While modern design can be viewed as cost prohibitive to most, its basic characteristics — open preparation, easy surfaces and details, and generous glazing — can still be accomplished with lower budgets. Trimming costs may come with the option of materials used, the kinds of details executed, and the size and scale of a house. The following examples incorporate one or more of these methods to exhibit lower-cost and low-tech solutions which are still otherwise modern in terms of distance and style.
More: Regional Modern Home Design
Nick Deaver Architect
This house in Texas by architect Nick Deaver is wrapped in corrugated metal, a relatively cheap material that’s also fairly low-maintenance.
At the primary entry, stone is used to clad a small volume beside a steel-framed canopy above the terrace.
Nick Deaver Architect
The canopy sunglasses not only the terrace but also the large glass walls next to it. The primarily good wrapper of corrugated metal gives way to a glazed expanse that’s rather modern. Past the open living/dining/kitchen area is visible, because you’ll see following.
Nick Deaver Architect
The inside is treated with a simple palette — wood floors, drywall walls and ceilings — which fits together with the spacious plan. A small detail that’s worth noting is the base in the bottom of the wall. In most modern houses, this base is removed, necessitating an exceptionally crafted joint which readily adds cost to your job. Painting the base to match the wall is a powerful way of extending the ease of the space when saving money.
Nick Deaver Architect
A low-maintenance picture encompasses the house, giving it the clear moniker, “Walkabout.”
Lake Flato Architects
Founded in Texas is Lake | Flato’s Porch House, a renewable house made from a modular kit of components. The example here illustrates a few dogtrot houses, which comprise breezeways between enclosed finishes.
Lake Flato Architects
This breezeway gives us a view of the horizontal wood boards that wrap the walls and the roof’s corrugated metal, which is also provided as cladding for its walls, per the architect’s page for the Porch House.
Lake Flato Architects
Another perspective of the breezeway demonstrates how it can be closed off with sliding doors to cut back on breezes and increase privacy.
Lake Flato Architects
It is clear within the Porch House how small the footprint is, but it’s nevertheless efficient, and also the cross-ventilation is an edge of a linear house program.
Stuart Sampley Architect
It looks like Texas is onto something in terms of low-cost modernism (with a clear vernacular twist), since this is yet another house in that state. Designed by Stuart Sampley Architect, the Moontower Residence — named for a nearby Austin landmark — is shaped by existing trees on the website; porches and glass partitions take advantage of these natural attributes.
Stuart Sampley Architect
As documented in a previous Moontower Houzz excursion, the exterior stuff are corrugated Galvalume (roof), fiber-cement siding (walls), and locally harvested cypress (porches and soffits).
Stuart Sampley Architect
Added to this minimal palette are some nice bits in metal: a sliding door by artist Susan Wallace in particular, and measures made from grating.
Stuart Sampley Architect
1 last glimpse of outside before we head indoors shows us the fence of corrugated metal, an affordable structure which has a rustic appearance which melds with the house.
Stuart Sampley Architect
Like the first example in this story, the inside is open and light, treated with wood and white shingles surfaces and quite standard details (base, window frames, etc.). Sliding glass doors connect the interior to the exterior and place the focus on the large tree.
jones | haydu
For the last job in this ideabook, we head west to San Francisco and a vertical inclusion by jones | haydu. Clad in ribbed metal with wood accents and frames, also opens itself onto top floor to bay views.
jones | haydu
Within the inclusion is a mix of low and high distances, white surfaces, untreated wood framing, and steel grating.
jones | haydu
The cheap, low-tech nature of the job is evident from the exposed wood framing between the older a new, vertical to a exposed expanse of the older house. Fitted to the wood studs are habit shelves, an interesting touch.
More: The L-Shaped House Plan
Living La Vida Local
Regional Modern Home Design