$1500 Plans So Long, and thanks for all the fish

Today we announce our impending price increase. The price of Construction Prints will be increasing from $1,500 to $4,750 on 24July2008. Yes, this is a significant increase, on the order of 3x, but still a small fraction of the cost of a home and they remain a tremendous value in comparison to custom design charges. The new pricing is part of a marketing agreement we have made with stock house plan vendor Houseplans.com who will now also be distributing our designs (by also we mean that we will still be selling plans direct from our site as always). This is part of an effort elevate the level of design offered in the form of stock plans, not only modern houses, but of all styles. This has been a goal of mine since starting this venture, and for the first time in the leadership at Houseplans.com I have found a similar vision. Yes, they offer the usual array of mediocre design, but they are behind this idea and are committed to marketing better designed home plans in a different way - a way in which design is more important than square feet, or bedroom count. The offering that they will assemble will completely out-class the offerings of other vendors and it is my sincere hope that this brings pressure to bear on them to improve their game. The end result, I hope, is the enlightenment of the buying public to better design, the creation of demand for better designed homes, and the inevitable move of the market to fill that demand. End game - better designed homes readily available for everyone, particularly for my camp of modernists. This really brings the introductory phase of our house plan venture to a close. We now have 8 different designs and 3 variations on one design available in Construction Prints for a total of 11 different plan sets, and another on the way in Design Prints only right now. And there are more great designs on the way. Customers have stepped up to the plate, and if you have been watching our blog you will have seen many houses under construction at all ends of the country. Our house plans have found their way into media, appearing in the New York Times, Dwell, This Old House magazine, soon Metropolitan Home, and numerous blogs covering design online. Our thanks go out to those early adopters and the journalists and bloggers that have covered them. As well as this launch has gone it has been a struggle to create the designs, market them, and maintain the sites to promote them, all while running a local architectural practice to keep our roof above our heads. The new pricing will allow us to dedicate more time to producing more product, so truly good things lie ahead. Thank you for following this adventure with us.

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Spring Creek Design wants to build your LaMiDesign house

Home Builder Spring Creek Design from Pennsylvania wants to build your house from our plans, and is running a promotion to encourage you to do it. New on the Spring Creek Design web site today is a promotion for our house designs. Spring Creek will cover the cost of the plans if you have them build your house. That amounts to $1,500, a small percentage of the cost of a house, no doubt, but its not chump change in my book either. Inquire about this offer on this web page - link. Spring Creek is running several other promotions including one pledging 5% off up to $10,000 on a sustainable building project. That is a significant pledge. You can find a description of their current promotions here. Hats off to Spring Creek Design for coming up with this incentive promotion - a complete surprise to us. I hope other builders in other parts of the country are so bold as to follow their lead. Its another part of the modern house puzzle. We have customers who want modern houses, we have builders who want to build modern houses, and we have some developers that want to sell modern houses. A far cry from a few years ago! Spring Creek serves the Chester, Mongomery, Berks, and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania, but if you are nearby I'd encourage you to twist their arms to drive a little further!

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The Slow Home - a new advocate of our Re-Modern Movement

Today I learned about a great web site called The Slow Home which seeks to establish a movement that is parallel to the Slow Food movement, except in this case mediocre developer housing is the junk fast food. I love this site because it captures the ideals of what I have called our Re-Modern Movement and frames them in values that we all can understand and agree on. Modern homes without pretense, smaller, more efficient, smarter design, earth friendly design, design that is meaningful to you the homeowner in both your home and community. The Editor, John Brown, has built a wonderful site around the idea with thoughtful writing backing up the proposal, and a Folio of architects and designers that he believes represent the ideals in their work. There is a video blog where by he introduces new additions to the Folio, and many of the entries in the Folio include short video interviews with the designers explaining their work. Great leverage of our internet medium - this is a smart site. Must reading is the 10 Principles of the Slow Home, and the What is Slow Home page. I am not going to provide direct links to these - click around and get to know the site. Spread the word to like-minded friends. Remember as I have said before, this kind of sharing and cross linking is how we build our movement, its how we get our voices heard in the marketplace, its how we bend the housing industry to serve us and ultimately to build the kind of houses we want. Credit where due: I found this on this entry at Future House Now. Future House Now saw this on WorldChanging. And if you must, but you should really visit both those links first, here is a link directly to The Slow Home.

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another great modern house blog

Here is a great blog for those aspiring to a modern home. The Do Research blog is a personal log book of ideas and projects for a Minnesota couple. It serves them to collect the ideas and thoughts about their own future house, and it serves us to look in at what they are finding. As of late they are living for a period in England, and hence are being exposed to wonderful European examples. This site is great food for thought for anyone planning for their own modern house. Discovered on the Future House Now blog - thanks John.

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a material and product resource blog

My friend Justin, who many of you may know as ModernLover at several of the busy modern housing and prefab messageboards, has always been an incredible source of material and product knowledge. As a remodeling contractor for many years he's had his hands in everything, and the son of a resource librarian for a large design firm, he's also had a pulse on what is coming down the road. Well, he's finally put it all together in an awesome blog called Materialicio.us. It's not officially launched yet, but Justin is filling out the starting content at an amazing pace - spilling his guts as the saying goes. Downloading a big chunk of his knowledge and resources every day. Its going to be a great resource for us all. Thanks Justin.

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