When John Citrigno acquired an Eichler Home in Sunnyvale, California, after the owners
defaulted on the mortgage he held he saw an opportunity. Earlier in his life John wanted
to become a builder and even considered becoming an architect, but went into real estate
investment and financial services instead. He had grown up in a part of the Bay Area that
has many Eichler Homes and had always been a great admirer of them. With this house
he could combine his long-time interests in building, architecture and Eichlers to create
an Eichler Home for the 21st Century. Thus John decided to undertake a complete
rebuilding of the house to high contemporary standards, while staying true to the
fundamental aesthetics of its design.
In addition to his admiration for the homes that my grandfather, Joseph Eichler, built in
the Bay Area in the 1950s and 1960s, John also admires the man himself for his
commitment to making high-quality modern architectural design available to those of
modest means. John’s concept for the rebuild of his Eichler was to try to imagine what
my grandfather might have done had he been building homes today.
The heyday of Eichler Homes was concurrent with the rise of what is now known as
Silicon Valley. The design aesthetic of these tract homes, built in the Mid-Century
Modern style, had strong appeal for many who were involved in the high tech industry in
the 1950s and 60s, as well as for people who would be involved in high tech later on,
such as Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Computers. Although Jobs never lived
in an Eichler Home, the part of Silicon Valley in which he grew up contained many of
them, and many of his childhood friends and classmates lived in them, including Apple
co-founder Steve Wozniak and Apple’s first employee, Bill Fernandez. Jobs credited the
design of Eichler Homes and the way they were built as a major influence for him in the
development of Apple products.
John, who lived near Jobs as a child and was a classmate of his, credits Jobs as an
additional major influence for his concept of a “21st Century Eichler”, specifically, the
influence of Jobs’s attention to detail and quest for perfection, and his dedication to
creating designs that combine maximum functionality and user-friendliness with a clean,
contemporary aesthetic that is minimalist in style yet never sterile, at prices that are
affordable for the masses.
I think that John has been exceedingly successful in his undertaking, and I have no doubt
that my grandfather would be very pleased with the result. I can’t speak for Steve Jobs,
but my guess is that he also would have been very pleased with the result and would have
seen evidence of a kindred spirit.
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