i found this house walking around town yesterday. i though it had made some good attempts at being modern and i would like to discuss those here.

1. simple use of materials – only stucco and cedar siding. i will talk about the ‘porch’ later.

2. the curved standing-seam metal roof works well here. what i find is inappropriate is the small overhangs. either make the overhangs huge or none at all. the front overhangs look a little to small to be noticeable.

3. large windows, though i am sure there was no enery model done for this house before being built. the use of aluminium windows are not going to be great for energy efficiency, since metal conducts heat better than wood or even fibreglass, the windows will not have as good insulating values. i wonder if people are still interested in throwing money out the window, and in this case, literally!

in regards to the energy efficiency of this house, there are a few problems. number #1 problem is the orientation, being north-east to south-west where the front yard is in  the south-west. if you take a look at the back of the house on the realtor’s listing, you will see the huge pieces of glass that face north-east. can you image the heat loss out of these windows? since this side of the house will only give little sunlight during the day, the rest of the time this side of the house will feel cold and uncomfortable. on top of that, the designer decided to put skylights at the ‘corners’ of the top floor. i am guessing this chamfering of the top floor was done due to the zoning requirements for building  height.

i don’t have a floor plan, but it looks like you have to walk right in front of the top floor windows to go in and out of the ensuite bathroom. maybe the reason the house is not selling is that any homebuyer is not interested in putting on a show for the neighborhood in the evenings when they come of the shower or tub and walk in front of those windows.

the front entry sequence is odd. why enter at the far left side of the property, the go down and all the way across to the right side to the main entry of the house. the front yard looks like a complete waste of space.

one thing that may also be turning off buyers is the sunken entry. Not to mention the ‘stitched’ together stone columns. this metal canopy and porch posts look like they were cut & pasted from another project.

here is the mls listing.