The New House Rules

Last week our company announced two big advances in our products and services: the 3BMatrix™and the OBPlusWall™.They both will help us achieve our on-going, decades-old goal to build high quality, high performance homes at more affordable prices.

For this post, I’ll try to explain why we developed the 3BMatrixsystem and how how it works.

With credit to Vitruvius’sfamous triad*, I believe that good architecture (beauty) is an essential ingredient in quality (functional and durable) homebuilding. As a builder, my criticism of the typical American home has usually been focused on the low standard of construction. But I’m equally critical of the low standard of home design that permeates our landscape. Bad design–really the absence of design in most cases–is just as responsible for turning the American Dream into a nearly disposable commodity.

In fact, the early demise of far too-many homes probably stems more often from bad design than from bad building. In production home communities, mind-numbing repetition is compounded by a complete lack of site responsiveness or vernacular expression. With only a few designs to deploy, the home designs that are conceived to work for everybody are visually exciting to nobody. When things in these kinds of homes start to go bad or require change, their occupants too often don’t see them as worth maintaining or renovating. The homeowners’ abandonment of care quickly turns houses into shacks and entire neighborhoods into slums. Therefore, a key aspect of sustainable, higher performance homebuilding is that the buildings themselves must have character enough to be seen as worth caring for..

This requirement demands that good, individual design somehow must become a part of the process by which homes are conceived and built. There must be a better way for production builders. They are still building most of America’s homes. Unfortunately.

There also needs to be a better way for people who are seeking to build anew home on their own, but don’t have the budget to hire an architect. The typical solution involves the search for the perfect plan by sifting through the many thousands available through home plan websites, books and magazines. (one company claims to offer 27,500 house plans). If the perfect plan isn’t found, it is usually possible to get some customization through the plan company or by simply asking the local builder to make the changes, if they are minor. This process obviously works for many people or there wouldn’t be so many plan companies competing for the business.

There’s a flaw in both of these approaches: there are no generic people.The needs, tastes, and desires of those who plan to build a new home have infinite variation. When meeting that individual level of customization is added to the just-as-infinite varying opportunities and challenges posed by the building site climate, orientation, terrain, and regional building context considerations, it becomes obvious why it is usually difficult to find a preconceived plan that is perfectly suited to the homeowners and their situation.

The new Bensonwood Building Block (3B) Matrix is a part of an alternative solution to the problem. Instead of focusing entirely on an individual house plan, we have created a group of building blocks with pre-conceived connections and engineering that literally have thousands of configuration possibilities. Our full library has many hundreds of building blocks, but for this beta launch, we have designed three separate series, each with around 25 or 30 building blocks. While we will ultimately be offering at least four “standard” plans in each series, the intent of each matrix is to have wide-ranging capacity to meet client needs, while also connecting the building specifically to the site conditions.

Like Legos, the system is based on an underlying 3D grid. All the building blocks fit with particular connection rules and a software automation process, allowing the addition or subtraction of blocks or their elements to be efficient, while retaining the appropriate construction information.

Each matrix family is planned for a wide range of preconceived outcomes,as well as possibilities we’re sure we haven’t considered.

All the families start with a base volume and can grow along their volume or adjacent to their volume. Each matrix series also has selected pieces, components or elements that can enhance the space or the building character.
Each matrix series has its own capacities and limitations.
Every component, element and block** (see definitions, below) have “fixed and variable” options, allowing for customization of things like window locations, roof overhangs, material choices, finishes, etc.
The 3BMatrix library is paralleled with a library of floor plan patterns, living spaces and living space combinations. The floor plan library has both individual rooms and combinations of rooms or living areas that make up larger spaces. We have kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms,master bedroom suites, entry patterns, open living area patterns, etc. The design grid ensures that the 3BMatrix and the floor plan configurations and details are compatible.

The process of shaping the floor plans from the library and combining building blocks allows us to find solutions to even very unique situations quickly. After assembling the plans and blocks, we still may need to customize the floor plan details somewhat, but we will likely have reduced that effort to certain areas and details. It saves a lot of time.

Instead of giving them individual names, we named each matrix series after villages. It was a way to suggest how much variation in shape, style and appearance we know can be derived from the chosen building blocks and our plan library. Other matrix series will be suggested in the future. We decided that three was enough for now. They are Hartland,Greenfieldand Fairview.If we were Toyota (without the defects!), Hartland would be our Camry; Greenfield our Corolla and Fairview our Prius.

Hartland is based on a two story volume; the others are a single story. The smallest plan in the Fairview group would be under 700 square feet, while the largest in Hartland could easily be over 4000 square feet. In general, style is flexible in all three series. By changing windows, roof overhangs, trim treatments, etc., all three can lean toward contemporary or be developed into conventional styles.

The Fairview is somewhat radical in its design approach and is all aboutenergy efficiency. The idea in the design layout is to separate the utility functions from the living areas, creating a band of heavily focused mechanical areas on the north side and opening up the primary living areas to bigger volumes, light and sun on the south facing side. It also creates a broad roof expanse for potential PV area and solar hot water. The design concept was derived from our Unity House, which achieved Net-Zero performance and a LEED platinum certification. All the homes in our Fairview series are capable of performing those feats again. Like the Prius, the Fairview has unique aspects and features for the benefit of increasing energy performance. It gives up formality and space in certain areas in exchange.

