Home Design

Calling all Russian (and other) oligarchs and hedge fund types: if you already have a slew of residences around the world, how about something completely different that will make you the envy of other wealthy types? We're talking about your own private island or a yacht marketed as a man-made floating island. Ah, there's nothing like the allure of a private isle, where you can forget about noisy neighbors and prying eyes.

With Greece's government in turmoil over the country's mounting financial woes, two German members of parliament have dared to suggest that the Greeks sell some of their prized property assets -- islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas -- to help meet their debt payments. This didn't go down well with Greeks, of course, who are looking to Germany for a possible financial bailout.

If you lose your passport in London in 2017, getting a replacement at the new U.S. embassy there will require crossing a moat -- or a partial moat, or a bit of a moat, as critics have called the 100-foot wide pond and landscaping that will surround the building, according to plans recently announced by the State Department.

Moats are, of course, all about defense. A deep, wide trench with or without water, is great for keeping enemies and armies at bay, or in this modern day case, the reality of bomb-throwing terrorists. Moats were very popular in Medieval Europe, especially in Britain, which is why it's somehow fitting that the $1 billion American embassy building, designed by Philadelphia architecture firm Kieran Timberlake, has a sort of moat that relates to its location on the banks of the Thames -- although New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described the building itself as "a bland glass cube" with "all the glamour of a corporate office block."

Moats never really caught on in the U.S., as far as we can tell, but there are some folks who hanker after them, in one form or another at their homes.

Art and design shared the spotlight during L.A.'s week of Academy Award-related festivities last Thursday night as Beverly Hills' Gagosian Gallery unveiled its addition in a starry opening for photographer Andreas Gursky.

Among the crowd in the Richard Meier & Partners-deigned space were actors Adrien Brody (mother is NY-photographer Sylvia Plachy) and Molly Shannon; major Hollywood players like producers Lawrence Bender (Oscar nominated for "Inglourious Basterds"), Brian Grazer and Harvey Weinstein and Independent Spirits Awards' presenter, film director and artist John Waters.

The gallery's polished concrete floors resounded with the clicks of Louboutin heels as fashionistas also took in the scene. Dior Homme's designer Hedi Slimane stopped by as did the dean of L.A. artists John Baldessari and photographer Catherine Opie (who will soon have a LACMA show).

The owner of San Francisco's most famous "painted lady" Victorian has put it on the market for $4 million. Michael Shannon's four-story, corner property punctuates the end of one of the city's most photogenic blocks, known as Postcard Row. The sale has drummed up some attention, but he's used to that.

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh is selling his luxury condo atop Fifth Avenue, and it can be yours - all 10 rooms on the 20th floor, with hand painted wall and ceiling murals included - for a mere $13.95 million.

Limbaugh may rail against so-called elites on his widely heard radio show, but he apparently lives like a latter day Sun King himself, what with the gaudy Baroque decor, crystal chandeliers and gold leaf moldings. It might not be to everyone's taste but a gut renovation would certainly add to the high price tag - not to mention a $13,360 monthly maintenance.

American families are going back to the future, with multiple generations shacking up together for the same reasons that young un-marrieds once did -- to save on housing costs. The trend has resurfaced over the past 12 months, reports Coldwell Banker in a new survey conducted among its agents, as families seek big homes with features like geographically separate bedrooms that let the middle-aged share space with adult offspring and/or aging parents.

"More than one third of our sales associates have seen clients express a need for a multi-gen home," Diann Patton, Consumer Specialist at Parsippany, N.J.-based Coldwell Banker Real Estate, tells HousingWatch.

Indeed, Coldwell Banker's survey says that 37 percent of Coldwell Banker agents have heard this request, and that among those seeking a "multi-gen" home, the top reason is financial savings (39%), followed by healthcare costs (29%) and family bonding (6%).

Patton says that families interested in multi-generational homes will look at models with "mother-in-law" or accessory units, but also homes with remodel-ready attics and lots of separate entrances.

Shortly after the devastating earthquake struck Port-Au-Prince, noted architect pioneer Andres Duany flew to Haiti with plans for building durable, affordable housing in the shattered country.

Duany, a celebrated archtitect who has masterplanned whole towns and claims to have written the definitive book on "smart growth" had big plans. He was going to put in gorgeous cross-ventilated windows and porches. He was going to give the privacy of master bedrooms to families that had only known poverty. And once he arrived in Haiti, he saw his plans were nearly entirely wrong.

"I came with a confidence I should not have had," he told us.

He needed to put in fewer windows, even in the hot Haitian climate, because some folk traditions make windows the object of mistrust. He needed to rethink porches, because some families consider it unkind to eat in front of their houses when starving neighbors walk by on the street. And he needed to think less about rooms and more about beds--cramming in as many as would fit.

Yesterday, Duany debuted his design for prefab housing to go up in Haiti's cities and countryside after the immediate crisis fades. It is, by his count, the fourth or fifth pass he took at the designs.

Want to take better care of your heart and keep it healthy? Consider moving to Albert Lea, Minn. Residents decided that the best way to prevent heart disease was to pursue public policies to prevent it.

People living in this city 90 miles south of Minneapolis, became the first in the nation to sign on to the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project - an effort to define what steps need to be taken to increase your life's longevity. With a population that tips the scales at a 60 percent overweight or obesity rate, this health overhaul couldn't come at a better time.

Dan Buettner, the author of "The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest", is the brains behind this project. He's well aware that where we live influences how long we'll live.

Australian Louisa Relia tells us why the diverse and historic neighborhood of West Adams, L.A., is where she calls home.

