The pairing of prefab and tree houses is a brilliant combination. Sybarite obviously understands this. Their new conceptual project in the rural UK approaches modular design with the goal of creating a flexible, easy-to-build dwelling in the country, though it’s more extraterrestrial than rustic.
The Tree House has been created from the interior out, with the intention of giving optimal perspective across the treetops. “The “belly” of the tree house accommodates undulating kinetic baffles that utilise wind power to generate electricity.” The model uses many recycled components and can be built in two weeks. Given the name of the company, we must assume that the interior doesn’t skimp where aesthetics are concerned, though we can only speculate until live models are built.
Recognizing a deficiency of affordable housing, The City of Santa Cruz, California has begun a program based on the reuse of the once vital “granny flat,” or ADU (accessory dwelling unit.) The program embraces the detached garage apartment by relaxing zoning restrictions to exploit existing buildable space, providing additional rental housing for Santa Cruz’s continuously growing population. The reuse of this land allows the city to increase density without faulting neighborhood character. Going several steps further, the city has put together a “how-to” manual including seven prototype designs, while offering low-interest loans for the program participants to make the units more affordable.
In light of the fact that the Prefab Now event is wrapping up today in Los Angeles, we thought it was a good time to highlight one of prefab architecture’s original purveyors.
You can’t talk about modernist prefab without reference to Jennifer Siegal’s Office of Mobile Design. OMD was one of the original peddlers of stylish prefab architecture, and with ten years of experience, the company knows its way around of prefab design and construction.
Melissa Cotton Womack, of How-To-Make-a-Terrarium fame, has just launched a new business of recycling vintage textiles into lovely home accessories such as pillows, wall hangings, and lampshades. Inspired by the aesthetics of her favorite movies, Rosemary’s Baby and the original Stepford Wives, Melissa was searching for fun, colorful home accessories, that she couldn’t find in any of the minimalist retro-modern furniture store - so she decided to design her own line.
To create the colorful line of Poppycotton home accessories, Melissa scours online auctions and New York markets to find printed textiles that hearken back to an era when homes weren’t afraid of a little pop and color. By fixing up the old textiles and integrating them into new designs, the vintage textiles are able to live a contemporary life, along with the facade of their former one.
We meant to announce this one earlier, but for those of you who haven’t heard it elsewhere, Prefab Now is this weekend in LA. Hosted by Dwell Magazine and the Hammer Museum at UCLA, the event (as the title infers) is an exploration into the current state of prefab, with presentations, panels and a full day of home tours around LA.
Striving to redefine the concept of urban recycling, The City of Chicago’s Green Initiatives Committee put together a juried competition with the Chicago AIA Young Architects Forum to develop a new receptacle system that would address problems with the city’s current approach. (See Jill’s earlier post announcing the call for entries.) Participants examined all aspects of recycling- from behavioral patterns, to collection, to operational costs- to design a comprehensive container to be used throughout Chicago, expanding the city’s ideas about reuse and advancing sustainable practice.
The receptacles built by the 25 finalists, including the three winners, will be displayed as part of the city of Chicago’s Live Green exhibition, which began on October 14. Already the competition has proved not only successful in its own right, but valuable on a growing scale; New York City officials have contacted the chair of the Young Architects Forum for ideas about holding a similar competition in New York.
The Santa-Monica-based architecture firm, Pugh+Scarpa, has been integrating their environmental commitment into pristinely designed and constructed architecture since 1991. Among numerous stunning projects, the Solar Umbrella stands out, proudly donning its photovoltaic panels like a rebellious fashion statement forecasting a new trend. The Venice residence is home to founding architects Lawrence Scarpa and Angela Brooks.
The house is inspired by Paul Rudolph’s Umbrella House, which was built in Florida in the 1950s. In the Pugh+Scarpa version, solar panels form a canopy over the house and wrap the southern side, offering thermal protection and rendering the structure energy neutral. The design utilizes Homosote cabinet finishes, fiberboard flooring, and metal stud framing rather than wood. They also added a stormwater retention basin and xeriscaping to preserve local water resources, especially crucial in drought- and flood-prone L.A.
