Blog

The future of urban density

2011-11-17T19:55:49Z

We at Spore are essentially suburban. In spite of our living in and loving our city, we live in a single-family dwelling that has enough room that we can store things we don't mean to keep. We admire the minimalism borne of constraints, and we love what density can do for community vibrancy, as well as for environmental impact. Cities in the United States tend to have codes that prevent developers from building the kind of compact dwellings that are popular in many Asian cities, but some people are starting to explore the "what-ifs." What if there were a viable option for affordable, safe housing for the young and poor in our cities? What if semi-communal options were architectually supported? Today we read this interesting article in the New York Times on a few projects that are considering this, and we were inspired by the idea that we might see something like this in our cities in the next decade. We just hope, of course, that they want lots of doorbells.

As seen on Decorgirl.net

2011-10-28T18:07:43Z

Thanks to Lisa at Decorgirl.net for the great Spore review earlier this year on Decorgirl.net. Don't forget to let us know if you ever blog about us--we'd love to share your post with our customers.

A House By the Park: the cost of building modern

2011-07-08T17:08:05Z

A couple of years ago, we began following the blog A House By The Park, the chronology of Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, on the building of his modern house in Seattle. His goal in writing his blog was not to just show off the progress on his beautiful home, but to precisely document the design choices and their costs so that other people could see what the reality of building custom modern might actually look like. The journey started in 2007, when Mike first started thinking about what he was looking for. In July of 2008 he found his dream property and the process began in earnest. Working with Build, a local construction firm that specialize in modern residences, Mike transformed a property with an early 1950s house into a modern masterpiece.

Along the way he shared his experiences and choices on everything from mortgages to lighting, with information about how he made his decisions along the way. We were pleased as punch that in his second to last post on the process he called out our True doorbell as a favorite find, a great honor after watching his progress for a year. Though the house wrapped up in November of last year, the blog remains an incredible resource and inspiration for anyone who is thinking about building or revamping modern.

Exterior Elements: Modern Planters

2011-04-29T17:56:06Z

While walking around the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle yesterday, we noted these thoughtfully designed corten steel planters. There remains a paucity of good options when looking for locally available planters for modern settings, and the most notable ones we see are site-built custom jobs. We particularly admired the way these were recessed into the spaces between the pillars and used the concrete wall as the back side of the planter. Have a favorite go-to planter? Share it with us--we are always looking for more options!

Favorite Gifts: Drawing a Tree

2011-04-15T23:28:29Z

Every year or so, we find a perfect new gift, the thing we buy in multiples and keep on hand for hosts, loved ones or business associates. A few years ago it was Tivoli radios, then it was tiny hexagonal Japanese bud vases. This year's gift-on-hand is the beautiful little book Drawing a Tree by Bruno Munari. As the cover suggests, this book provides simple observations about the forms of trees and how they can be represented in a variety of media. For days after thumbing through it, one looks longer at trunks and branch forms, and even when sketching with the kids we find ourselves adding more variety to our arboreal efforts. Sweet, meditative and useful: what else could one want in a gift? We stock up on it at Peter Miller books in downtown Seattle.

Modern in the Hood: Soleil Development

2010-07-26T21:43:44Z

In this sad time for the construction industry, we were more than pleased to see this pair of houses go up in our neighborhood. We have noticed a few semi-mods built in our area in the past year, but we've gotta say that they often fall short on the quality. A shed roof only goes so far. But this pair, built by Seattle's Soleil Development, was impressive to us from the first days of foundation pouring. The same week that these footings were going in, another house down the street from us started pouring chunky, ugly, coarse foundations that looked sized for a supermarket. By comparison, Soleil's fastidious and clean workers did masterful work, which continued through every stage. Their building site was clean, their workers friendly, and their quality admirable. They invited us in a couple of times to see the progress they made, and we were impressed. For relatively modest single-family homes, they were well planned, light-filled and livable. We also really liked that they didn't insist on pushing the houses to the lot lines, and each has a serviceable yard plus a few deck areas. So: nice work, Soleil. We'd be happy to see more developers work with this attention to detail rather than superficial modern glosses. Oh, and of course they used Spore doorbells (Delight).

The Best Modern Deck Railing (is the one you make)

2010-07-22T23:07:46Z

Update! Update! For those few souls who might have followed our household plight in past months, I am happy to announce that we have a deck railing! Yes, a full two years after Ted laid a lovely new cumaru wood deck, we are able to dine al fresco. We went back and we went forth. We had plans to replicate the old railing, updated to baby-safe standards. We also considered all the other standard offerings for modern railings: cable, glass, etc. Hours were spent in CAD, fine tuning. Powder coat colors were considered, from harvest gold to black and--for a brief crazed moment--blue. But it never seemed quite right. Then I happened to pass a new house under construction down the street, and their elegant solution was clearly the best choice. We ended up more or less copying that design, which consists of welded steel panels that are side-bolted to the deck and reinforced with a wooden hand rail. We had hesitated on having horizontal pickets due to the age of our young girls, but we figured they'd learn not to climb it, and the spacing is up to code so that they can't squeeze their noggins through. While the house down the street sports galvanized panels, we opted to powder coat ours black, to match our windows and house trim. While things like this never happen quite as quickly as one would like, we are quite pleased with the result. And the thrill of our "new" outdoor space inspired our babe to learn a new word: "Deck!"

Congrats to Virginia Tech LUMENHAUS

2010-06-28T18:21:48Z

We were excited to receive word yesterday that VTech's LUMENHAUS won the Solar Decathlon in Madrid this week. The competition, which asks participants from university teams to create a sustainable, self-sufficient house powered entirely by solar energy, only had invited two U.S. teams. LUMENHAUS took the overall prize as most efficient, and tied for first place in architecture, and took home several more prizes in other categories. Congratulations to the team! And they used a Spore True for their entry...

Super Siding: Modern Exteriors

2010-04-24T06:59:09Z

Being in the business of exteriors, you'd think we'd be down with all the latest and greatest in siding etc, but we tend to be navel gazers for the most part, and check only for doorbell buttons when we slowly cruise by any mod dwellings. Not that we don't notice, we just happen to be very focused on one very small thing. Micro destroys macro in our vision. But when I was poking round all the fantastic submissions we got from Design Milk readers during our giveaway last month, I found this awesome duplex done by architect Nicole Blair of Studio 512 in Austin. For once, the siding made me look. It is nice to see color for a change, and the tone and dimensions play without being too much. I'd be curious to know how much upkeep it requires, but for now, I will just say: nice. We were also pleased to discover a nice shot of our Delight button on the Studio 512 website, and we are always happy to find that great architects already know us.

Spore in Custom Home Magazine

2010-04-14T04:38:24Z

We finally got our copy of January's Custom Home Magazine, published by Hanley Wood, which features all of our doorbell buttons! You can see it online here.