The 1700 SF three bedroom house features lots of opportunities for indoor / outdoor living, and the extensive use of glass makes the entire house seem larger than its square footage suggests.

The house features an attached carport and two covered outdoor areas.

New Blue Sky Building Systems Website

Last month Blue Sky launched an all-new website at BlueSkyBuildingSystems.com. The new website features far more detail on the all of our projects, and consolidates information we used to have on our separate Blue Sky Homes site into a single resource. Additionally you will find far more detailed information about our various building systems such as the Blue Sky Frame™ and the Blue Sky Wall™ on the site, and you will find summaries and images of many of the custom home projects that are the work of our growing number of partner architects. This move shows our commitment in serving the architect community with great products, and also will give individuals intersting buying a home the best information on what is available from our great partner architects including of course o2 architecture, TaalmanKoch, Jim Jennings, and many more.

If you are someone who dreams of one day having your own home incorporating Blue Sky technologies we suggest you take a careful look through this projects section of our new website. It is quite likely that you will be drawn to the works of one of our partner architects. When that happens we would be happy to make the proper introductions.

One important housekeeping note, we ask that people who have friended us on our BlueSkyHomes facebook page please also friend us at BlueSkyBuildingSystems. Future updates will come through the Blue Sky Building Systems page. .

New Project – Vista Place by Ferrier Architecture Studio

If you know Southern California you likely know Venice Beach, the fun-and-funky beach community. Among other things Venice is noted for the great people watching on its long beachfront boardwalk. In recent years it has also become known for some of the most interesting architectural explorations anywhere in Southern California.

We are pleased to announce that Blue Sky Building Systems will be contributing to that rich design tradition when our Blue Sky Frame and Blue Sky Wall is used to create a 2,000-square-foot addition to an existing 800-square-foot original walk street beach cottage dating to about 1910. Houses in Venice that are on a walk street face each other across a wide sidewalk – not a street. The only driving access to such homes is via rear alleys.

The folks at Ferrier Architecture Studio decided to use the Blue Sky Frame as it offered an economical alternative for an architecturally significant home that otherwise would have required the use of expensive and time consuming structural steel members
This will be Blue Sky’s first project within the city of Los Angeles and we anticipate that ground will be broken in mid 2012.

New Project – Collins’ Residence by Peirket Group

What better place to build a home with an all-steel frame than in a high-fire zone. After the original home on a spectacular Santa Barbara property burned in the 2008 Tea Fire, Russell and Laura Collins acquired the lot and seized the opportunity to build in steel, utilizing our prefabricated moment frame system.

Their architects at Peikert Group Architects (Santa Barbara) had learned about our system and thought it would be an ideal match for the project for a number of reasons.

Given the history of the site and the ongoing concern about future wildfires the architects felt that a fire resistant frame made great sense. They also liked that the frame elements could be transported and erected quickly on site, leading to a shortened and simplified construction schedule. Finally, the architects saw that the clear spans provided by our frame gave them the leeway to design a home with unobstructed sweeping views of nearby mountains as well as large open interior volumes.

Designed with sustainability and comfort at its core, the three-bedroom home incorporates exposed concrete flooring with radiant floor heating, photovoltaic panels, solar hot water, a tankless water heater, Energy Star appliances, LED lighting throughout, drought-resistant native plantings and irrigation for water conservation.

This family residence will provide seamless indoor/outdoor living with a contemporary aesthetic.
This exciting project is will soon go into plan check in the city of Santa Barbara. Construction will likely commence a couple of months into the New Year.

Peikert Group Architects has won more than 60 local, state and national awards for designs that grace the hills, valleys and urban centers of Santa Barbara, the Tri-County area, and beyond.

Construction Start on Goddard Residence by Taalman Koch

We are pleased to report that steel will soon start going up at the next project utilizing the Blue Sky Frame and Blue Sky Wall. Linda Taalman of TaalmanKoch Architects in Los Angeles has designed an innovative addition for an existing home in Santa Monica, California. The 900-square-foot addition will be built for the Goddard family at the back of the house where a steep slope poses challenges for traditionally framing designs.

