Reinvent yourself

Like all creative fields, home design is subject to fads and fashions, so how do the leading builders and developers evolve in order to stay ahead of the game? Builder Magazine speaks to the experts about the best ways to keep your style fresh.
Change is the status quo in design, and if you stand still too long there’s a danger that the industry will slide past, leaving you stranded both commercially and creatively. Sustaining success through the lean years demands that a builder’s homes always remain relevant, accessible and fresh.
The Traditional and Craftsman styles once so popular is starting to look dated and its practitioners have either evolved or perished. Good design advocates Todd Lord, Owner of Inspired By Real Estate and Designer John Kilbourne, President of Level Design LLC, however, have turned evolution into a science, by using numerous distinct styles and creative new concepts.
“The trend towards Traditional home style values has been around since we started designing homes twenty-five years ago,” say Lord & Kilbourne. “A lot of what we designed was Craftsman Style, which was hugely popular between 1995 and 2006. But now we believe that after living through the worst housing crash ever buyers might just avoid builders with enormous inventories of products that remind them of those times. Homebuyers today are asking for something different, so we went back to the boards and looked into current trends and came up with our Contempo and Starlight series of home plans, which offer a cleaner, more sustainable and contemporary approach – silhouetted urban style elevations and green built lines, inspirit with consumer attitudes and well read magazines like Dwell.”
Similarly, many builders that have stuck with what they know have watched sales shrink, as homebuyers have instead targeted price point purchasing because the massive inventories are so very mainstream and traditional. Designers Todd Lord and John Kilbourne are the vanguard of reinventing production home design that moves with these new times. “The area we know the best, we saw the writing on the wall a long time ago that almost all builders homes look alike,” says Todd Lord. “Many design companies who are competitors haven’t been so interested in making the move, but it’s a shame for them, because not only does it make sense as a business move but it also opens doors creatively and inspires new homebuyers into the marketplace.”

“Design is like fashion – although the core principles and craft remain the same, it has to evolve or it will die,” believes John Kilbourne, principal designer of Contempo and Starlight Collection. “But for a builder to change their style they have to be influenced by the need to survive.”
“In my experience there are two types of spec home builders,” Kilbourne continues. “There are those that pass themselves off as custom, but are really just desk top builders who can copy stuff they see. They’re pack followers, and although their work may evolve it is shallow and doesn’t break any new ground. Then there are the real passionate big production builders, the ones with talented design teams and creative ideas, who get inspired by things – art, architecture, photography, film, innovative products, marketing, nature, anything really. They adapt and change through experimentation.”
“It’s important that all builders keep up with changes in fashion, design and culture in general, because one minute your homes may be the ‘in’ thing, but trends quickly move on and change, and evolution must play a big part in your work if you are to remain on the ball and ahead of your competition in today’s market of plenty,” both say. “It’s about being able to expand your skills or evolve your style to work alongside new ideas.” Different disciplines are about wanting to get an idea out, not about wanting to be a part of a trend. “You have to be a very hard worker, a lateral thinker, and someone with a genuine love of the new concept, not just because it’s cool and everyone else is doing it,” Lord says. Exploiting new design areas are a challenge that Lord believes is doubly difficult if a builder’s approach is overly prescriptive. For most re-tooling is the biggest obstacle. We developed the construction documents to be extremely production builder friendly. All of the designs offer value-engineering methods, standard framing techniques and carefully selected building materials.