Home Security Check, part I

Burglars do not discriminate, certainly not when it comes to building styles: modern or not, any home can be burglarized. And though it is difficult to make a house burglar-proof, it is rather easy to increase your odds dramatically.

In the first of a five-part series on home security, let's start with the overall perspective.

The first step toward protecting your home from break-ins is to conduct a home security check that will show where your property is most vulnerable.

This step-by-step list, arranged according to the hierarchy of risk, is a good place to start.


Your home's appearance

Burglars want an easy target, so try to think like a burglar. Stand on the street outside your house and ask yourself: Does this property look neglected, hidden, or uninhabited? A front door or walkway obscured by shrubbery offers crooks the perfect cover they need while they break a door or window.

Consider trimming shrubs away from windows, widening front walks, and installing outdoor lighting with motion detectors. Simple motion-activated floodlights cost less than $50, and installing them is an easy DIY job if the wiring is already in place. All sides of your house should be well-lit, not just the front.


Doors: The first line of defense

Are your front and back doors vulnerable? Steel, solid wood, and impact-resistant fiberglass are all good choices for security.

Open all doors and check the strike plates, the metal fittings that catch bolts and latches. If they are fastened to the soft wood of the door jamb with two screws: you need to upgrade (details on how to upgrade and what to install in the next post “Doors”.)

Especially vulnerable are back doors and garage side doors. If you have an attached garage, secure the door by disabling the automatic opener and locking the door before you go away on a long trip. The door leading from the garage into the house should be outfitted with the same hardware as all other exterior doors and be kept locked at all times.


Windows

In order of risk, ground-floor and basement windows are more likely to be attacked than second-floor windows. The exception is second-floor windows that can be easily accessed, by a deck or other elevated structure outside the home. Make sure all windows can be opened, closed, and locked with relative ease–and then remember to lock them. The biggest problem with windows is that homeowners leave the house and leave them wide open.

Don’t ignore the doors and windows on your garage as well as an outdoor storage shed, especially if you store tools such as ladders, saws, screwdrivers, and hammers, any of which would be handy to a burglar. As with house doors, the best option is a secure deadbolt. Hasp closures are easily defeated because someone can insert a crowbar behind the hasp and snap it.


Patio doors

It's relatively easy to lift a set of older patio doors off the track, even when they are locked. Don't attempt to do this on your audit, but take time to inspect the doors and hardware. Replace any missing or broken locks, and consider installing and using locking pins to prevent them from sliding.

Consider your family's habits: Do you leave the patio doors open all summer? Locking the screen door isn't good enough; it keeps out bugs, not thieves. Get in the habit of closing and locking patio doors when they're unattended or you're not home.


Safeguarding household valuables

Thieves want easy-to-grab electronics, cash, jewelry, and other valuables, though some are not above running down the street with your flat-screen TV. Most make a beeline for the master bedroom, because that's where we're likely to hide spare cash, jewelry, even guns.

Tour each room and ask yourself: Is there anything here that I can move to a safe deposit box? Alternatively consider a home safe, bolted to your basement slab–a good spot for everything else. These safes come in various sizes, from drawer-safes to wall safes that go between wall studs to free-standing monsters, not to forget dummy can-safes. The rule: anything that costs a burglar time helps you. Run a search on amazon.com for safes, and you'll get a good overview of cost and availability.

Have you made a video inventory of other items of value in your home? Are you properly insured for theft? Understand that high-ticket items in your home office, such as computers, professional camera equipment, or other business essentials, may require an additional rider or a separate policy. And take steps to back up the personal information stored on your home computer.

_______________________
In the next installment: Doors.

Based on an article series by Joseph D'Agnese for the National Association of Realtors

The Kronish house by Richard Neutra in Beverly Hills threatened by demolition – for sale at $13.995M

For the first time in 30 years, this Richard Neutra Beverly Hills home has been offered for sale. In essence, it was listed as a tear-down in April for $13.995 million, with no real photos and no mention of the name Neutra. Those details were added a few weeks later.

Named for its original owner, Herbert Kronish, and built in 1954, the one-story house sits at the end of a 250-foot-long driveway on a 2-acre, flag-shaped lot with mature trees and a swimming pool.

With 6,891 square feet of living space, six bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms, the contemporary home is the Modernist architect’s largest in Southern California, according to his son, Dion Neutra. Walls of glass open to a terrace that steps down to the pool.

