Mouzon Design Recent News

Coastal Living 2011 Idea House Breaks Ground

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 08:20:13 -0500

The Ultimate Beach House, as Coastal Living’s 2011 Idea House is also known, will look out across this park to the ocean at East Beach Norfolk. The groundbreaking was held earlier this week in cold, blustery weather. It should be much nicer when the house is finished at the first of June next year.
Wanda and I are very excited to be designing this house for many reasons. As noted earlier, it will be the first SmartDwelling to be constructed. It has many cool new ideas, including the fact that it’s designed as a multi-generational house. Here’s how it works:
The house has two master bedrooms; one upstairs and the other one down. At the beginning, the downstairs master bedroom wouldn’t even have to be built out. Rather, it could be a large open room for your home office, if you even built it at all at the beginning. This is because you’ll be upstairs near your young children. They’ll occupy the Children’s Realm, where each has a curtained bed alcove. The Children’s Realm has no door so you can easily supervise internet usage.
Eventually, the kids are old enough that you won’t feel the need to be near them at night. Matter of fact, they probably would like a little distance from you, and you might like the distance as well. So you build out the downstairs master bedroom and move downstairs. The oldest kid gets the bedroom you just left.
Time passes, and your kids grow up and leave home. But that’s about the time that one of your parents needs a place to live, so you move back upstairs and your parents move into the downstairs bedroom. A few years pass, and your parents pass on, but one of your kids is starting a family, so you move back to the downstairs master bedroom, and your kid and their spouse moves into the upstairs master, with their kids in the Children’s Realm. Eventually, of course, you pass on, and the cycle continues.
Oh, and I didn’t mention that there’s a suite over the garage for an office or bedroom, so it’s even more flexible than that. The bottom line is that for the past hundred years, we’ve been designing homes for the nuclear family. Once, however, we built homes that could stay in the family for many generations. The Idea House re-opens that grand American tradition.

Mouzon Design Chosen for Coastal Living 2011 Idea House

Wed, 1 Dec 2010 11:15:51 -0500

Wanda and I are delighted to be designing Coastal Living’s 2011 Idea House! It will be built at East Beach Norfolk. Working drawings are essentially done, except for items such as garden designs, interior design, and such that won’t affect the initial progress of the house. We expect to see groundbreaking in the next couple weeks or so, and the house will be completed by the first of June and photographed during the first week of June. It will be published in a fall issue of Coastal Living as is their usual practice. Phoebe Howard will reportedly be the interior designer... not sure if they actually have her under contract yet or not, but everyone on the team is delighted with her work, and she’s reportedly very excited about the project. We hope to hear next week that she’s officially onboard.
This house is especially exciting for Wanda and I for many reasons, including the fact that it will be the first SmartDwelling to be constructed. Project:SmartDwelling is an initiative hatched late in 2008 by the New Urban Guild. It incorporates numerous principles of the Original Green, which is an initiative we’ve been advancing for years through the Guild Foundation. I’ve even written the book on the Original Green; much of this past year has been spent on the book tour, and we’re looking forward to another year of touring, as people across the country want to hear more about the Original Green. Look for a number of Original Green workshops to be held at the Idea House while it’s open next summer, because telling a story is never as good as showing a story.

SmartDwelling I Story Runs in Wall Street Journal

Sat, 2 May 2009 07:39:36 -0400

Our SmartDwelling I design was published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, April 27. See the Original Green Blog for details. This home design responds to the Wall Street Journal’s query of “what is the most sustainable home that can be imagined today, if technologies and human behaviors were not impediments?” SmartDwelling I attempts to answer this question: First, it’s designed for a specific region (the American Gulf Coast) because truly sustainable buildings should be appropriate to regional conditions, climate, and culture. Next, it’s designed for a neighborhood, not for some indeterminate location, because properly-designed neighborhoods are at least half of the solution of sustainability. Its biggest design move is to entice people into a series of outdoor rooms so they become acclimated to the local environment and require less conditioning when they return indoors. Outdoor living space is larger than conditioned space (1,200 SF) in SmartDwelling I, which is sustainable in a broad way known as the Original Green. It grows much of its own food. It hopes to be lovable to the non-architects. It is built durably, able to last for centuries. It is flexible, able to be used for many purposes through time. And it is highly frugal with energy, air, water, and materials... and conserves not only our own health, but that of the surrounding environment. These are all ideals promoted by the New Urban Guild’s SmartDwelling Project. SmartDwelling I is only one design by one person; the SmartDwelling Project will produce many designs by some of the most notable architects and designers of the New Urbanism. This is only the beginning... stay tuned...