Name, Age, Occupation: Louisa Maria Relia, 39, landscape architect

Neighborhood: West Adams, Los Angeles

Abode: A four-bedroom, two-bath California bungalow built in 1906

How long have you lived here? 6 years

What do you love most about your neighborhood?
Other than the access to the freeway, I would say the historical value. It's the first suburb built west of Western in 1906 so it was built primarily for the directors of Paramount Studios and Professors of USC. At that point it predates Beverly Hills. Then when Beverly Hills was developed all the wealthy people from our neighborhood moved to Beverly Hills. Ray Charles and lots of African-Americans moved in and it was called Sugar Hill, which it's still referred to by some.

A single dollar can buy you this two-story, four bedroom 1926 Arts and Crafts-styled bungalow in Michigan. There's just one catch: it must be moved from its Detroit suburb to make room for a local park.

Moving this one-buck, fixer-upper is estimated to cost about $20,000. Add in renovations on the 2,110 square foot home, plus the cost of the land on which to place it, and it will likely cost more than last year's purchase price of $76,415..

If no one buys this Arts and Crafts-style home for $1 by May 31, 2010, it will be demolished. So what factors do you need to consider when uprooting and relocating a house?

When the Academy Awards take place on March 7, English actor Colin Firth will be one of the chosen few at Hollywood's Kodak Theater nominated for a major award: Best Actor, for his role in "A Single Man."

While Firth is unquestionably the heart of the movie, and Julianne Moore is his most visible co-star, a supporting-role nod must go to the mid-century modern house in which Firth's character, a college professor grieving for his deceased love in early-1960s Los Angeles, spends much of "A Single Man."

The movie is the directorial debut by legendary fashion designer Tom Ford, who clearly has an eye for visual detail. From the immaculately tailored Kennedy-era suits George (Firth) wears to the vintage Mercedes he drives, "A Single Man" is a visual delight, which provides a fanciful ballast against the movie's morose subject matter.

George's home is supposed to be in Santa Monica near the ocean, but the real house, designed by architect John Lautner, is nestled in the Whiting Woods area of Glendale northeast of the city.

As it happens, the house is for sale, listed at $1,495,000. The listing reads:

Southern California residents have not one, but two thousand more reasons to rip out their water-wasting turf: a check in the mail.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and a handful of other utility companies are paying SoCal residents to rip out their suburban lawns. In exchange, homeowners are required to replace grass with drought-tolerant, native plant species or install permeable surfaces which filter water back into the ground. Common permeable surface choices include flagstone, brick, and gravel. The rebate is $1 per square foot, up to a maximum of 2,000 feet.

The process works like this:

What to do about Chicago's embarrassing Big Dig?

The Chicago Spire, a 150-story tower condo tower, was designed by Santiago Calatrava for a site overlooking Lake Michigan. The cocky, corkscrew shaped building was expected to cost more than $1 billion, which, even for Calatrava (whose projects have been known to go over budget), was a lot. But the developers ran out of money, and all they have to show for their efforts is a giant hole -- 76 feet deep and 110 feet in diameter -- in the ground. (Calatrava says he is owed more than $11 million for his design work.)

So what's to become of the hole, a literal architectural depression? The Chicago Architectural Club is asking architects (and architecture students) to put on their spire-shaped thinking caps. "Once the motor of real-estate speculation has stalled, what can we use to propel ourselves, and the discipline, forward?" asked the Club, announcing an international competition. Blair Kamin, a Chicago architecture critic, asked the same question on his blog last year, and the answers came pouring in. (Responses included: a scuba diving tank; "pudding"; the Obama presidential library)

In Vancouver, as in other Pacific Northwest cities like Seattle and Portland, sustainability is an overriding principal for architecture and urban planning. So it was with pride that the city's Olympic organizing officials crafted a public-private partnership in which an inner-city, former industrial zone became not only the site for the Olympic Village -- housing for more than 2,700 Olympic athletes during the during the games in sustainably constructed buildings -- but a laudable mix of market-rate condos and subsidized affordable housing afterward. Given how such recovery of inner city land reduces the need for sprawl at the edges of the Vancouver metro area, the development actually embodies all three components of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra.

The Olympic Village, once the games are completed, will give way to what's being called the Millennium Water development, featuring about 1,100 units, 250 of which will be set aside available for low-income households, and 120 for rentals. The buildings are targeted to save up to 50 percent on energy (versus code), while up to 70% of electricity needs are provided by an innovative system that recovers heat from sewage.

The waterfront condos are winning high praise from Olympic athletes, who are not used to having such cushy housing; most units have high-end finishes such as marble countertops, as well as expansive views of the downtown skyline and distant snowcapped mountains. "It's blown us away, to be honest," American speedskater Chad Hedrick told Time magazine. "They really went big on this. It's a million-dollar view, for sure."

New-and-improved home sweet home.

A Mediterranean Revival style building, once so deteriorated that the city of Miami Beach was ready to demolish it, has been brought back to life by the Miami Beach Community Development Corporation (CDC), a non-profit group that will maintain it as housing for low-income seniors.

The 11 residents who still lived at Villa Maria when the renovation work began in July 2008 will come back to the building, which sits on Collins Avenue and 28th Street in the heart of the city's heavily trafficked hotel district. Returning to their renovated apartments is a huge blessing. They enjoyed -- and missed -- the comeraderie among the tenants in the building.

The rest of the 34 units will be rented to seniors on fixed incomes. The tenants will pay only 30 percent of their monthly income for rent. The remainder is subsidized through a federal housing program. (To be eligible for HUD's Section 8 housing subsidy program, family income must be 50 percent below the median income of an area. In the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, the median income is $55,900.)