Dion Neutra, who runs Neutra Architects, says that the owners have refused to let anyone in to photograph the house and that he's hoping any plans for demolition can be stopped. Beverly Hills doesn't have strong preservation laws and has let other mid-century houses by big names bite the dust.

Eyewitness reports from commenters say the house is in bad shape, but it is large (6,891 square feet) and it does have a pool. Either way, a buyer will end up with a two acre flag lot off Sunset and an occasional next door neighbor named Madonna.

Commenting on the fact that a demolition permit has been applied for but not yet granted – or so it seems –  blogger Barbara Lamprecht writes

“The proposed demolition of any work anywhere by a master architect is automatically discretionary. Period.”

Please email me if you are interested in preserving this important property.

Via:
http://neutra.org/kronish.html
http://architectureforsale.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/richard-neutra-kronish-house-in-beverly-hills/
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/07/neutradesigned_kronish_house_looks_headed_for_demolition.php
http://barbaralamprecht.com

A Day of Architecture

Update: 2012 dates are June 23 and 24, 2012. The main event site has not been updated yet... let me know if you need help translating ;-)

For the 17th year in a row (!), in June Germany celebrated a “Day of Architecture” throughout the whole country, with 1668 open-house-projects in nearly every state. Organized by the Architekten-Kammern (Architect Chambers, the German equivalents to state AIA chapters), the focus this year was on modern and contemporary residential projects, which generated intense interest from a curious public.

The 2011 event, under the motto “Better Living. With Architects” (which probably did not mean to imply that you necessarily live better if you share your bed with an architect), tackled subjects such as new forms of living, demographic changes, new use-concepts and building without barriers for handicapped residents.

The “Day of Architecture” – actually whole a weekend, always the last one in June – is such a success that it has become a permanent item in the annual calendar of every architecture-crazed fan as well as the professionals (except this writer, who only learned about in late June). US-style “open houses” are otherwise unknown in Germany, but on this weekend, builders, owners and architects fling open their doors to let the public romp through their new homes, renovated buildings and rehabed interiors.

A selection of interesting projects from all states in Germany can be seen here (use the arrows next to “Bildauswahl” to scroll through the photos on that page; click on a photo to read a brief description in German; click on the link under the word “Projekt” to get a detailed description).

Some of the featured projects (below not linked):

Have a Great Independence Weekend!

A mid-century-modern summer pool scene, Strümp/Germany 1958. Photo © G.Kaiser

The Modernist Bird

Any bird, afflicted by the same modernist virus as their garden's owner, now has two more splendid options, one being this International Style feeder:

Read more at the NYTimes: Houses and Feeders for the Contemporary Bird

Modernism on the Jersey Shore

This week, I am vacationing on the Jersey shore, in Avalon north of Cape May to be precise. I had never been to this small town or the barrier island referred to as Seven-Mile-Island before: a beautiful area, especially this time of the year, before the masses arrive (if you can speak of masses with a serious lack of hotels and most residential structures being single family homes).

What caught my eye right from the first minute in Avalon was the rather uniform building style, locally referred to as Nantucket architecture:

Nantucket style via Jersey shore: mostly two stories, steep roofline, lots of 
dormers, shingled roofs and siding (often vinyl, sometimes cedar), emphasized 
fenestration, covered porches, ocean-facing balconies.

(Do bear with me, we're getting to modernist houses soon...)

A lot of the area houses are now build as pre-fabs, with plumbing, wiring, windows etc. pre-installed:

 Prefab "upside-downer" with main living area on second floor and six bedrooms, 

constructed from 14 modules. Time between two shots: one day. Move-in date: 

approx. three to five weeks from photo date.

Long-term visitors told me that even in the 1960s, Avalon and its neighbour Stone Harbor were expensive. $300,000 for a house on an interior lot was not uncommon then. Currently, oceanfront starts at approx. $5m asking, a vacant lot on a high dune is available for $10.0m, a small interior single story ranch home with 3 bedrooms and no pool on 8,000 sf in walking distance to beach is $1.0m. Originally however, most homes were humble seaside cottages:

(Really interesting, but no modern architecture? Anywhere? Just one?) 

