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JOHN BROWN is the editor of theslowhome.com and the founder of the Slow Home Movement. He is a registered architect, real estate broker and Professor of Architecture at the University of Calgary.
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Bringing New Life to a 1950's Dwelling
Interior Living Space
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Interior Living Space 2
Ceiling Detail
Exterior Living Space
Before: Exterior
After: Exterior
Site Plan
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For this project, we were asked to remove most of a fifties-era, two story home that no longer functioned due to a series of piece-meal add-ons and remodels. We brought new life to the property by more fully utilizing the site, which is a large corner lot at the intersection of two streets at an acute angle. We were able to use the geometries of the two streets to organize the house in a way that better utilized the yard and created a family room couched between a two story sleeping wing and the public wing of kitchen, projects room, and garage. In the family room, along the edge of the sleeping wing, we built a stone wall that extends to the stair volume to the front and to the outside deck to the back. The wall is the focus of the house and a good example of an attempt to solve a common problem of this era: to combine a hearth and an entertainment area into a living room wall that serves one seating area.
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We believe that our homes and neighborhoods should be healthy, vibrant places that uplift the spirit and gracefully fit our needs. We call for an end to poor construction, bad design, misleading marketing, unfair lending practices and environmental neglect in the housing industry. We acknowledge our collective responsibility to create CLOSE, SIMPLE, LIGHT places to live that leave a positive legacy for future generations.
provides design focused information that homeowners can use to improve the quality of how and where they live. It takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. The sprawl of cookie cutter housing that surrounds us is like fast food - standardized, homogenous, and wasteful. It contributes to a too fast life that is bad for us, our cities, and the environment. In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home empowers you to take more control of your home and improve the quality of how you live while reducing your environmental impact and futureproofing the long term investment value of your home.
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