You may recall that we have worked with TaalmanKoch before. They used our frame to create a sturdy off-grade base for one of their aluminum framed itHouse structures near Clear Lake, California.

We anticipate that steel will begin rising at the Goddard Residence around December 18th. If you are interested in potentially visiting the construction site please use the “contact us” form at the bottom of this page and we will work with you to set that up.

After the original home, uniquely situated in Santa Barbara’s back country, burned in the 2008 Tea Fire, the clients acquired the property and seized the opportunity to build in steel, utilizing a prefabricated moment frame system (Blue Sky Frame) engineered by Blue Sky Building Systems which could be transported and erected quickly on site, and which lends itself to the open volumes desired for the living spaces. Designed with sustainability and comfort at its core, the three-bedroom home incorporates exposed concrete flooring with radiant floor heating, photovoltaic panels, solar hot water backed up by a tankless water heater, energy star appliances, LED lighting throughout, drought resistant, native plantings and irrigation for water conservation.

Here are some details about the project:

The flexibility of the Blue Sky Frame provides a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor living spaces. The clear span of the structure allows for maximum natural light and views from within, while featuring the house as a glowing jewel on the hills of Montecito.

Birds-Eye Cutaway

The approach from the street is detailed to provide natural light via clerestory windows while maintaining the residents’ privacy.

Residence From Road

A clean public face with the entry at the apex of the contemporary structure.

View Towards Entry Door

Project Challenges:  The home is situated on a steep lot in a high fire area.

Why Blue Sky: The architect selected the steel structural system to provide better protection against wildfires. Additional benefits include a simplified construction schedule and maximized views. Construction is simplified because the prefabricated system is relatively quick to erect, therefore reducing the number of days that special equipment and workforces are required on site. The clear spans provided by the Blue Sky Frame afford unobstructed, sweeping views of nearby mountains.

The house is actually a 2,000-square-foot addition to an existing 800-square-foot original walk street beach cottage in Venice, California.

The architects and home-owners, inspired by the beauty of the galvanized steel used in the Blue Sky Frame, decided to expose many of the building materials on the inside of the structure. This will give the house a very unique and open feel.

The design also does not have many lateral walls, which would traditionally be required in a wood construction house. This particular design could only be rendered in either the Blue Sky Frame or structural steel. The Blue Sky Frame uses 50% by weight less materials and goes up much faster than a strutural steel system, which is very important to both the home-owners and their neighbors.

The design will also use the Blue Sky Wall in a curtain wall application. This will ensure an air-tight building envelope and great thermal performance for the house. This also is highly important to the environmentally conciseness home-owners.

The project will go into plan-check and construction in the summer of 2012.

Floor Plans

 First Floor

Second Floor

Roof

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at methodology360 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

This expressive modular building follows the contours of a native wash slicing through the property, adhering to the precision of a Miesian order while intentionally deviating from established orthogonal conventions.  The elevated structures respond to the terrain, provide shade and preserve the natural beauty of the site.

Distinctive solar shades protect the open interior spaces from direct sunlight and provide privacy from the neighboring properties.  The shape of the building provides shade onto itself.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at methodology360 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The pristine, wooded site has two flowing streams and a waterfall located on 20 acres near Seaside, Oregon.  The owners wanted to create a multi-generational family retreat.

A secluded camp to recharge and reconnect with those who are most important to them and to experience the natural calm and beauty of the great outdoors.

The architects designed three light-filled buildings surrounding a central south-facing courtyard.   The use of multiple buildings creates a more intimate scale while the grouping of the buildings around a central courtyard reinforces a sense of community for the family and their guests.

The main building provides all the common living and cooking areas.  In addition, it has a sleeping loft and a large fireplace for family gatherings.  The second building, nicknamed the potty pavilion, houses all the common showers and toilets.  A covered, glazed breezeway with a built-in storage bench links up to the third building which houses three private bedrooms.  In the design of each building, a key element is the connection to the surrounding site.  Banks of 8’ high glass doors provide a seamless connection to the outdoor courtyard.  Above, continuous translucent wall panels let additional light into the living spaces, casting shadows as the surrounding forest branches sway in the summer breeze.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Erez Russo can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The graphic below shows how in this design the frame is clad in order to maintain a traditional look while getting the benefits of steel construction.
Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at fAS can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Stephen Green Architecture can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

This design features a large open living room which opens out to a covered courtyard.