From that style evolved a slightly larger variant, sort of a ranch on stilts, to counter occasional flooding typical on barrier islands (please note the gable windows below, first sign of modernism):

And – deep sigh – as everywhere, there's always room for more bling and less taste:

Misplaced Italianate on the ocean, clad in white marble.

18,000 sf Nantucket Style on steroids in the dunes. Potatoe-chips build that residence.

After one or two days, I started to see hints and glimpses of modernist architecture: 

Modern interpretation of the salt-box? Geometrical fenestration 

is actually a residential version of a curtain wall, facing east.

Ensemble of three individual residences on a triangular oceanfront lot near the inlet.

Detail of above ensemble shows house 1 and house 2. All three houses utilise 

different exterior materials and colours to emphasise their separate structures.

Architect's remodel of a non-modernist home includes greening of garage roof plus new facade.

Oceanfront residence with roof terrace, facade in typical local color (stained wood? planking).

Fourth house from the ocean (on right); vertical emphasis of wood planking and fenestration 

countered by three massive horizontal blocks formed by retaining wall, balcony on 

second floor and roof terrace on third.

Contemporary but clean interpretation of the upside-downer, with main living areas on second floor. 

Upside-downer on the Bay with lovely cedar-shingled facade. House orientated 

west towards the Bay. Garage and closed front facing east and street.

Looking elegant at first glance at dusk.

West elevation however shows messy design, restless details, fenestration not 

lined up and overall neglect. Pity.

Unassuming oceanfront; narrow 5,500 sf lot necessitates a smallish front and deep 

footprint. Three stories visually compensated by emphasis on the horizontal through 

bands of windows and pale horizontal planking.

 My favourite, right next door to above home. Near-Neutra-like use of emphasising 
the contours and construction with gray timber, spaces filled with white vertical 
planking (wood?). Smaller windows to the west, large expanses of glass facing 
the dunes and the ocean (on the right).

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you had fun – and looking forward to your comments!

Renderings in the Sand: Mid-century Modern Beachfront Homes and their Architects

Midcentury-modern beach houses, their jaunty, angled forms clad in weathered cedar siding, have faced tear-down threats for two decades now. The archives of their architects, however, are sometimes enjoying better fates. 

 

This 1961 image of Andrew Geller's Frank House in Fire Island Pines, on Long Island, was recently rediscovered. 

Two scholars are sorting through faded color slides, rolled blueprints and musty photo albums related to low-slung houses perched on dunes.

Christopher Rawlins, an architect in Manhattan, is poring over the papers of the architect Horace Gifford, best known for catering to Fire Island clients as prominent as Calvin Klein. Gifford died of AIDS in 1992, at 59, and an artist friend, Ed Di Guardia, had long stored the files in his Long Island garage. 

Jake Gorst, a documentary filmmaker, has moved into an 1890s Long Island home in Northport, where the architect Andrew Geller, his grandfather, spent a career playing with geometries. Mr. Geller’s most famous work is being preserved: the Pearlroth House in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., with two diamond-shaped wings often said to resemble a bra. 

Mr. Geller, 87, is in poor health and lives with his daughter, Jamie Geller Dutra, in upstate New York. Mr. Gorst; his wife, Tracey; and their two daughters have preserved the attic office, down to the tobacco-smoke stains on the wood ceiling and racks of tweed jackets, protractors and T-squares. Drawings and models keep turning up in closets and crannies. 

“I feel like I’m on a treasure hunt in my own house,” Mr. Gorst said. 

But storing aging paperwork and cardboard models safely, and preparing for exhibitions, books and documentaries, can be costly. Mr. Rawlins runs a Web site, horacegifford.org, and hopes to raise $70,000 for a Gifford monograph from Princeton Architectural Press. Mr. Gorst’s Web site, andrewgeller.net, links to his kickstarter.com campaign, trying to bring in $40,000 for archive preservation by June 2. 

The beach house architects did not prepare much for scholarly attention. Gifford, who suffered from manic depression, gave away many of his models and did not record street addresses on his vellum drawings.

“I love Horace Gifford, but occasionally I curse his habits,” Mr. Rawlins said. 

Mr. Geller kept working until recently, filing his documents in jumbled boxes and drawers. When fans would drop by, Ms. Gorst said, “He was just so thrilled that anyone showed interest in his work.” 

First published by Eve M. Khan in the NYTimes, 5 May 2011