Listing info.

Listing info.

Slate’s photo essay on pre-fab.  

This is one of the more unique AD Stenger homes.  I believe this home was originally designed for a pilot (A few years back Chunk and I chatted with his widow and I believe that is what she told us).  AD Stenger had strong interest in aeronautic and while at UT spent more time pursue those interest than architecture.  There are several homes that you can see swooping elements to the roof line what reflect that interest.  This is one of my personal favorites.  

Listing info.  

This was posted some time ago when it was FSBO.  Milton Ryan was a wonderful architect working mostly in the Terrill Hills area of San Antonio.  Real gems of the period.  This home is largely in original condition and hasn’t suffered ill conceived updates.  Ideal for someone looking preserve and own a period piece.  

Listing Info.  

Go here for a Flickr slide show with more images of this home including a few period shots.  

Updated Stenger.  Not really keeping to the history in my book but still a Stenger under it all.  

Home with chapel studio.  Not really modern per se but interesting and quirky which I always love.  It is next door to a Cottam Hagrave home for your modern fix.

Virtual Tour and Info.

Saturday, August 16th

Hancock Rd - $599k- 1 to 3pm

Lansbury Dr - $285k - 1 to 4pm

Sunday, August 17th

Rivercrest - $2.990MM - 1 to 4pm

click here to see large version.

The builder, Dan Fawcett, and I have traded emails over the years and he has always struck me extraordinarily passionate about what he does.  Needless to say I was interested when he said he was going to build a home inspired by Eichler and specifically the A. Quincy Jones designs.

I’ll be going there in a few days, but the pictures are great.  The home does display the strong ties to Eichler but also incorporates some local elements not to mention some advancements we’ve come to enjoy since the mid-50s.   I don’t see the center atrium many Eichlers are famous for, but in many ways the site seems to call for less inward focus and more outward views.   Always deter to the site. 

Check out the full gallery here.

Dan put a bunch of pictures up on his site of that were taken through the build process.  See those here.

The home just was listed for sale, info here. 

Update:  Yet more pictures can be seen here.  Also a new brochure with more details.  

Saturday, Aug 9th

Highland Hills - $435k - 2 to 5pm

This is house is one of several classic Austin MCM homes in a row on Highland Hills Dr.  Great area.  The later updates didn’t keep with the style too much but nothing that a little interior work can’t fix.  

Sunday, Aug 10th

Balcones - $599k - 1 to 4pm  (pictured above)

Agave - $359k - 1 to 4pm (holds the record for most comments on a listing on this site)

West/Westlake - $657k - 1 to 4pm

South Austin - $699k - 1 to 3pm

For Sale by Owner in Kerrville, TX (about 2 hours west of Austin).

Download brochure (includes all contact info)

Pictures:

Kitchen

Bedroom

Dining

Aug 3rd

Link Ave - $465k - 11am to 1pm (pictured above)

These houses are pretty much open every Sunday (at until they sell):

Monroe St

Jewell St

Listing Info.  Designed by Nick Mehl.

Listing Info.

The basic backstory is a developer planned on building 9 homes, built this one as a model home (which is apparently very well appointed in quality) but then bailed on continuing the development.  

Virtual Tour here.

I was asked my opinion of it and it strikes me as a hybrid.  It wants to be modern influenced but didn’t carry it out to the fullest.  It shows up in particular in trimming items like choice of doors.  Otherwise, it is pretty close to the FAB designs out at Agave.  

Sunday, July 27th

Highland Hills - $435k - 1 to 4pm (pictured above)

Rivercrest (Westlake) - $2.990M - 1 to 4pm

Oltorf - $499k - 1 to 5pm

Strangely enough, this is our rather oblique way of introducing our store-wide sale, which is part of the 2ND on Sale event which runs from Thursday through Saturday. Everything everywhere is on sale. Thursday night we will be open until 9:00 to kick off the weekend. Bizarre dioramas will be on display. There will be beer(s).

As far as the actual, you know, sale… we’ll have 20% of all Gus Design (our Canadian friends), mark-downs on everything else in the store, and most importantly, all thimble-sized Japanese figures will be just 25 cents. So yes, even with high gas prices, you too can afford to drive down, buy a couple of handfuls, and build your own bizarre Civil War scene. (The only rule is the Union always has to win and you can’t make any silly comments about state’s rights.)

All proceeds from the sale of ridiculously cute Japanese toys will benefit Austin EcoSchool.

More info.

Those in business, particularly the product development side, like know about the golden triangle:  resources, features, time.   The real estate version is:  price, location, features.  That is the hardest thing to come to terms with when buying a house.  It doesn’t help that there are several other dynamics in the market like competitors (other buyers) and inventory availability.

We started looking more in earnest late last year.  Before then, I was definitely keeping an eye on the market but wasn’t fully comfortable with buying yet.  A lot of that had to do with our moving around so much.  Also, as first time buyers we were bound to go at a slower pace.  The market of prior years didn’t really lend itself to well considered buying given the competitiveness for the better places.

One unfortunate side effect of looking at listings for nearly 3 years was a level of burn out and paralysis had begun to set in.  Too much information can as paralyzing as too little.   Hence creating a framework for a decision is important.   

First we set some boundaries.

Price.  Our plan was to say as close to historical averages of income to price as possible.  Modern convention had people buying at ratios of 5x or more but that seemed simply insane.  Further, we also wanted to use only one of our incomes in the calculation.  Lots of reasons but it boils down to:  flexibility in career & freeing up income for other investments and activities.  