In a way, revealing the 3BMatrix is a little like revealing the “man behind the curtain.” We’ve been designing on our grid for at least 15 years, which has given us time to build up huge libraries of both 2D and 3D blocks, elements, rooms and patterns. By distilling them into more discreet groups, we hope to increase the ease of building up customized whole house solutions, while also decreasing the cost of both designing and building them.

As we try to perfect this system and process, we have future goals.

First, it would be great if we could open the system up for use and interaction by other designers or even the clients themselves. We are working with a CAD software developer on the idea, but it is far from being fluid and practical at this point. The real efficiency isn’t just in creating the design, but in automatically having all of the construction information right down to the trim details, and then being able to directly relay that information to CNC equipment for cutting and shaping. That’s the way it works within our in-house program, but the software aspect alone is too big and complex to share easily.

Second, we’d like to be working with other builders, architects and suppliers to spread and share the development of building blocks and plan details within a grid and matrix concept. We’d welcome the partnerships. It would be a dream if even production builders could achieve their building efficiencies without resorting to the endless duplication of dumbed-down designs that compromise performance. This is the type of system and technology that could be a real solution for improving the average American Home.

*Among many other things, Vitruvius is famous for his assertion that a building must exhibit three essential qualities: firmitas, utilitas, venustas — that is, durable, useful, and beautiful.

**A Few Definitions:

Off-site fabrication: We cut, shape and assemble construction components, elements, blocks and modules in controlled conditions away from the building site. It’s not “pre” anything. It’s just fabricated. We don’t say that windows, cabinets and equipment are prefabricated. They are just fabricated, or manufactured, as more complete products.

Component: parts, pieces and various materials are aggregated into assemblies or products that have added value, but are still substantially incomplete. A window is a component, as is a framed wall or floor section.

Element: When several components and additional parts and pieces are assembled together to make the construction unit more complete. A wall with windows, insulation and siding installed is an element as is a closed roof or floor assembly. Elements are typically panels.

Building block: When the elements are assembled into a three dimensional building assembly. A dormer is a small building block.An entire building bay, extension, porch or room addition are larger building blocks.

Module: A building block with finishes and mechanical systems completed and installed off-site

Reading Michael Lewis’s new book, TheBig Short would have been fun if it were fictitious. It’s fast moving, well written, and full of colorful characters who play out bizarre roles in a tale that should have had a kind of philosophical Orwellian foreboding. Instead, it’s about how and why the market crashed in 2008. If you want to know how we got into this awful economic quagmire, the story told in The Big Short is as good an explanation as I’ve read.

The explanation, in short: left to their own devices, there are lots of selfish, greedy people out there who lie, cheat, and steal. They have no trouble taking away all the money, along with the humble dreams, of millions of innocent, trusting, vulnerable people.

In this tale, both the heroes and villains are villains. The hero-villains are smart gamers; the villain-villains are clueless corporate stooges. They’re all greedy, duplicitous and amoral. Because money is the only game, nothing else matters even when they know it should. One of the characters, Michael Burry, sums up what should have been a moral dilemma quite nicely:

“I have a job to do. Make money for my clients. Period. But boy it gets morbid when you start making investments that work out extra great if a tragedy occurs.”

Then he did just that, and made very large and explicit bets against subprime mortgage bonds. He knew enough to bet everything he had on the calamity of others and he won the bet.

So, on one side were all the financial houses that originated the subprime mortgages, the firms that packaged and sold the subprime mortgages, the fund managers who invested in the subprime mortgage-backed bonds and the agencies that rated the subprime mortgage bonds. On the other side were the guys who figured out not only the likelihood of failure, but how to increase the likelihood of failure. It was a gargantuan stakes financial shootout in a wild west cowboy culture with no rules and no sheriff.

Again and again, I found myself reading passages twice and thinking, “This can’t be legal. Why is this allowed?”

Apparently, it’s not. The sheriff finally showed up–even if a couple of years late–and has been investigating the crime scene. Finally, the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Goldman Sachs with fraud.I’ve read numerous articles about the indictment just trying to find some hope that the indictments will stick. Late yesterday, the NYT reported that there is strong evidence that the top executives of Goldman were personally overseeing the mortgage department and won’t easily be able to blame their racket on lower level staff. Good. I hope they nail ‘em.

As The Big Short makes clear, this kind of internal dealing wasn’t limited to just one company. There was double-dealing and lying going on everywhere. It’s how they roll.

These guys were essentially both mixing the toxic Kool-Aid and then making bets against the health of those who drank it. That’s dark and evil behavior, and I do hope there are consequences. There would be few tears if those bankers would come to learn the real meaning of the suffering caused by their “Bet against the American Dream,” (from the title of a song commissioned by ThisAmerican Life.)
Our tears are for the pawns in their game.

We cry for the millions and millions of lives have been disrupted or turned on end so that a few bankers could show all aces and cash in big.

We cry for the people who lost their live savings and their homes; for the formally middle class, now learning to live in poverty.

We cry for the millions of good people now out of work and running out of hope.

Our tears are for those whose innocent pursuit of the American Dream turned into their worst nightmare.
Our tears are for many hard working small business owners whose good enterprises are now shuttered.

