Closer, LivingHomes Prefab Almost Done [Curbed LA]

Posted in Architecture, Design & Shelter, Green Building, Real Estate Development, Santa Monica & Venice

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Comments (8 extant)

"There are two kinds of people I can't stand. Those who are intolerant of other cultures, and the Dutch." nice write up. makes me feel like I'm there again.

By Marissa at Curbed LA at December 18, 2006 2:56 PM

I think Steve Glenn's company is on the verge of something great. I enjoyed reading about their prefab homes and I have actually spotlighted them on my blog (www.equitygreen.com).

By Garrett at December 18, 2006 7:22 PM

Still no pictures of the bathrooms?

By John LA at December 18, 2006 7:39 PM

The house is a great addition to Skwerl's neighborhood...

I wonder, however, if it's popularity with gawking architects and tourists is responsible for the brand new stop sign clogging up one of my back routes home...

Stop sign proliferation, speed humps, and traffic "calming" measures are amongst Skwerl's pet peeves...

By Skwerl at December 19, 2006 9:20 AM

hi John LA - I have a couple of shots of the bathroom on my flickr account - its a hard space to photograph: http://www.flickr.com/photos/85811296@N00/

By Marissa at Curbed LA at December 19, 2006 10:28 AM

The house always looks great in pictures but the build quality looked mediocre when seeing it in person a few months ago. Also, the water feature in the garden was alarming given the environmental/sustainable marketing. Maybe it is a solar powereed pump lifting gray water???

By biter at December 19, 2006 2:45 PM

Enough already. This was the best review we've seen on this just ok house that was actually fun to read.
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=37348_0_24_0_C

By KillerPaw at December 19, 2006 4:39 PM

Keep up the good work on the coverage guys. At some point some roof top deck pictures would be awesome! Maybe this was one of the things Steve wouldn't let you take pictures of. Most of the "secrets" reside up there...

John LA was wanting some bathroom pics. I've taken quite a few of those, plus some of the powder room, which no-one has for some reason. For such a small space it's fabulous with this 1 foot thick concrete cast sink (or similar material). It's a fantastic house! We are trying everything we can to be in one by next year here in Knoxville, TN.

Here's the pics:

http://web.mac.com/atomicanne/iWeb/LivingHome/Photos.html

By Scott W at January 6, 2007 2:26 PM

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