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This is the best way to understand the best features of the Lagom House design. This has has a unique balance of open plan living and discrete rooms. The kitchen, while a separate space, has an open view to the living room and the entry foyer - and is part of the circulation loop that runs around the ground floor.
Continue reading "0970 Lagom House kitchen time"
The kitchen of any home ends up being the hub of domestic life, and the Lagom House is no different. First off you need good work space - a generous amount of counter surface. Easy access to family life means its own "back-stair" access from the bedrooms upstairs. Good views and direct access to the backyard, for keeping eyes on kids, and for easy indoor and outdoor living. A window on the driveway to keep an eye on the comings and goings of kids and cars. And proximity to other workspaces - the laundry room is immediately adjacent, and its a short hop to the front door as well.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story kitchen"
When you reach the top of the stairs in the Lagom House you are greeted by this wonderful window seat and a great view of your neighborhood. The bedrooms in the 2 story version all face the bak yard, so they are all to your right in this view. Beyond the linen cabinet is the kids homework desk and hobby area and the kids bathroom at the end of the hall. Not a square inch is wasted in this design.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story upstairs hall"
Continuing the theme of going upstairs, lets go upstairs in the Lagom 2 Story house. Here is the view up the stairs from the landing between the kitchen and the living / dining room. The kitchen is on the left, the dining table on the right with the home office beyond the partition in the background. Up the top of the stairs we see the big window at the window seat in the upstairs hall.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story on the stair"
With the last days of Spring on us it is really starting to feel like Summer around here. What a better way to enjoy these days than with a great front porch to hang out on like the Lagom House.
Continue reading "0970 Lagom House front porch"
Step in the door of the Lagom House and the entire home unfolds before you! Kitchen ahead on the right, the dining and living room to the left, the home office to the side of the door. No instructions needed!
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story entry"
Do I really have to twist anybody's arm to convince you that a back porch is the perfect gateway to your own backyard? I know we've been ranting and raving about back porches lately, but here it is again. The awesome back porch world of the Lagom House 2 Story. You're welcome.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story is the story of your life with a back porch"
So maybe you don't want to freak out your neighbors, we totally get that. But you love a modern house as much as the next mid-century modern collecting freak. But who needs the hate mail, the town petitions, the trip to planning board - you know how much of a pain some neighbors can be when they have their style police hats on. Don't sweat it. The Lagom House 2 story is here to fly under their radar. By the time they figure out your dot-dash-DOT-dot windows you'll have won them over at your tupperware party in your cool open plan living room. Have your modern cake and eat it too - hold the grief. No fool'n.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 story is your stealth mod home"
So I've made a point of telling you how the Lagom House is designed to face the sun and provide the perfect platform for renewable solar energy for you home. But I've only showed you pictures of the house configured for the South side of the street - where the sun would be shining in your backyard. How about across the street on the North side where the sun shines in your front yard? Here you go - the North Side Lagom House! The deep roof overhang provides nice cover for your front porch, and the dormer windows in the bedrooms have their own overhangs and side baffles to control hot summer sun and to let in warming winter sun. And in the back yard you have a great covered porch as well to enjoy your back yard from.
Continue reading "0970 Lagom House so what's that look like across the street"
The Lagom House 2 Story is a house with two porches - a front porch and a back porch. A house with a porch is a wonderful thing. There are few things more social during warm weather than to sit on your front porch watching the neighborhood go by, inviting a neighbor to sit for a moment and chat, a wonderful middle ground between the safety of your home and being in the front yard. So the question that comes to mind, for this Architect at least, is why not a back porch? Why not that? Why would we not want a similar graceful bridge to our own private outside world of our own back yard? A place where you can take meals outside, an outdoor living room, and really - the best place ever to watch a summer shower.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story - upstairs/downstairs, front porch/back porch"
Maybe you love working in the yard, it can be like therapy. But if you are like me you prefer to have a yard that works for you, and not vice versa. Our illustrations for the Lagom House has always shown such a yard. Small enough to not consume your free time that you want to spend elsewhere but large enough to function in a way that brings you joy and utility. Room for a small veggie garden, and fenced yard for drying laundry away from the romping kids and dogs. A potting bench behind the garage, out of site. A front yard big enough to give you some buffer from the street, but small enough to trim in 10 minutes. Ahhh, that's sub-Urban living at its best.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom 2 Story has the big yard that won't eat your weekends"
You'll often find me talking about how the Lagom House is a really smart plan, one that lives bigger than its square feet. Its a 1500 sqft house that packs three bedrooms including a master suite with its own bath, it has separate kitchen and dining + living room, a mud room, a home office, and a homework area for the kids. There are very deliberate strategies for making space brought to bear here to make this small house feel bigger and live larger. In a nut shell, here's the inside word. Number 1: when you have a small space, make distinct spaces within it. In a word a completely open plan here makes one place with kitchen living and dining all in one room. Breaking it up with elements like the stair and screen walls makes more places. And more places always feel like more than one place. Number 2: Make places feel as far away from one another as you can, even when everything in a small house is close by. So, having to walk around a corner to get to one room to another, or up and down to get someplace. Hide things from one another so places reveal themselves as you move, and it makes a journey to get from one place to another. Everything in site makes a very short trip, but destinations you can't see always makes a journey feel longer. This is how you live big in not a lot of space.