I cry for the difficulties in my industry and my own business; for all the good craftsmen and builders whose noble profession was sent to ruins by an evil racket; for my associates whose jobs are much less secure and who rightfully worry about our ability to weather this calamity.

I don’t like vengeance, but I do wish those gaming bankers would come to know what is like to not be able to pay basic bills, or where their family will sleep tonight, or where the next meal will come from. I want them to sit down with some of the families whose lives they have ruined and hear first hand about the emotional, physical and economic damage they’ve done.

In that setting, I’d like them to explain themselves.

Here’s the rest of the story I alluded to in my last blog, Affordable Home.

By at least a relative measure, with the project I reported on and others we have been doing recently, our company has essentially marked the achievement of an objective set at a company “Seamless Summit”** in 1982. We set a goal to advance our skills and capacities to a level that would bring us into regular work on the very best homes being built in the United States. At the same meeting, we agreed that our ultimate goal was to use the innovations, advanced capabilities, production efficiencies, and knowledge we hoped to gain doing higher-end projects back to the building of high quality affordable homes.

At the time, most of our building projects involved affordable homes. The houses we were working on then were typically simple and small. Many–if not most–were built for Do-it-Yourselfers (DIY), who usually had far more energy and determination than dollars. Our timberframes made for a perfect way to collaborate with DIY’ers because the frame and enclosure completed the most difficult and time consuming part of the project, giving them an ability to use their sweat equity in the areas in which there was less risk, less requirement for builder knowledge, and less physically demanding work. These kinds of building projects were good work, and fun. It was very rewarding to help people build high quality homes that might not have been possible without the support and value we provided

But there was a problem. We weren’t making any money. It’s hard to run a company on perpetually empty coffers.

Since the early 1970′s we had been concentrating our efforts on the revival of timberframe construction. We had developed methods and details that made our buildings some of the most energy-efficient homes being built at the time. Our revival of an old craft wasn’t intended to take homebuilding backwards; rather, it was our attempt to develop a new and better approach in which durability and high performance were inherent in the basis of our system: timber “furniture” wrapped with a high tech insulation blanket.

In this, we had been successful. The timberframe revival was starting to get some traction. We had demonstrated that it was a good alternative with unique attributes. Still, we worked in the margins of visibility and viability. We realized that we needed to bring our work into the daylight and prove its merits in every aspect or it would become yet another alternative building method that couldn’t find its way into the mainstream. We came to the conclusion that if we were ever going to earn real and steady paychecks, we’d have to earn it by bringing a higher degree of perfection to our finished products. Our homes needed better design, better engineering, and more refined solutions for the integration of mechanical systems and interior finishes.

At a time when we were incredibly weak and our future looked dubious, our Seamless Summit resulted in a strategy to go on offense instead of defense. We determined to improve our craft skills, enhance our design capabilities, get serious about engineering, and develop more capacity and efficiency to allow us to take on larger projects. While we were nearly desperate to earn more money, we knew we could only get there by providing more value.

It seemed like a slow road, but the advancements came steadily. We learned how to do more complex buildings, our tolerances tightened, our designs became more sophisticated, and the engineering more rigorous. During that period, I wrote my second book (The Timber-Frame Home: Design, Construction, Finishing) to try to bring better understanding about timberframe construction to both homeowners and professionals.

Within five or six years we had turned things around in our favor. Our expanded capability and capacity won contracts to design and build bigger homes, with bigger budgets, for clients who had higher expectations. We were then able to pay real-world wages and also invest in better tools, facilities and training. The business stress shifted from survival to execution, which were just the sort of challenges we were hoping to face.

Meeting the challenges of high-end building eventually became standard fare for us. We developed a reputation for integrating the best qualities of design, engineering, craftsmanship and high performance. Over the last 20 years, this type of work has taken us to almost all 50 states, Canada, and a few overseas locations. I featured a selection of our projects in my 1998 book, Timberframe: The Art and Craft of the Post-and-Beam Home.

By the middle 90′s, we were already talking about the second part of our Seamless Summit objectives. Were we good enough, efficient enough, innovative enough and adaptable enough to bring all the we had learned and developed back to the arena of affordable homes? Since we also didn’t want to compromise the critical elements of our standards, moving down in the market was much more difficult than moving up. We could have done it years ago if we were willing to lower the standards of structural quality, design quality or energy efficiency, but then it wouldn’t be us.

But now…finally, we are closer than ever to the goal we set so many years ago. Our homes are not cheap, and I wouldn’t want to pretend that was so, but we now have our costs down to the point of being competitive or less expensive with the site built alternative, while offering a higher standard, and delivering the finished product in less than half the time. My last post was a story about the least expensive turnkey home we will have built since the early 1980′s. It’s small, but it will be extremely well-built and energy-efficient. It will also have a beautiful interior space with a wonderful open volume. There are fewer timbers, but it will contain the quality standards of numerous timberframe craftsmen and that’s saying a lot.

It’s not the end of the road, but I’m very encouraged. We have more projects like this coming up and I’ll tell their stories in the months to come.

**In the middle of our original shop there was a big steel and cast ironwood furnace I had salvaged from the basement of an old home. It devoured our wood waste and in return kept the entire shop pretty warm, but perhaps more importantly it served as the location for all of our informal gatherings and company meetings. It was our hearth and heart.