The entire north side of the house, which faces grand mountain views, is 100% glass.

The structure mixes flat roofs and butterfly roofs, all of which are easily supported by the Blue Sky Frame.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Kristi Hanson Architects can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The structure is design to sit over the undulating terrain and maximizes the property’s down-valley views.

The architects have also taken advantage of the Blue Sky Frame’s ability to support cantilevers up to 10′, allowing the house to extend over the grade without increasing the footprint of the structure.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at o2 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Click here to read what the editors of the magazine had to say about the Blue Sky Frame.

As a follower of Blue Sky Building Systems you already know that the Blue Sky Frame is our revolutionary, eco-friendly, light-gauge steel framing system.  And now every AIA architect in the world knows it.  It would be hard to overstate the importance of this award for us.  It offers unambiguous validation that our single most important audience sees the intrinsic value in what we have pioneered.

With this award we anticipate a significant acceleration in the rate at which architects reach out to us to learn how they can use the Blue Sky Frame and our other innovations in their designs.

Architects+Artisans, the site devoted to “thoughtful design for a sustainable world,” featured the fact that we framed our most recent project – a farm house-style residence in Malibu, California – in record time.  Read the story  here.

Modern Steel Construction, the official publication of the American Institute of Steel Construction, wrote about Blue Sky Homes in its daily blog’s “Steel Shots” section.  Read the story here.

Glossy shelter magazine Azure, which “profiles international designers and architects, reports on major trade fairs in North America and Europe, and investigates design issues related to our changing society,” prominently featured Blue Sky Homes and quoted company founder David McAdam in its May 2011 cover story, “Greenest Prefabs.” Read it here.

The American Institute of Architects featured both Blue Sky Homes and the Blue Sky Building Systems in the “Practicing Architecture” section of AIArchitect, its biweekly eNewsletter for America’s community of architects.  Read the story “A New Generation Reinterpret Wexler’s Vision” here.

Builder News, a national building trade magazine that “reaches the largest and most powerful industry professionals,” featured Blue Sky Homes’ latest project, the Gordon Graham residence, in its “Design Friday” blog.  Read the post “Design Friday: Modular Steel” here.  

American Builders Quarterly, an international glossy that “provides an industry-specific look at high-quality companies spanning all aspects of the building trade,” featured Blue Sky Homes on the cover of its March/April issue, with a Q&A interview with company founder David McAdam inside, starting on page 159. Read the story “Quarterly  Man of Steel”  here.

Reporter K Kaufmann, who covers green tech for Gannett’s The Desert Sun, the Coachella Valley’s daily newspaper, wrote about the start of our Gordon Graham Residence in Yucca Valley in this article, Steel house is light, strong and unique.

The house was built for a Canadian, Gordon Graham, who uses the two-bedroom, one-bath home with his family mostly as a winter weather retreat.

The building design takes advantage of the slope, dramatically reducing earthwork and significantly reducing foundation costs.

The frame, as seen in the video below, shows all the structural elements in the building. The remainder of the building could be all glass if desired.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at ferrierAS can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Aimed at the developer market, this series of homes by Weinstein A|U feature a total 1,100 sf of interior area (conditioned space) and also include an additional 531 sf of useable usable, covered, but unconditioned space (covered lanai, breezeway, laundry, 1/2 bath, mechanical closet). Additionally, the units include 660 sf of usable uncovered exterior open space (lawn and deck)

The residential units utilize a “Z”-lotconfiguration to provide private exterior space on both sides of the residence. The residence is essentially configured as two modules; the Great Room on the view end, and paired bedroom suites on the on-view end. In lieu of views, each bedroom suite is provided with a generous exterior garden courtyard (230 sf each).

As seen in the renderings above, the Blue Sky Frame is clad in these buildings. The Blue Sky Frame is a cost-effective way to build the buildings off-grade ( common in Hawaii ) and it ensures a long life-span for the buildings in an environment where extensive termite damage is common.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Weinstein A|U can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The approximately 5,000-square-foot home will sit on a flat creek-side lot and, as is typical of the farm house style, will have dual-sloped roof lines and pop-out features.

