Martha Stewart may be planning to infuse her corporate identity into new home developments across America, but Thomas Kinkade, "Painter of Light," apparently beat her to it:
Fake family photos of happy, wholesome, all-American families frolicking at beaches, golf courses and weddings adorn the walls. Floral and chintz fabrics abound, and the "children's rooms" are done up in golf themes and horse themes and, for one poor mythical college student, an entire University of California at Davis theme (including UC-Davis wallpaper, pillows, pennants, and framed campus photographs.) And while the homes all boast computers -- this is high-tech country, after all -- the fictional "matriarch" of one model home still pens her thank-you notes the old-fashioned way: in ink, on Thomas Kinkade stationery. ("Fran -- Our new home is beautiful! We love the small town feel and the community is wonderful. It is a joy to live in our new home.")
Last weekend's NYT feature on home builder conglomerates like Toll Brothers pairs well with all of this. This is, de facto, the way that a lot of America gets built:
Sometimes, one or two of Gibson's architects visit a house they're trying to emulate. "We have something at Toll Brothers I call our special sauce," Gibson said, describing the "lines of sight" and "spacious feel" inside its homes. "So we take the deficiencies of the competition's homes and improve upon them." When he first started at the company in 1993, Gibson recalled, Toll Brothers was following the market trend by replacing 8-foot ceilings on the first floors with 9-foot ones. "By 1997 and 1998, we started offering homes with 9-foot first and second floors. And in January 2002, we started offering 10- foot first floors." In Gibson's view, such modifications are tweaks on the real yeoman's work, which is providing every customer with the essential 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. Still, the alacrity with which his department can design a new house (one week) and introduce it to potential buyers (a few months) is one reason the American home, at least aesthetically, seems to be undergoing rapid evolutionary change. Gibson's office can also move quickly to create new exteriors as well as interiors when tastes change. Take the Toll product known as the Columbia, which happens to be among Gibson's and Bob Toll's favorites. (Neither Toll nor Gibson owns one, though. Toll lives in an 18th-century farmhouse; Gibson in a 1915 craftsman-style bungalow he's restoring.) I asked Gibson who at Toll actually designed the Columbia. He didn't know. Gibson said that it was originally called the Cornell when it made its debut 17 years ago and has since proved to be the company's best-selling house. "It has 22 exterior looks that we can put on it," he explained, which means the Cornell/Columbia can hide behind a French provincial in Pennsylvania and a redbrick Colonial face in New England. It can, Gibson said, go anywhere or be anything.
Speaking of going anywhere and being anything, Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta brings us Lovetann, a new modular housing system made up of interlocking panels that "define the look and function of walls, floors, and ceilings." (Of course, this is just one of many similar systems being developed to alleviate the rising cost of building a house, on less land, around the world; Toll Brothers' average new home price, for example, is $565,000.) Lovetann can be modified and rearranged over time as needs and tastes change. As a bonus, the whole system can be erected in ten days. (Below: Lovetann, left; Toll Brothers' Columbia, right) Courtesy City Of Sound.
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