Above the door of the furnace, the name “Seamless” was embossed in the casting. We assumed it was the model name and that a unit that was somehow seamless must have been seen to be an advantage over one that was not. But since several weld seams were visible in the steel section,we never figured out exactly what “seamless” meant to imply. We just knew it kept us warm and close.

Many of the milestones of our company history began at the Seamless. It was there that we celebrated events and achievements large and small and it was there that we settled our disagreements and managed to come to consensus on matters large and small. The gravitational pull of the Seamless was powerful enough that we often met there even in the warm months when there was no radiant heat–just a big, ugly furnace, and habit.

When we added a big wing to the shop, the Seamless could no longer keep the entire space warm. Since it was also a bit of a fire hazard, we moved it out and replaced it with a wood gassifier which fired a boiler for hydronic heat. The heat was better and more efficient, but Seamless was gone and sorely missed.

The loss of Seamless happened about the same time as the installation of our first computer network to connect our workstations and store our files and information. We were early adopters of computer technology andwere already suffering from data loss and disconnected computers. Finally getting networked was a big deal. Of course, the network needed a name. Let’s see, it’s supposed to link us together and a keep us connected, right? Of course–easy.

It’s called Seamless.

Once again, bad news begets good news.

For homebuilders, the latest news couldn’t be worse.

Sales of new single-family houses in February 2010 were at aseasonally adjusted annual rate of 308,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 2.2 percent (±15.3%)* below the revised January rate of 315,000 and is 13.0 percent (±12.2%) below the February 2009 estimate of 354,000.

Each successive month has been setting a record for being the worst annualized monthly sales numbers for about 75 years. In better times, these numbers were three or four times what we have seen in than these last few months.

It’s tough times in our business. What’s a homebuilder to do?

What we are doing is learning and changing at a very rapid rate. Like any species or organism catapulted into a new environment, the laws of the jungle are simple: change or fade away. So we are paying very careful attention to what is wanted and needed by those homebuyers who remain in the market. That’s where the good news comes in. People now want homes that are smaller, better and cheaper, and we can do that. The first two aspirations are our sweet spot and the third one suits us fine, as long as all our better building standards are accounted for. The challenge is a good one, and we think we’re measuring up.

The home under construction in our shop this week represents a great milestone for us. We are building a complete turnkey home, including foundation, excavation, fixtures and good finishes for about $150K.

The home has about 1000 square feet, on one level. The living area and the bedrooms have cathedral ceilings. The area over the bath and central closets has a flat ceiling with access for storage and mechanical systems. This home will be full of natural light and will have a grand volume in the public area.

Shed roofs over the windows will help to provide summer shading and their brackets help to break up the facade. The home is simple but still has some nice features and will be extremely tight and energy efficient.

How do we give high quality and low cost at the same time? Our shop conditions are the key. Most of the cutting and shaping is automated and extremely accurate. We simply have to assemble the individual elements and components in the most efficient manner. With our off site building system, we have a parallel fabrication process instead of the linear system that must be adhered to on site. We can do many things simultaneously, which cuts down on time and costs. The walls elements are framed, sheathed, insulated and have their windows installed in the same day. We then can apply both interior and exterior finishes at the same time, working both inside and out, while always being indoors and in “good weather.”

While the walls are being built, the roof panels are also being built in a different shop area. The sheathing and interior drywall will be applied, insulation (dense-packed cellulose) will be blown in.

Meanwhile, we are also preparing the interior partitions and trim, cabinets, etc. When the home goes up in a few weeks, it will happen very quickly. The enclosure will be complete in a few days and the home will be completed in a few weeks afterward.

So, how do we survive in this economy? Simple. Compress time and cost. Enhance quality.

I’m proud to have this excellent example of how our company is proving itself to be a “complex adaptive” survivor in a tough economy. It’s also exciting because it represents fulfillment of a company goal established almost 30 years ago. I’ll say something about that in my next post.

I’ll also show more photos when the house is raised and assembled on site.

I’ve spent a lot of space in many posts here in criticism of the homebuilding industry and of the financing institutions and of their mutual cowboy risk-inherent tendencies. When homebuilding is seen as a primary economic stimulant, bad judgment and greed are confused with smart business decisions. It seems wisdom and restraint are in short supply in the times they are needed most. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get businesses to understand something when their potential growth and wealth is dependent on their not understanding it. Or put another way, when the plundering is good, the philistines among us are exposed.

But the philistines are nothing without willing victims. In truth, it is the consumers who most decide what happens with homes and homebuilding.When our consumers tell us they want bigger more than they want better,square footage goes up and construction quality goes down. When they like luxurious bathrooms, every home has a spa. When they like granite countertops, the quarries work overtime. Market trends redefine what value means on a regular basis, but it’s rare when American consumer biases are more than skin deep. The industry responds by accentuating the current superficial value trends and sacrificing what isn’t seen or appreciated. As minimal as they are, its fortunate that building codes save both consumers and the industry from truly disastrous trade offs.

If better homes are going to be built on a regular basis, the only real hope is by way of more discriminating homebuyers. As the insane bubble years spawned idiotic behavior, the recession is causing homebuyers to have a new wave of rational thinking and increasingly restrained desires.

If our 2010 clients are an indication, the current consumer trends are encouraging. These points are connected; one quality imperative leads to another and they add up to important contributions to what I call theNew House Rules:

1. A home is an investment…in your life.

In this economy, people aren’t buying or building a home to flip, so they’re buying a place to live. Decisions about their home are now calculated on what is important for their quality of life, not every whim and wish.

