There's no place like home. At least that's the mantra of about 8,000 people a week who are starting up home-based businesses. Millions more have found a way to work from home by telecommuting, creating a sub-culture of more than 5 million people who will work from their residences by the end of the year 2000, according to the National Association of Home Based Businesses.

Despite the growing numbers, most new home designs do not allow for this phenomenon, giving rise to an urgent need for innovation, imagination and renovation for this quickly emerging and exploding market.

Three leaders in the homebuilding industry, BUILDER Magazine, Beazer Homes and Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, will join forces to demonstrate cutting-edge live-work concepts at the 2001 International Builders' Show. A recent issue of BUILDER Magazine illustrates the LIVE/WORK/2001 concepts. By building three homes in the Castleberry neighborhood of downtown Atlanta, not far from where the show will be taking place in February, LIVE/WORK/2001 will become an example and showplace for builders who are interested in both urban redevelopment and home-based working environment types of construction.

The LIVE/WORK/2001 consortium will build these three residences to blend very differently-functioning types of businesses into uniquely livable and contemporary designs, called the "Lifespan," the "Loft" and the "Livabove." With the goal in mind of incorporating classic forms of downtown architecture with state-of-the-art floor plans, the homes will range from an inexpensive loft with exposed structural materials to walk-up storefronts with bi-level work environments with cleverly arranged living quarters.

The Loft, the most affordable of the three designs, is geared to the young professional in a start-up business. Its vaulted workspace opens to an upstairs bedroom loft overlooking it from an upstairs balcony with a cantilevered desk. Only a set of curtains divide the living and working arrangements, but the plan includes a fully equipped kitchen with plenty of storage space and the option to subdivide the living space. It also incorporates two-car parking in the rear of the unit with one enclosed garage bay and a courtyard behind the living area.

The Livabove features a roomy first floor workspace with a 12-foot ceiling and a classic, urban-stately front elevation. The living space above it can be accessed by outside stairs from both front and rear, featuring a two-story living area with exposed truss systems. Owners can rent out the rear bedroom and deck or use it for a variety of other living profiles, such as child-minding or elder care. The third story loft space can be made into one or two bedrooms.

The third design, called the Lifespan, looks to be the most innovative of the mix, with what is described as an ingenious door system that can convert the unit into a two bedroom rental, complete with office space. The home features two separate front entries, a contemporary kitchen design with a private courtyard view, ganged French doors under an Old World gabled roof, and sumptuous brick detailing to complete its urban-class appeal.

Market researchers identified six different target-buyers for this new generation of home-based business owners, from recent college gradautes to empty nesters, all with a desire to be close to city life and its entertainment, shopping, sporting events, and energy. Architects Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company were given lease to design homes for the Beazer-secured home-work sites in an up-an-coming inner city neighborhood of Atlanta where redevelopment is already gaining steam. The architectural firm's Andres Duany, already considered a leader in the new urbanism, was the designer of radical-departure master-planned areas like Seaside (remember The Truman Show?) and other award-winning designs.

These LIVE/WORK/2001prototypes will be open for guided tours during the International Builders Show. BUILDER Magazine is poised to cover the event in detail, with a feature story set to appear in its January issue, and more aspects of the unique project to be highlighted throughout the year to follow.

The current trend for living and working at home re-defines everything the past few generations may have had in mind when taking a bite out of the American homeownership pie. The concept, of course, is not a new one. All over the world, people have demonstrated for centuries that you can live and work from the same place. In many countries, storefronts are the main floors of residences, giving busy shop owners the flexibility to disappear upstairs for lunch or to care for children or the elderly all in one place. For those of us with fairly shallow immigrant roots, our great grandparents may well have had their livestock living just below them, keeping everything convenient, inexpensive, and under control. Americans' historic quest for self-determination and a healthy penchant for entrepreneurial capitalism is no doubt alive and well.

Published: September 13, 2000

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A veteran of the real estate and homebuilding industries since 1986, Dena Kouremetis first joined Realty Times as a new homes writer in 1998. Since then, she has authored four books, written consumer columns on new homes issues for websites and newspapers all across the country, contributed to builder trade magazines, appeared as a guest expert on several radio shows and even created a ten-chapter podcast for LendingTree.com’s homebuilder website, iNest.com, now available on iTunes, entitled Uncharted Waters; Navigating the Purchase of a New Production Home. Kouremetis recently joined her local Folsom, CA Coldwell Banker office as a broker associate while continuing to write for the real estate industry. For the past three years, she has been training real estate agents for both the resale and new homes industries, putting her experience, research expertise and gift of expression to work to help others entering the business.