This is not a photo of a UFO. 

This photo was taken in Kirkland, Washington at 5 pm on November 17.

I had an appointment with a client to re-stake her custom Lindal design on the site so that her civil engineer could verify the house location for permitting purposes. The builder would meet us on site for the siting at 4 PM.

The breathtaking site is two converging ravines with huge mature trees that are totally covered with ivy, as is the ground itself. I often joke that I am certain the Keebler elves live there. I designed the house to overlook the ravines, “floating” just above the ground with major views south and west.

The delivery of every Lindal project is an exciting event. The arrival of sealed containers loaded with Lindal components is an exciting event, a tangible result of months of collaboration. And when the builder unloads the materials, the inevitable affirmative exclamation of the legendary quality of the Lindal materials is music to the clients’ (and my) ears.

This delivery to Southampton is particularly gratifying to me for a number of reasons:

Less than one decade ago the average age of Lindal clients was 64, typically building a second home—a Classic Lindal—on a large remote site with water or mountain views.

Times surely have changed. I could not possibly describe my clients that simply. Meet the most recent Warmmodern Living clients:

The September 6 Sunday New York Times contained a terrific Opinion piece, “The Not Very Smart Home,” written by Allison Arieff, former editor of Dwell and a writer on architecture and design.

In the engaging piece, Arieff quite artfully criticizes much of today’s home technology as being redundant, not logically integrated into other home technology that it supposedly enhances, and lacking sustainability.

Consider another point of view. Several decades ago, when proponents of active solar design “competed” with proponents of passive solar design, there was an adage that “owners of active houses could be passive, while owners of passive houses were by necessity active.”

Over four decades ago, my mentor prophesized that “someday in your lifetime, water will be more valuable than oil.” In the face of my first “oil crisis” (waiting on line for an hour to pay a stratospheric $1.50/gallon for gasoline), his words struck me as lunacy.

During the ensuing forty years, we’ve learned to design and build homes that consume increasingly less energy. Passive and active technologies to harness sun and wind; energy efficient HVAC systems and appliances; new energy-saving building technologies have collectively enabled us to reduce our reliance on nonrenewable energy resources by as much as 100%.  

But what about water? Reduced flow showerheads and toilets have been the extent to which many of us have given consideration to water conservation.

No more!