2. The American dream is a verb, not a noun.

It’s about working, earning and building, not getting something for nothing. Future homeowners have come to their senses and realized that the American Dream is not the right to immediately have the home of their dreams, but the right to work toward the home of their dreams. They are willing to build in several phases or put off finishes and amenities to get the home built right in the first place.

3. Build small, live large.

They want their homes to be smaller. A few years ago, the standard size seemed to be well above 3000 square feet. Now people want their home to be smaller and less expensive to support in terms of energy and maintenance costs. The average home size for our customers is dropping to 2500 square feet. The next home in our shops will be around1000 square feet.

4. Avoid using your mortgage for expensive fluff.

Our customers are interested in the quality of the building itself and are willing to compromise otherwise expensive millwork, fixtures and finishes to put more of their financial resources into durable structure and energy conservation. For the first time in my building career, I’m seeing people choose lesser quality in finishes and amenities to get more quality in structure and insulation. It’s my dream come true.

5. Mortgage your house, not your life.

Our clients are figuring out how much they can afford and they’re not willing to spend a dime more. In the boom years, it seemed that all budgets were flexible. Many clients would spend way beyond the original budgets as they made changes and upgrades through the building process. The new normal is for fixed budgets, with few, if any changes, and no upgrades. Building budgets mean something again as people are unwilling to risk the possibility their income won’t easily cover the mortgage payments.

6. Invest in what you need, pay for what you want.

Some of our customers are simply putting off the installation of fixtures and finishes until they can pay for them out of pocket. It’s a sensible scheme since there are many things that go into a house, from appliances to light fixtures to carpets that don’t last nearly as long as payments on the mortgage. Over 30 years, a $300 light fixture would cost almost $850 on a typical current mortgage. What are the chances that light fixture would still be in use?

7. Fat is hot. And cool.

Good structure and insulation requires walls that are fatter. For a long time, our minimum wall has been 6 inches thick. With high density insulation, we’ve been able to achieve between R-22 and R-26 with this thickness. But more is better and we are now building most of our homes with an R33-35 standard and a wall thickness that’s closer to 9 inches. Still, some clients want more, so we have projects with walls that are 12 inches and even 16 inches in thickness. Our clients are investing in the real comfort that comes from shelter from the heat and cold with minimal or no expense.

8. Do some work yourself.

Especially with finishes, our clients are choosing to work on their homes in the building process to save construction costs. They are willing to paint, put down flooring or carpet, tackle landscaping projects, and sometimes much more. “Do it yourself” (DIY) homeowner involvement in homebuilding represents both true savings and an opportunity for people to be intimately connected with the making of their living environment. A home should adapt to those who live in it, and the beginning of adaptation is for homeowners to have experience and knowledge in making and remaking the space they dwell in.

This economy is a hardship on many, but these New House Rules are better than the rules that steered us to the waste and excess that ran rampant in the boom years. I had hoped that it would be a vanguard of well-intentioned homebuilders that would lead us to a better standard of homebuilding, but we can only do so much. The real path to affordable, sustainable homebuilding is through the adjusted aspirations and attitudes of our clients. As homebuilders, we need to be able to deliver on the the new requirements, but it is our customers who truly pave the way.

In this economy, any way in which jobs are lost is a shame. On the other hand, it is pretty clear that this “great recession” has been both destructive and cleansing. It has not been kind to bad ideas and narcissistic indulgences. Jobs that were buoyed by lavish habits and idiocy were always at risk.

Hummer is bankrupt. The Hummer idea was always bankrupt; it just took awhile for its physical manifestation to drop off the cliff with it. Actually, it probably was never an actual idea. It may have been more of an observation: when fuel is cheap and wealth comes without effort, people will buy really stupid things.

If nothing else, the Hummer is stupid. It might have been pretty good as an open truck in a desert battlefield, but it’s nearly useless as a work truck: too high for hand loading and too hard to maneuver in real work situations. It’s not good for suburban human transport for the same reasons. Its bigness begets uselessness. It also must be the worst 4-wheel drive vehicle for actual 4-wheel drive situations. It’s too heavy, too wide and too unstable. I had an encounter with a caravan of Hummers on an old mining road in Moab, Utah. I was on a bike. I passed them about mid-day and then came upon them hours later after I doubled back to go back to town. They hadn’t gotten far because two of their vehicles had faltered, hung up, and were broken down. Like me, a similar caravan of Jeeps had driven around them, no doubt wondering as I had, if they knew how silly they looked with all that money and metal, but no useful vehicle; no common sense.

But the foolishness of the vehicle is only half defined by how useless it is; the real highlight is its fuel inefficiency. It had to have been made to maximize fuel consumption, or it wouldn’t be so bad. Its drivers say they average about 10 mpg, so we know it’s commonly much less. Because it has a gross vehicle weight rating over 8500 lbs, the US government does not require it to meet federal fuel efficiency regulations. Its excess was even subsidized through a business equipment deduction that many wealthy people used. The recent bankruptcy therefore ends a loophole in which excess-seeking people could essentially purchase a bigger hose to ensure that they get their fair share of the fossil fuel sucking binge.