Continue reading "0970 Lagom House is smarter than the average plan"
The Lagom House Two Story is a slightly larger version of the original Lagom contest house, but only larger in the fact that it has a full second story with out the dormered ceiling bedrooms from the original. But that full second story also makes this version the easiest one to build and it maintains the same great compact floor plan. In some ways this house is so ordinary its no great stretch to imagine it sitting next door to almost any kind of traditional house and being right at home. But it shines modern in the details - funky window arrangement, modern style front porch, cool galvanized corner trim, too many to list in fact. Its the every-day modern house for the world we all live in.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story is the modern house next door"
Super happy to announce a new plan set today - the West/East Version of the 0970 Lagom House. The Lagom House was concieved from the start to have a massing that oriented the house to the sun, and as such would have a slightly different version depending on how the building lot was oriented. The Southside version and the Northside version were completed some time ago, so with great satisfaction today we add the final version for building lots on either side of a north/south running street.
In the house design competition that spawned the Lagom House design it was proposed that the house be available in 3 variations, so as to optimize the exposure of the roof surface for solar gain, as well as the seasonal shading of the windows. In a practical manner it also allows a developer to add variety to a neighborhood as the houses change their presentation to the street depending on their location.
When combined with the two story 1192 2 Story Lagom House a builder can offer a satisfying mix of houses, while at the same time enjoying the speed of building and economies that come from building a repetitive design. Score one for smart design.
As with the other Lagom House designs, this new version also incorporates our energy efficient USA New Wall designs in both 2x6 and 2x8 versions. The framing documentation also utilizes our Swedish Platform Framing for added energy efficiency. This is a one of a kind product - there are no other vendor of stock plans that incorporate these advanced energy efficient techniques. The Lagom Houses comprise an off the shelf option for creating an energy efficient neighborhood. Now any small developer/builder can offer the most advanced energy efficient product available in the country without the cost of custom designs.
The door is wide open now. Who is the builder that will take this up, and out-perform their contemporaries in their market? I am looking for you.
Continue reading "0970 Lagom House West/East version - new in the catalog"Traditionally bigger houses have always been worth more? Recently value seems to be in transition, where size is no longer the sole measure of a home's worth. So why would you go against the past trend of more equals more? How could less equal more for you?
Well, for one, smaller houses cost less. Spending less on your house means you have more available for other parts of your life. Maybe you like to travel, maybe you value having another small weekend house instead of one big house. Maybe you've committed to private schooling for your kids. Maybe you just want to work less and enjoy life more. Maybe you want to spend more on making your house energy efficient, and building a smaller house leaves budget available for more insulation and high efficiency equipment. A smaller house uses less energy on an ongoing basis, which again frees money for other parts of life, and a highly energy efficient home frees even more. A smaller house means less to clean, less to wash, less to repaint, less to take care of.
So say that all sounds great, and resonates with your values and your aspirations. You never wanted a big house, but you do have needs. You need three bedrooms, and one of you work out of the house, and the kids need a space for homework and hobbies, you don't want to feel cramped and you're afraid you cant shove all that into a small house.
To that we say Welcome to the Lagom House 2 Story, with 1,540 sqft, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, home office, kids homework area, a front porch, and a screened patio out back. Small enough to be highly efficient, smartly designed to live big beyond its square feet. Built with the highly insulated USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing, it will perform efficiently in the toughest American climates.
Construction Prints are complete and available in the catalog.
Continue reading "Why would somebody want a "small" house?"Its got a plan number now, its plugged into the site model of the 1.5 story Lagom House, and illustrations are pouring forth.
See you in the catalog.
Continue reading "1192 Lagom House 2 Story"We've just begun work on a 2 story version of the Lagom House. The original Lagom House was a 1.5 story house, meaning the second floor was under the roof rafters and included dormers to increase floor space. The Lagom 2 Story will use the same floor plan but with the second floor expanded to the full footprint of the house.
The 2 story version gives it a little bit more floor space on the second floor, not much, but will make the bedrooms feel bigger. And just gives it a different feel, a stronger MoTrad vibe. And the house becomes even easier to build without the dormers to frame. It will top out at 1,540sf now, up about 50sf from the 1.5 story original version.
The simple peaked roof will make the house easier to frame, and it also obviates the need for north and south side of the street versions of the house - the peaked roof offers good solar system exposure on both sides of an east/west street. The simple MoTrad geometry is also more compatible with existing neighborhoods than the rather abstract triangular geometry of the original Lagom House design.
Continue reading "New design - variation on Existing design"
