Eichler homes rediscovery: when suburban was modern & livable

Builder Joseph Eichler brought high-end modern design to suburban subdivisions. From 1950 through the mid-seventies his company built 11,000 affordable architect-designed homes in California. Steve Jobs credited the builder as a design inspiration for Apple. ““Eichler did a great thing,” he told his biographer Walter Isaacson, “I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn't cost much.” It all began in 1942 when Eichler, after living in a rented Frank Lloyd Wright home in the San Francisco Bay Area, commissioned Lloyd Wright disciple Robert Anshen to design something similar for himself. His $100,000 home never got built and instead, the two began work on $10,000 modern tract homes with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, skylights, and radiant-heated floors. Over the following decades, Eichler’s homes became a large part of the “California modern” movement and today many have rediscovered the elegant simplicity of Eichler living. On *faircompanies: https://faircompanies.com/videos/eich...