Oh yes. Hummers are also ugly. It’s ugly like mutations are ugly; like bad manners are ugly. It’s like when the lack of consideration, refinement, scale and proportion are all mixed together, they will surely produce ugly. It’s an ugly that is far more than how it looks, because the very worst part is what it intentionally projects. What it means is, “I don’t care about the rest of you. I’m going to get mine.”

Therefore, except for the jobs that are lost in its downfall, I say good riddance to the Hummer. May its demise usher in a new era of sanity and improved attitudes.

But that’s about cars and everyone knows I don’t have much appreciation for cars, and that this blog is not about cars, so what’s my point?

It’s about McMansions. Everything I just said about Hummers is also true of huge, gaudy homes, which are widely known by that well-defining, sarcastic appellation. Although McMansions don’t have a singular aesthetic outcome, as Hummers do, we all know them when we see them.

McMansions are also bankrupt. It’s not in the news because no single builder is going down with the sinking McMansion ship. But for all intents and purposes, they are gone. Ask Toll Brothers.

Except for the jobs lost in the process, the loss of McMansion building is a very good thing.

Like Hummers, McMansions aren’t being built because they were always a stupid and wasteful idea.

Like Hummers, McMansions don’t perform their function well; they do it worse. They make comfort and security harder. It takes extra effort to live in them; and effort to support their daily demands.

Like Hummers, McMansions require very big hoses of energy; they suck it with profligate abandon.

Like Hummers, McMansions were made possible by easy financing and tax loopholes. In the real world, they are senseless.

Like Hummers, McMansions are ugly in that same out-of-scale and out-of-proportion way, and they also are ugly in that same mean-spirited way.

And so it is that good news is bad news when a better economy and lower fuel costs spawn human excesses that reveal the worst in us; and bad news is good news when tough times bring out our ability to be frugal and judicious.

If only good news generated as much wisdom as bad news, a sustainable world would be closer at hand.

I’m in Victoria, British Columbia, at the Canadian Home Builders’ Association (CHBA)conference. I was the luncheon speaker yesterday, in a session sponsored by the Canadian Wood Council (CWC). My presentation and message were warmly received, but perhaps only because our country was properly humbled with the Olympic hockey loss. After I acknowledged their hockey superiority, everything else I had to say sounded a little wiser, or at least worth politely listening to. I can’t imagine any words from an American would have been appreciated had the hockey gold not been won by Canada.

It’s not just in hockey that we’ve been humbled, however. The average Canadian home is better than the average American home*. The CHBA has consistently sought to raise standards, lead the research into better materials and methods, champion good innovations, and support education and training. They take pride in the quality of Canadian housing, and are dedicated to continually improving it. In the discussions and meetings I’ve had with the builders here—and in all the CHBA reports I’ve been reading—there’s a consistent theme about raising the bar, whether the subject is energy, durability, safety, or construction efficiency. It’s what trade associations are supposed to do and they do it with diligence.

The U.S. homebuilders’ association (NAHB), on the other hand, gives lip service to standards improvements, but spend much of their leadership effort in lobbying against code or regulatory changes that would help to enact what they say they are for. Instead, they fight hard to minimize standard upgrades with the might of their “experts” and attorneys, using funds from their membership dues. If we were scoring a game of homebuilders’ associations in a competition of doing what is right for their consumers and their country, this one is not nearly as close as the hockey game.

But that’s not all. The Canadian banks didn’t get caught up in the sub-prime lending disaster. They have constraints built into their regulations that prevent that kind of wild, free-for-all gaming of homebuyers. Since Canada is so affected by what goes on south of their border, their economy and market was deeply influenced by the bubble mania, but the builders I’ve been talking to didn’t let it steer their business plans into risky territory.

On the other hand, the U.S. economic collapse in late 2008 did pull the Canadian homebuilding industry down with it. They were, and are, innocent victims. Still, the Canadians have been buffered from deeper problems by their stronger banks, by the lack of foreclosures, and by the wisdom of the building community to stick to building homes rather than chasing baseless profits.

Yesterday, in one of the conference reports, an economist said that they are already in a “post recession growth phase.**” Though the recovery is somewhat fragile (again, mostly due to U.S. problems), the mood at the conference has been upbeat and optimistic. Several of the builders I talked to said they actually haven’t suffered much. Because they didn’t get greedy on the upside, they didn’t get unduly punished on the downside. Overall, the Canadian housing start numbers are currently down about 30% from the pre-recession peak.

That sounds pretty bad, but the recenthousing news from the U.S. is much, much worse. According to the following chart, we’re now at the very lowest point in the last 45 years.

We’re down to a seasonally adjusted annual housing start rate of 309,000, which is a full 80% off our peak in 2005, 2006. And with this news, there is absolutely no discussion in the U.S. homebuilding industry about post-recession anything. In fact, on our side of the border, we are clearly in the throes of a homebuilding depressionthe likes of which not many living builders have seen before. So score this one for Canada too, but pity them as well because this wasn’t a game of their choosing or creation.

It is time for us to recognize that in many things we are not the best. Really. We don’t have the best hockey team. Our economic policies are not guided by the best policies or the most common sense. Our citizens can’t expect to have the best homes that can be built for the money they spend. Our trade associations don’t always strive for better because they tend to get caught up in striving for more.

It’s time to show a little humility. We would do well to go north of our border and listen to a little Canadian wisdom.

