nice end to a great 2010

What a terrific 2010! Beginning with the Portland H&G Show and the NW Natural Street of Dreams, add some amazing projects working with terrific clients on incredible site, and now named as a top 20 fabulous green prefab on Jetson Green. Really looking forward to 2011, as we have some big things in store!

Happy Holidays to All, and to All a Great Night!

Merry Holiday's to All!

From all of us at ideabox, wishing all a Happy Christmas & a Merry New Year! 

Thank you to everyone who have visited us here at ideabox, the Portland H&G Show, and at the Street of Dreams. And thanks to all of you who visit ideabox.us, call, who write us, it's great to hear from you.

And special thanks to our clients and the amazing projects we are privileged to work on. 

Here's to ending a wonderful 2010 & looking forward to an amazing 2011!

Happy Holidays!

It's the Season!

The Wonderment of Place

Perhaps the best reward of the ideabox "thing" are the sites our houses go, and the people we are so fortunate to work with. Each site is unique, and every project is about creating a new and special living environment. The simple elegance of the architecture and a confident palette of resource efficient materials allows the opportunity to basically custom design the ideal solution.

It's so much fun! 

This site is overlooks the Puget Sound and is truly spectacular. Nestled into the trees, the sunlight sparkles off the water and through the branches. What is amazing to me is the quiet, the silence is practically deafening. So close to modern civilization, yet completely away. It's this sense of place that inspires and motivates our efforts for small footprint, Northwest modern influence, ideabox houses. 

Hope all are enjoying the best of the holiday season! 

Prefab at Your Price Point!

We're in natural home magazine!

It was a nice trip to the mailbox the other day. First, it was a bright, sunny, perfectly fall day. So any excuse to go outside is a good thing. Then, included in all the mail was a couple copies of natural home magazine. Flipping through the magazine, caught a nice article about an Aspen prefab. To my surprise, on the face page was a picture of... the ideabox fortino! How cool is that? With the headline "Prefab at Your Pricepoint" it is terrific to see ideabox recognized! In a national magazine! 

We work hard to continually evolve the entire ideabox portfolio of houses. At every opportunity we look to make our houses healthier, to use less energy, but always be an awesome living experience. Some of the houses currently in production are truly individual designs, expressing the design goals and lifestyles of the client. They are very cool, kind of hoping they too might grace the pages of national magazines like natural home!

Hope all are enjoying an incredible fall! The weather here is amazing!

Okay, So it's Fall!

It's the best time of year... well, it's supposed to be!

Finally, the sunshine is out in the Pacific Northwest. It's football season, the leaves are starting to think about changing color, temperatures are cooling (if not a bit tooo much this fall). I keep looking for those warm days and brisk evenings, kind of hoping we get some of that to make up for the summer we didn't quite get.

Lot's going on this fall!

First, last week I was fortunate to participate as a speaker at the Residential Design Forum and as a juror for Futureshack, both events presented by the AIA Seattle. It was an interesting discussion about housing. What will it be. How is it being done now, in an era of challenged financing (construction/development financing & home buyer lending). Is home ownership the big thing it's supposed to be? Or will it become a service product - something to use and move on from - suggesting perhaps ownership isn't as important as livability and portability.... kind of paralleling new models of employment and stability. Is all this a discussion of now, as we approach the end of this challenged economic environment, and will we just return to "normalcy" later?

Futureshack was fun, and compelling, in its second year of existence. To me, any opportunity architects can have to have a public discourse with their community is a cool thing. The fact Futureshack focuses on housing, something everyone can relate to, is the perfect subject matter. AIA Seattle staff and their participating co-chairs did a terrific job organizing the competition and creating public discourse public. During the live public jury presentation at Seattle Center, we were positioned on a brightly lit elevated stage in front of seemingly hundreds of people. Me being gallant and polite, got stuck with this huge modern (very cool) winged chair thing that you sat back inside. Now, I'm not a big guy, so this big chair kind of consumed me, which while very cool for watching football, is not so cool for sitting in front of a bunch of a few hundred people on an elevated stage with bright lights! (Everybody else had practical chairs). It did give me an air of authority however, assuming anyone in the audience could actually see me. It was fun!

I came away thinking housing will evolve more from the holdings of old to something more of a serviceable purpose... a kind of "make my life easier so I can go do stuff..." role. Size, we think, will diminish as we realize the enclosed space we actually use. And design hopefully will take a more prominent role as the concept of house becomes an identifier, kind of like cars, or computers, or the kinds of restaurants we eat at determine who and what we are. We think lives will become simpler, more focused on experiences than acquisition. 

What do you think? We, ideabox, just want our houses to be a part of a fun lifestyle. We want our houses to do their part by embracing small footprints, be responsible in use of materials, use very little energy, and be a total blast to live in... and around!

If you're reading this, and in Portland, we'll be at the Street of Dreams house from 10 till noon or so tomorrow. Come by and say Hi!

A Mini Street of ideabox Dreams!

It's a mini "OPEN HOUSE" of the ideabox Street of Dreams house this weekend. The fortino house is still on location at 95th & Cornell, in NW Portland. We're thinking from 10AM till 4 PM. It's at the Arbor Vista development, who are very cool in allowing us to keep the house there for a little while. 

This is the first blog post since we had started the Street of Dreams - which - was amazing. Thousands of people came by, most quite surprised with what they saw. We followed the "big house" of the street, quite a transition from almost 6,000 SF and a $1.7 million price tag to the 1,200 SF $225,000 ish (installed w/ typical lot cost). We were quite pleased with their reaction. The modern design, the clarity of spaces and materials, the idea that houses can live beyond their walls with creatively designed outdoor "rooms" - most were delightfully suprised.

We liked the smiles. (And all those who thought it was the best house on "the Street.")

Special and continued thanks goes to Hip Furniture for their incredibly well received furnishings so elegantly designed by Unleash Design Studio that really showcased how the the house can live. When we designed the fortino, we were going for simple and cool lifestyle, and really got that! 

To get in the house, you had to get up to it. And with the incredible landscape design by Schultz & Long that was so quickly and professionally installed by Aspen Creek Landscaping and decks by "Bob-the-deck-Guy" (our name for him). the house truly was an indoor/outdoor experience.

And it's all still there for all to see - free - through the middle of October. Call for an appointment, or come by on the next few weekends!

It's Magic on the Street of Dreams

You gotta see how cool dreams can be!

The NW Natural Street of Dreams is incredible. Houses and interiors that reflect today's active lifestyle. New green technologies that literally give back - from solar hot water systems to pervious pavers to finish materials - all stuff you can do at home! And incredible design talent from the homes themselves to spectacular interiors and amazing landscapes.

And a pretty cool modern prefab.... gotta see that!

And now you can see "the Street" with a discounted ticket! Print the attached coupon... it's like the Street & a latte!