We're often asked how we're different from other house building companies and I largely addressed most of the technical aspects in this blog post.
We have a different view of houses and what constitutes quality of space, which largely comes from the Modernist post-war movement of the fifties and sixties, inspired by developers such as Joseph Eichler and architects like Craig Ellwood and Richard Neutra, to name just a couple (more to come in another post about Box heritage).
What we love about this style was that often the post and beam structure (timber or steel) which lent itself to large open plan layouts, large glazed areas and beautifully light and well laid-out plans. The honesty of material is noticeable, with the use of steel, timber laminated beams, concrete, timber linings, brick. Lines are elegant and simple. In one word, sophistication.
We would love to develop communities of houses, like Eichler, where it was well known for owners to put a pink flamingo on their lawn at cocktail time. Any of the locals could pop in for a quick drink and chat and the flamingo was an open invitation! Eichler looked beyond the house and how planning could foster that element of 'community'.
Similar to the architectural heritage, we pay a lot of attention to the client's brief and the site, we don't just shoe-horn boxes into any old site. You are spending a lot of money on a house you intend to spend a lot of time in so it is important that it is right - the devil is always in the detail.
And finally, nowadays we pay a lot more attention to the build process as well as the house specifications from an environmental point of view. Again, this will be discussed in more detail later but our selection of materials and the 'modular' aspect of the homes means less waste, faster and more efficient build and lower running costs for the future.
All this aside, the design and build experience is a lot of fun and I think we'll have to bring back the Pink Flamingo....
MODERNIST ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN WITH CERTAINTY OF COST 
Box DNA
Pink Flamingos
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Why BOX?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
BOX was borne from the simple premise that there just had to be a better way to design and build homes.
The architect and builder processes don't seem to have evolved much over the last couple of hundred years. The process is still inefficient, costly, fraught with uncertainty, subject to the whim of weather Gods. It is testament to human perseverance, vision (and a generous helping of naivety) that people still insist on building their own homes.
The challenge BOX overcomes is to create a system which at the same time can be worked by an architect to suit a site and brief, while also giving certainty of time and cost.
In a sense, BOX is your old-fashioned 'house company', but with a key difference.
Almost every notable house company has its roots in the building industry. The focus is on price - the biggest area possible for the best price. Designs are created with cost to build very much in mind at the expense of quality of space.
On the other hand, history is littered with examples of companies started by designers or architects who have attempted to come at the problem from the design angle without the appreciation of how complex and costly a house can be to build. Most of these ideas have failed because they were just too costly to produce as a result of limited understanding of the building process.
The key is getting the right architect together with the right builders and engineers to create a concept that both allows the architect a certain design freedom with the constraints of a system that has been is efficient to build.
You just have to look at the beautiful lines of a BOX to see how it is different from other house companies. It is very much driven by design, but not at the expense of build efficiency.
One of the best by-products of achieving balance is that you have a product that still requires architectural input because almost every house has a different site and different owner. However, the cost of the architect is greatly reduced because the concept and technical aspects have already been decided. The architect focuses on configuring the system and helping with material selections. You get the value of the architect without the cost usually associated with one-off design.
And because the system has been built before, the costs and construction process is fully understood.
The problem with bespoke architectural builds is that each house is basically a prototype and you have all the issues associated with doing something for the very first time. Not so with BOX. Not only do you have a beautiful modernist building, designed by a leading architect, but you have certainty of cost, build time and value for money.
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