*This is a subjective statement and I’ll stick to it, but my caveat is that U.S. homebuilding right now is very slow, but the quality standard is pretty high for those that are being built. The low-skilled labor is off doing different low-skilled jobs, or they’re unemployed. The quick-buck builders aren’t building because there are no quick-bucks slipping from anyone’s fingers. The good and dedicated builders and tradespeople are hanging on and continuing to do good work. So the quality of the average American home may be equal right now.
**Here’s a stark difference that helps to explain the quicker turnaround: In the U.S., only 10% of homeowners have fully paid for their homes and 1 in 5 of those still paying are “underwater” on their mortgage, with many of those heading for foreclosure; in Canada 42% of homeowners have fully paid for their homes and the underwater problems aren’t significant because home values weren’t as seriously affected.

There’s nothing more important in homebuilding than finding the solution to making sustainable, affordable, high performance homes the norm. If we’re ever going to get there, we need to recognize the inherent tensions and conflicts, and then overcome those obstacles by developing new strategies in design, building and financing. To put it simply, if we really want a better result, we need to do a whole lot of things differently.

These following two slides are intended to illustrate how some of those differences might be put in perspective in order to implement new approaches. In the first one, you will see the Open Building concept, with the separation of the shell (Green) from the Infill (Blue).

The shell has its own separated layers that also must be taken into account, but the important consideration is that its performance requirements must be matched by longevity. Better buildings consume more energy and resources in their construction and therefore need a longer period to account for the embodied energy and resource use. I see no reason why 250 years shouldn’t be a normal goal and expectation for the average home. Right here in New England, we have tens of thousands of examples that prove such a time period is reasonable.

The shell has public aspects that are often controlled by public or community agencies for multiple reasons. Its energy consumption has public and environmental impacts, the structural qualities are a matter of public safety (need we be reminded by the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile?), and even exterior style and material selections are often controlled to maintain local character.

The infill elements should be much more controllable by the occupants during the multi-generational life span of the building. Because of this, the most important short and long term consideration becomes two-fold:

1. That the infill layers should be executed in such a way to give the occupants the flexibility to fit the interior out to suit their needs and desires, both initially and through the decades and centuries.
2. That the initial infill needs don’t unduly compromise the quality of the shell.

That leads to the second slide.

Here you will see some of the Miyasaka-san’s ideas as referenced in my earlier post. Again, green is the shell; blue is the infill. The entire length of the bar is the whole cost of the completed building with all its amenities and finishes–that is, fully “tricked out.”

The shell should have very little variation in quality and therefore its relative requirements and budget can’t easily be compromised. These needs ought to be supported by tax incentives and a completely different financing program.
Parts of Europe have long had these kinds of incentive programs. My friend Stephen Kendall, who is a leading scholar and advocate of Open Building strategies, pointed out to me that Japan now has a “long building life” program to develop residential buildings with a 200 year standard. The new law was passed in the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament in October 2008. According to Minami Kazunobu of the Shibaura Institute of Technology, the incentive works this way:

“The client can apply for tax reductions and can receive subsidies by designing and building a house which complies with the new law and technical guidelines. Specific incentive measures have been implemented. 1) When a person has purchased or constructed and occupied long life-span superior housing from 2009 to 2011, the person is exempt from income tax up to a maximum value of 6 million yen over a ten year period according to the balance of the person’s housing loan at the end of each year. 2) When a person has purchased or constructed and occupied long life-span superior housing, the person receives an income tax exemption equal to 10% of the construction cost which exceeds that of ordinary housing (limited to 10 million yen). 3) The fixed asset tax on long life-span superior housing is reduced by 1/2 for two years longer than in the case of ordinary housing.”

It can be done!

Along with a new approach to achieve the “long life” shell, we need a new approach to develop the systems and approaches for the ever-changing infill elements in order to accommodate the lives of the generations of inhabitants. It’s on this side of the bar where budget flexibility and inhabitant participation are critical. The blue side should not require expensive specialists. Instead DIY systems, para-professional designers and installers, and new infill system companies should control the fast-churn side of the bar. I also envision an active second-hand market for infill elements, including modular partitions and other demountable elements.

If we’re going to achieve any of this, disentanglement must be one of the New House Rules. The shell (theater) must be disentangled from the infill (stage); the structure must be disentangled from the space plan; the space plan must be disentangled from the mechanical systems; the mechanical systems must be disentangled from each other; and each of newly disentangled layer must have access and demountability in relation to its expected life span or need for change.

–21st century homes should be durable to the tune of multiple centuries.
–21st century homes should not chew up energy; they should require little and make what they need.
–21st century homes should adapt to the lives of their occupants, continuously.

Such homes are possible right now.

Our own Open-Builtsystems, strategies and philosophy are intended to lead the way and prove that the future of homebuilding can be brought to the present.

I used the Theater and Stage analogy at last year’s Greenbuild conference in Phoenix. It struck a chord with reporter and author, Katherine Salant, who was in attendance. Subsequently, she wrote an articlefor the Washington Post about the principle of separating the shellfrom the infill and how it plays out in our work. We used the following graphic to illustrate the point:

The tie-in to high performance building is the simple notion that better structural and thermal performance requires more resources and more labor, which in turn begs for more longevity to justify the materials and time invested. Two other considerations are derived from that understanding: 1. The internal short-term elements (stage) need to be less intertwined and hard-connected to the long-term shell components (theater) and 2. infill needs to be subservient to the shell requirements in the original construction.