The contractor estimates that he will be able to cut the construction time from 18 months to eight months by using the Blue Sky Frame.

The Blue Sky Frame for the Malibu Farm House

The house also features the sheer-tab configuration of the Blue Sky Frame.

The core structure of this house, which is currently under construction, was put up in two weeks.

Here is a two minute video of the first 15 days of construction on the project:

This project, 750-square-foot addition to an existing 1,500-square-foot home, is built primarily using the Blue Sky Frame and Blue Sky Wall.  A large new deck will serve as a transitional space between the old house and the addition and will provide cross ventilation. The addition will have an open kitchen, living and dining area with physical and visual access to the backyard.  A covered porch will provide shade and a protected outdoor space to enjoy during warm summer months.

On this project the Blue Sky Frame is the main structural component.

The Blue Sky Wall ensures that the exterior walls have high thermal performance, and also enables the construction to go quickly.

The home-owners, who are very environmentally conciseness, also appreciate that the construction waste is significantly reduced compared to traditional construction, and that all Blue Sky materials are 100% recyclable.

Please contact us below if you would like a tour of the construction site, or if you would like more information on how the team at Taalman Koch can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Using the Blue Sky Frame the house floats above the topography, reducing construction costs while maximizing views.

All images courtesy of Burdge & Associates Architects, Inc.

The house design is being finalized for permit submission.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Burdge and Associates can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

This home sits on spectacular ridge near Clearlake, California.  The owner is Terry Ohm of Ohm Lighting.  It took just three days to bolt together the Blue Sky Frame on this project.

Week 1: Blue Sky Frame

Week 2:

Almost completed home

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Taalman Koch can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

This house will be built in a very remote corner of the Southern California desert.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Taalman Koch can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The unique two story, three bedroom house, takes full advantage of the Blue Sky Wall and the Blue Sky Frame. The home features extensive outdoor living spaces with over 1,000 square feet of outdoor living area, as well as a spacious and open living room, kitchen and dining area. The master bedroom suite occupies the space above the main house and has its own expansive private deck from which the owner can enjoy the majestic views.

Exterior View

Exterior View

Ground-Floor Floor Plan

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at o2 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

This sleek hideaway has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two living rooms. The design offers a lot of private living areas while also promoting the best in indoor / outdoor living.

This 4,000 square foot home offers four bedrooms and four bathrooms in a design that features a lot of open space, lots of glass, and a mix of on-grade and off-grade siting.

Elevations

First Floor Footprint

Second Floor Footprint

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at o2 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Joshua Tree 1 – 4 is the first phase of an enclave of environmentally friendly modernist rental homes to be built adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert of Southern California.

The two-bedroom, two-bath design that is stunning both in its spare modernist lines as well as in its focus on the features that appeal to this market, including:

• Dual master suites, separated from the living area and each other, for maximum privacy.
• Full-height pocketing glass doors on the front and back of the living space.
• Weather-protected rear patio with a steel soak tub, built-in gas barbecue and fireplace.
• Bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms.

The Joshua Tree 1 – 4 project is within walking distance of the park and affords dramatic long views into the far reaches of the Mojave Desert. The homes have been situated on the sites to maximize views and privacy while still creating a sense of community within the raw desert landscape.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Jim Jennings Architecture can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

The Beachwalk project is a highly optimized implementation of the Blue Sky Frame. The project, which features both two-bedroom and three-bedroom units, has unique features like a solar power, high energy efficiency, and a living green roof.

The site plan elegantly creates a private outdoor space for each unit, along with private parking.

There are three potential floor plans which prospective buyers can choose from.

Standard Floor Plan

Alternative 1

Alternative 2

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at Methodology 360 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.

Rock Reach House,  is a simple but elegant two-bedroom, one-bath home that floats above a fantastic terrain characterized by giant weathered boulders and ancient piñon and junipers in the high desert community of Yucca Valley, California. Only six columns support the entire structure.

If you are interested in renting Rock Reach Home, please visit www.rockreachhouse.com.

Please contact us below if you would like more information on how the team at o2 can help you build a house similar to this on your lot.