The Seattle Times reports longtime Seattle architect Gordon Walker’s contemporary modular home on Orcas Island arrived on two flatbed trucks, one carrying the steel frame, the other the side panels. The home was assembled in seven days. A practicing architect for 49 years, he says, “I can’t find anything in the senior realm that I’d consider dying in, let alone living in,” and says most high-rise senior housing looks like“parking garages for old people.” Perched on steel posts with exposed steel beam structure, the living room faces woods, and at the other end a bedroom fronts on a meadow, both ends with glass walls. In between is the kitchen with plywood counter tops, a guest room, Walker’s office, bathrooms, concrete floor, and master bedroom. Clerestory windows bring in natural light along one side of the home, and a series of four by eight storage closets 75 feet long line the area beneath the windows, all set on a 16 foot modular grid for flatbed shipping. The forward-thinking Gordon says, “I spent my whole life planning for others. You begin to formulate at an older age what you might want to do. This house is on 10 acres in the woods overlooking the water. We’ve got to quit building the memory of what was.”
