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  Chicago Tribune Article on Pre-Construction

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Builders Start to Rethink the Design of the American Home
Chicago Tribune
October, 2003
By Barbara Ballinger Buchholz, Chicago Tribune

   In Chicago, builder Allen Shulman, president of North Star Homes in Northbrook, says owners still want a certain number of rooms and rooms of a certain (large) size.
   “They don’t understand how unique finishes and details can make small rooms exquisitely beautiful and as expensive as large, less detailed rooms,” he says. He thinks Susanka’s concept may begin to happen more as the availability of lots decreases and owners seek to make their “little houses special,” he says.
   3. Smaller houses, more expensive lots. With the cost of land rising faster than materials and the salaries of would-be buyers, another segment, though not a majority, is building houses with smaller footprints, says Mark Englund, president of Lifestyle Home Design Services in Minneapolis St. Paul. Those willing, so far, to make this trade are homeowners who favor close in locations where land is at its highest premium, says Town &Country's Fitch.
   Housing stock in the highest density areas will consist of more multifamily dwellings, including “stack flats” or linear town homes, says Chicago architect Stella Koop of RTKL Associates Inc.
   4. Disappearing living rooms. First came the family room, then the great room, both harbingers of the living room’s diminished status as the place to entertain. Although rumors of its demise may have been premature, its presence now seems less secure. One third of new homes are now constructed without it, Ahluwalia says. “It’s definitely on the chopping block among average size homes.”
   Town &Country is testing the non-living-room house at its Churchill Club in far west suburban Oswego, where homeowners instead get a more casual space. How is this option different from the great room of the past? “It’s larger, but instead of being big and open, there’s more definition of function through materials and window placement,” Fitch says.
   North Star’s Shulman offers a different plan, replacing living rooms with a “hearth room,” which is much smaller and more informal than a great room and primarily for family. But he hedges his bets by including a bigger family room/great room for entertaining, with fancier furniture and media equipment, he says.
   Builders still skittish about completely eliminating the living room reduce its size. Concord has cut square footage by one third.
   5. Flexible dining rooms. For now the dining room remains in transition because builders and owners are reluctant to give it up even though families formally entertain infrequently.
   A more ambivalent group thinks it should be retained as a formal, chameleon like space that can work as a dining room, living room or study, says Robert Bowman, president of Charter Homes in Lancaster, Pa.
   A third, smaller number of owners, pushed by their architects, do without it because they have kitchens with large eating areas, says architect Michael Rosenfeld, who works in Acton, Mass.

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