The Three Little Pigs have nothing on these digs. Ancient technique and modern groove set these structures apart from the little hillside boxes filling our neighborhoods. There are no cookie-cutter house plans here. Just clean, green, natural buildings smoothed from dirt, straw, clay, and loads of ingenuity. No Big Bad Wolf will blow these down.
This lovely 9,800 square foot gem has been called "One of the Greenest Luxury Homes Ever Built" and " shows
that high-end real estate can have a small environmental footprint."
A year ago, Preston at JetsonGreen asked "Are we confusing the words "green," "sustainable," "energy efficient," and "small footprint"? You tell me, is this green? Since then, the answer has become even more obvious.
...
Binary Studios suggest that their Small Energy Efficient Dwelling is like a plant: "As the seedpod protects and nourishes the seed in the initial stages of the embryonic plant, the SEED [pod] equivalently recognizes the social contract of architecture to serve those in need by providing high quality affordable dwelling units to the large population that is typically underserved by the design community."...
So that was estimates.
One of the few advantages of being new to this job is appreciating it's strangeness with fresh eyes. Three times a year, while the Senate is in recess, an intriguing and largely overlooked ritual takes place in the airy committee rooms of Parliament House in Canberra. Senior public servants, heads of departments and a highly qualified army of advisers and minders converge for five days of cross-examination in front of the Senate's eight standing committees.
Jorge at Inhabitat calls Ming Tang's temporary shelters "origami inspired"; They remind me more of the tensile structures of Frei Otto They were developed as temporary shelters for the homeless after last May's earthquake in Chian that left millions homeless and shown at the Urban Re:vision competition. ...
That's what Environmental Graffiti calls them. They are more accurately known as Fujian Tulou, and were built starting in the 12th century as the ultimate gated community....
This is a reconstruction of a previously published post lost when a Porsche crashed into our server farm.
20 architects designed houses for the Gene 20 Architecture International Project. MVRDV "designed a house which maintained gigantic window scene, within this window scene there consist various elements of spatial topics, each spatial topic, according to residential demand, is able to reformat, to reach the maximum desired living atmosphere."
huh?...
"lend them money and you get a rabble instead of a thrifty working class"
The Federal National Mortgage Association, previously known affectionately as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 by Franklin Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, to provide liquidity to the mortgage market so that working Americans could buy houses. The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) was founded in 1968 to do much the same thing after Fannie Mae was privatized.
50 years ago François Massau built this rotating house so that his sickly wife could enjoy sunshine and warmth any time of the year. Massau was an eccentric builder who does not appear to have been very nice, and spent his last years fighting in court, dying alone and penniless at 97 in 2002. But John Tagliabue in the New York Times describes the 1400 square foot energy-efficient house:
From tiny apartment to big front porch
Buffalo has everything going for it; green hydropower, water, railways, canals, a temperate climate; it should be a hot spot. Instead it has a smaller population than it did in 1907 and acres of empty houses. Adam Sternbergh writes in New York magazine about how New Yorkers are taking notice and moving there- mostly the creative types that can work anywhere (and don't have a lot of money)
It is "a story about choices. It’s a story about reaching that pivotal moment when the dream life you imagined for yourself in New York no longer seems attainable or attractive, or simply no longer seems worth the wearying chase."
Housing in San Francisco is expensive, and one way to make units cost less is to make them smaller, particularly if there is restrictive zoning and you can get more units in the same building envelope. Now they have squeezed units down to 250 square feet, smaller than most hotel rooms. George Hauser, the architect, notes that they aren't for everyone-
"It's not the last place a person might own, but a great place to spend three to five years as a young single ... to build equity and move up," said Hauser, principal of Hauser Architects in San Francisco. "You're in a small space with great amenities and the resources of the city."
...
Housing in San Francisco is expensive, and one way to make units cost less is to make them smaller, particularly if there is restrictive zoning and you can get more units in the same building envelope. Now they have squeezed units down to 250 square feet, smaller than most hotel rooms. George Hauser, the architect, notes that they aren't for everyone-
"It's not the last place a person might own, but a great place to spend three to five years as a young single ... to build equity and move up," said Hauser, principal of Hauser Architects in San Francisco. "You're in a small space with great amenities and the resources of the city."
...
We have noted before that the rich are different from you and me- they emit a lot more carbon dioxide. Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain is no exception; Joe Romm of Climate Progress ran the numbers on as many of McCain's homes he could find information on.
He writes: "So what is the carbon footprint of McCain’s countless homes? Here is a rough estimate.According to press reports, just one of McCain’s homes, his $4.66 million condo in Phoenix, is about 7000 square feet, which is three times the size of the average American home built last year. His $850,000 Virginia condo is another 2,100 square feet. Given a total estimated ...
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