design Eichlers
My belief is that Eichlers are a direction, not an end point.
Which brings me to updated Eichlers. Because I believe that those men, given the money, materials and technologies available today, would have built homes closer to what our remodels are producing. At the same time, because I’m building homes one at a time for specific clients, rather than 500 at a time for the above average homebuyer, my results are highly individual. But, they still carry the Eichler or Krisel intent of enhancing family life through intelligent architecture.
I have a long personal association with Eichler homes – I’ve lived in seven of them. It all began in 1957 when I was seven years old, I moved into one in the San Mateo Highlands. There, I grew up in the middle of the ongoing Highlands Eichler tract development. I’ve lived in Eichlers in Palo Alto, Foster City and three up here in the Highlands, where I live now with my wife and family.
I have always loved the basic logic of Eichler homes. I find their elegant simplicity to be not only livable but aesthetically pleasing. I’ve remodeled more Eichlers than I can easily count during the 40+ years over which I have been a designer/contractor. I’ve worked on five of them in the Stanford “professorville” community,
2023 Nicholas: I am currently having the great pleasure of working on a custom Eichler, originally designed by Claude Oakland in 1971, which I extensively remodeled in 1991 for the previous owners. The current owners contacted me and asked me if I would work with them on some repairs and additions to update the house to their needs. Naturally I am delighted to be able to continue with the refinement of Oakland's excellent original design.
about half a dozen in Palo Alto, many in Foster City, one of the custom Eichlers in Menlo Park, and many in the San Mateo Highlands. I have more than once been asked by clients living in non-Eichlers to do what I can to make their homes look/live like an Eichler.
We work on non-Eichler MidCen houses as well and find the similarities interesting. Indicating a community of design thought from that time.
I truly love and understand these homes. I do what I can to show how versatile they are and how they can be improved and updated without losing their style, personality, and integrity.
DRACO Eichler remodels have been consistently selected and featured on the San Mateo Highlands Eichler Home Tour (eichlerhometour.org). Three DRACO projects were featured on the May 2017 Eichler Home Tour, and of the ten homes selected for the previous Eichler Home Tour in 2014, DRACO represented four of them.
The Modern Architecture & Design Society (MA+DS) featured DRACO’s Sunnyvale Butterfly Eichler on the 2018 Silicon Valley Modern Home Tour. In fact they used a photo of the butterfly roof space for the Tour poster.
