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    Saturday, March 15, 2008

    CaBOOM!! Day 1

    My christmas present last year from Kersten was a trip to the CaBoom Design Show in Santa Monica. It's a trade show for modern design products and in addition to the trade show there are tours of modern homes in the LA area where the architect and owners give tours of the homes. There is a tour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and Kersten got me tickets to all three days.

    Getting to LA and making it to the first tour was an adventure in and of itself but I did finally make it here in time to tour the homes in the Pacific Palisades. We toured 5 homes and while they were all really cool, these 3 were my favorites.

    I really liked the warmth of the wood and plaster on this house. The inside had really great earth tones and earthy materials. The roof was a really cool interpretation of a butter-fly roof with a skylight in the middle over the stairway where the roof planes meet. Designed by Gray Matter Architecture.

    Inside the ceiling lines are skewed at odd angles, which according to the architect did something to the perspective when looking at the house from different angles.



    I really liked the window for a backsplash in the kitchen here.

    This is the steel stairway with the skylight above it. It was really great to have so much natural light flooding into the space.






    These are a few of the details that really stood out to me.
    I love this big front door that hinges off center.


    The doors and casings were all bamboo, which I had never seen before, but you know how I love bamboo. It looked really cool.


    This detailing for the base boards is called a shadow mold. I thought it looked really cool.

    House 2
    This was my second favorite house designed and built by Built, Inc.











    House 3

    This house was really much less traditional than the others. It breaks free of right angles and has really creative use of texture and materals. It was designed by and built foran architect from Kanner Architects.

    You can see the really interesting trowel work on the stucco that I really liked.


    This cat represents what I really like about cats. They are tough. It just sat there and stared at everyone who walked in, making it clear that this was his house.


    I also love how it stands in contrast to and defiance of the really inauthentic new building directly across the street.

    6 comments:

    amelia said...

    What a cool present! I'm with you on that backsplash in the first home - so neat. However, my big complaint about a lot of the modern homebuilding styles is how child unfriendly they are. Ex: those stairs.

    Kersten said...
    This comment has been removed by the author.
    todd said...

    stairs are not kid-friendly ever.

    i'm not sure how to respond to that last paragraph.

    Kersten said...

    Redo in the light of day:

    I don't think there is anything inherently child-unfriendly in modern homes. I think that the type of home we want to build — green, small, etc., and all the things that go along with those titles — is actually quite a bit more child friendly than conventional building. (Fewer nasty chemicals, no nasty things living in the non-existent carpet, etc.)

    I'm a big believer in kids adapting to things — so, if there's a corner or another corner or a hard floor, the kid just grows up with it. I guess this is a really long-winded way of saying that I don't think it's the house's job to coddle a child (leave that to its grandmother), and kids are wonderfully adaptable.

    And Todd's right — what set of stairs is ever kid-friendly?

    todd said...

    most of the things our daughter has hurt herself on in our house are things that all houses have, ie. furniture, bathtub, doors, the hard floor, people. most recently, she has a nice goose-egg on her forehead from a door jamb. granted, we don't have a modern house, but that usually just means cleaner lines, more open spaces, and lower furniture. generally probably good for a kid.

    kids are definitely adaptable. i'm amazed at the velocity with which stella tears through our house without getting hurt (for the most part). they learn (mostly).

    k8 said...

    first of all, i'm disappointed that i don't live in LA anymore so i could go to this again.

    but these houses all make me weak in the knees.