Location.  This was a bit harder.  What area is right for you is pretty personal.  Obviously location and price do have a strong link in real estate so picking target neighborhoods had to match our first criteria.  We don’t have kids, nor plan to, so schools don’t matter.  We do like a walkable area, but much of Austin fits that pretty well.  At the end of the day, a lot of it was about how we spend out time and where our social life interactions occur.  We like our friends and want to see them often, so that was a big factor.  Reasonably close to a lot of things is important especially since the cost of driving (cost, time, carbon) is so high.  

We ended up focusing on Hyde Park, Brentwood / Crestview, Allandale, and to lesser degrees adjunct areas like French Place / Cherrywood or Windsor Park.  Places like Highland Hills, Travis Heights, and Barton Hills are very attractive for many reasons but rarely shook out when considering other factors so they seemed less likely as viable ares for us.  

Setting boundaries on price and location help a lot but in many ways the easier part.  The hard part is when they start to become at odds with what you want in a house (aka the Features).  Defining priorities is critical and seemingly impossible at times.  That will be the topic of the next post.

Needs some mild updating but great bones on this MCM.  Love the exposed beams and ceiling (though must be hell on energy efficiency).  

Listing Info.

Virtual Tour.

photo:  Doug Kanter of the NY Times

The NY Times put up this nifty multimedia tour of some of China’s new modernist building.  Not even sure of modern is quite the right phrase as these leap beyond the original form / function thing into the realms of digital art come alive.  

Here is the virtual tour.  It includes some detail and renderings about the underpinnings of the buildings.  

photo: Julius Shulman

Regular readers probably know of my love for John Lautner.  If you happen to be in Los Angeles between July 13th and October 12th this year, I fully recommend taking the time to visit the Hammer Museum and see their Lautner Exhibition as well drive up Mulholland or around Silverlake and see some of his work.   If you are there in the September time frame there will be a new documentary screened. 

While Launter is more known for his later period concrete curved and cantilevered structures, like those pictured here, it is his earlier work that really kindled my love for mid-century modern design. 

photo:  Joshua White

This place was for sale last summer and then was sold.  It is now back on the market.  I should have grabbed the picture set as there was a lot more than offered here.  If you go the Dick Clark site and click on residential there are more (it is the Mount Bonnell house).  Boo for Flash websites where you can’t link directly to anything.  

Listing info.

Updated:  Price.

New:  Virtual Tour yet more pictures (and better than the listing set).

Last week, I mentioned that I was going to write up some notes on the house buying thing this week.  This week just slipped by.  Sorry about that.    

Today I’ll kick it off with some background.   We moved to Austin summer of 2005.  It was at that time our 4th city in 4 years after a bit of whirlwind of Seattle to DC to Seattle to LA before coming to Austin.   I started Modern Austin because we were looking around at places and learning the city and I thought, “since I am looking at all this already, may as well throw up listings and pictures and maybe others will find it useful as well.”   

We were planning on renting for a while, learn the city and then buy.  Of course, it didn’t work out that way and we were off to DC area again for about 20 months.  In my mind, we still lived in Austin but in reality we lived on Capital Hill (Eastern Market Area).  Keeping the site going was nice way to stay in touch with what was going on here.  We moved back Labor Day weekend 2007.  Hopefully for semi-good (I would love to find a way to spend the summer in a more temperate region).  

Next post:  Coming to terms with the realities of the market.  

Duncan did kick up a topic at the end there that I’ve been thinking on and off about for many years:  what is modern?  And how do you conveyed that to others?

Modern seems to have a much wider umbrella than other styles.  I certainly can think of principles which embody modernism but it is hard to pin down with certainty the same way you can with Victorian, Federal, or Colonial styles.  It seems more often than ‘modern’ falls into the old “I know it when I see it” method of classification.  Duncan pretty much implies the same here:

Modernism should be based on a set of design principles and not be considered a “style” so many homes rely on a series of aesthetic embellishments that complete the checklist to qualify as modern.

I agree with this but when it comes to communicating with other people or with the marketplace it gets blurry.  One person’s modern is another craftsmen (well not really, but you know what I am saying).  It is all too easy for developers and realtors to try to lack into the modern label.

For what is worth, I often post up listing that I feel aren’t really great examples of modernism but if I got too strict, there would be next to no content. 

How do you describe modern design to others?

Listing Info.

AD Stenger in Barton Hills.  Listing info here. 

I’ll be off moving into our new place (we finally bought!) and watching fireworks.  

Overview

Designed by Christopher Roberston, co-founder of KRDB Design Build, now of Robertson Design, recently featured in Metropolitan Home Magazine WHO’S NEXT issue as one of the 28 World’s Best Young Talents.  This duplex was featured on the 2000 AIA Austin Homes Tour. 

• Open living area with 12+ feet ceilings providing great interior light
• 2 large bedrooms, each with walk-in closets
• 1 large full bath
• 1400 sf
• Deck
• Private tree-filled yard
• Washer / Dryer

Lease Info

• $1600/month + Deposit
• 1 year term preferred
• Cats OK
• No Smoking
• Available from July 16th

Pictures

Click here for a picture tour. 

Contact info

If you are interested in leasing and would like to schedule a showing, please contact me via the form or call 512.736.7959.  

Note

Most the pictures on the flickr slideshow are from the B unit (especially the inside photos).  The available A unit is exactly the same in configuration (though flipped in layout).  Main difference is the A unit is painted sky / cornflower blue on some walls & has a bigger kitchen island.  There are some pictures of the B unit fully furnished.  These shows the paint scheme before the B unit was painted and is what the available A unit currently reflects.

Per Realtor:

Designed by Earl Swisher of The Lawrence Group, this ultra modern home measures 1,826 sf per TCAD and features a sparkling in-ground pool. Built in 2006. Numerous green features and upgrades

This Agave home is a considerable step-up from the default spec homes available there.  If you are thinking about Agave at all, highly recommend checking this place out.

Realtor Listing.

Listing info.