I grew up in Colorado Springs, which is fairly close to Cripple Creek, a1890′s mining town that was empty and crumbled into ruin by 1950. My dad used to take us up to the old ghost town where we’d explore the mine and building remains. It was there that I first saw poor construction standards. The miners’ shacks and the storefront buildings were little more than wooden tents, made with skinny framing members and board sheathing. These buildings were all temporary props, with no intention whatsoever to make permanent structure. At least they knew it, and planned it that way.

In my later youth, I found myself working in tract developments outside of Colorado Springs. First, I worked in the ground, laying sewer and water pipes, but eventually I joined a framing crew and helped to build the homes. I soon realized that the construction standard wasn’t a whole lot different than the dilapidated miners’ shacks of Cripple Creek. In some ways, these buildings were worse than the miners’ shacks because the truth wasn’t known to the owners and their homes often had very serious inherent deficiencies and workmanship flaws. With the siding on the outside and the drywall nicely painted on the inside, no one knew. Well, actually there were a few who knew–the oft-repeated job-site saying when something wasn’t right was, “You can’t see it from my house.”

Here’s an important architectural vocabulary distinction: Buildings should have good facades, but they shouldn’t BE facades. Illusions can happen on the Stage, but they shouldn’t happen on the Theater structure itself. Our commitment to building high quality, high performance buildings requires us to first of all insure the integrity of the shell. Then the play can go on, decade after decade and generation after generation, celebrating both beauty that is static and life that is forever dynamic.

I’ve been having an email conversation with my friend and colleague, Kimihiro Miyasaka. Mr. Miyasaka is an architect based in Toyko. I’ve known him for many years and have been enriched by our positive relationship in numerous ways including cross-cultural learning and collaboration. Additionally, we have various interests and priorities in common, such as the importance of good design, a fondness for wood and timber construction, the celebration of craftsmanship, and the pressing need for both more sustainable homes and homebuilding processes.

Lately, Miyasaka and I have been lamenting our difficulty in communicating the importance of Open Building ideas to the future of homebuilding. We think the name itself is inadequate and somehow undersells its significance. Open Building theory attempts to explain the rather subtle fact that buildings are fundamentally different than their contents and are only temporally defined by their interior amenities and finishes. Yet these short term elements have somehow become entangled in our consciousness and in the buildings themselves. A house is at least two things, not one. All the pieces, parts, layers and equipment add up to a long-term feature on the landscape in which the dynamic churn of daily lives plays out.

Two things. They both matter, but at different time scales and for different reasons:

One is the house; the other personalizes it and makes it your home.

One is the theater; the other is the stage where your play is set.

One should resist change; the other should invite it.

One should be designed for permanence and sustainability; the other should be designed for multiple possibilities and flexibility.

One is your actual shelter; the other allows the shelter to function for your needs and desires.

One has public implications; the other is purely private.

One ought to be worthy of long financing; elements of the other should be paid for immediately or shortly.

The purpose of the theater is what happens on the stage, but it wouldn’t be smart to compromise the quality of the theater for the needs of a play. The theater is in service to the stage, but the stage is therefore subservient to the theater.

This sort of paradoxical relationship is the nut of Open Building. It isn’t sexy. It’s even kind of boring. But understanding it and applying its truth to the process of design and construction could transform the industry and the very idea of home. At the very least, accepting its reality, and applying principles and priorities that arise from that understanding could make houses and homes much better places for less cost.

My childhood home, which we affectionately call “2320,” is a good example of a typical older home living out its long-term potential and its short-term continual change. It’s now about 120 years old and is in its 4th incarnation. It started out as a single family home, became a rooming house, and then was broken into three different apartments. My father saved it from the wrecking ball and had it moved a mile up the street. With that, it was occupied by 13 rowdy Bensons and it stayed in our family for about 40 years. When we sold it, the buyer bought it with a sub-prime mortgage and never even made the first payment. Instead the“owner” stripped out the millwork,, sold it on EBay, and otherwise did his/her best to destroy the place. But a new buyer, like my dad, recognized its beauty and value and has completely restored it for her family and her at-home business. It’s hard to imagine why 2320 won’t be useful and no doubt made over a few more times in next 120 years.

The theater lives on; the stage is constantly changing. Unfortunately, 2320 wasn’t built for the inevitable churn and change that’s happened over the years. Each of the incarnations has been difficult and expensive, or has caused the inhabitants to adapt to the building in uncomfortable ways.

The challenge Miyasaka and I have been noodling about is two-fold: How do we get the theater to support the requirements of the stage and, on the other hand, how do we ensure that the plays on the stage don’t cause people to forget the needs of the theater. Being the diligent and thoughtful man that he is, Miyasaka came up with a plan to help put the priorities in the right place. Notice that the brown refers to the “Support” (Theater) considerations, while the blue refers to the “Infill” (Stage) considerations.

Miyasaka is showing that the budget for the Support/Theater is fixed, while the budget for the Infill/Stage is variable. By this chart, he is proposing to his clients different strategies for affecting the completeness or the level of finish for the Infill for the purpose of making the underlying house construction all that it should be. He offers no strategy to go the other way, which I think is brilliant.