Next up on the list of fabulous, environmentally-conscious prefab: Living Homes. With an immanent launch in Santa Monica, Living Homes is preparing to debut a structure that incorporates the key elements of eco-friendly home construction with an aesthetic that gracefully updates classic Southern California modern style.
With legendary architect Ray Kappe as their first designer, this aesthetic is coming straight from its progenitor. Founder of Sci-Arc and recipient of numerous awards, Kappe’s residential work “has been characterized as ‘the apotheosis of the California wood house.’ Clear systems, harmony with nature, and environmental considerations are hallmarks of his approach.”
Last Thursday, the National Design Awards were announced at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, honoring the best of American Design in ten broad categories including Architecture, Fashion, and Communication. While we applaud Patagonia, who won the Corporate Achievement Award for their environmental initiatives, we are particularly appreciative of the accolades for Sergio Palleroni, who won a Special Jury Commendation for his work at the University of Texas Center for Sustainable Development. Palleroni runs design/build studios in disadvantaged communities worldwide, teaching participants how to best exploit locally available resources and to build long term, sustainable developments.
Professor Palleroni and the UT Sustainable Design and Development Workshop will be showcased next year as part of a 6-part series on PBS called “Architecture=e2,” to be broadcast for Earth-Day. The segment, which will be entitled, “Design Like You Give a Damn,” will center on Palleroni’s work to provide assistance in areas hit by disaster, which seems particularly appropriate given recent global events. Currently, Palleroni is working with a student team to produce 19,000 homes for single mothers in rural Yaqui, Mexico.
There’s something unconditionally appealing about seeing greenery growing in unexpected places. Whether it’s from concrete, rooftops or furniture, it’s a decorative detail that adds vibrance and texture (and sometimes nutrition).
The Galapagos Coffee Table from Lwin Design has a grid of round follicles that offer a controlled environment for growing grass indoors. The eco-friendly table is available in reclaimed plastic, acrylic or ecoresin, with translucent skateboard wheels for mobility. The lower compartment can be used for magazine storage or as a display case, with the holes left open or filled with foliage. Making sprouts and wheatgrass this fun is almost a reason to start eating them more. Almost.
In a move sure to please college students everywhere, home furnishings colossus IKEA is making attempts to green-ify and hip-ify its business through a new line of eco-friendly (and yet still cheap!) designer products. With the tagline “What if?” IKEA challenged 28 designers to produce socially and environmentally responsible products using green and recycled materials. The resulting collection is a mix bag of quirky items - all of which have a lot more personality than your standard IKEA products. The eco-friendliness of the pieces makes them even better.
I particularly like the HANMEDA (above), a collection of boxes made from recycled Indian newspaper, the AXVALL (above), a simple chair made from rubber bands around a steel frame, and the modular BODA storage solution shown below.
There’s nothing we love more at Inhabitat than seeing waste materials recycled into innovative new pieces. That’s why we were super excited to come across Sea Bags, a small company in Maine that recycles old sails into super cute nautical tote bags.
The question “Where do all the old sails go? weighed heavy on the minds of two young entrepreneurs on the Atlantic shores of Maine. (Strangely this thought has never occurred to me). With this concern for reducing waste in mind, the founders reappropriated the rugged elegance of the sail to create the best hand crafted bag around.
Sea Bags look very practical and sturdy, and are sure to give you that “Captains Club” look. The bags come in three sizes and can be ordered directly from the Maine-based company via phone or email >
While most of the country has shifted focus, the Gulf Coast is far from putting the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita behind them. The Mississippi Renewal Forum, a weeklong charette hosted by Biloxi, MS, wrapped up on Monday as teams of architects, planners, code experts, and public officials presented plans for rebuilding the coastal areas of Mississippi. Led by New Urbanist Andres Duany, the teams put forth ideas for reconstructing and revitalizing the eleven major areas affected on the Gulf Coast. Some highlights include options for eco-tourism in Gautier, a revitalized street grid in Biloxi, and creative forms for connectivity, green areas, and civic gathering spaces in all of the communities involved.
Faced with height restrictions when building his family home in London, architect Alex Michaelis decided to go underground. Observing a 6′ limit, he created a light-filled, spacious home that uses the lower climes of the site to achieve the designer’s goals. The home includes green features such as a glass roof with a grass top, solar panels, radiant heat, thermal wool insulation and double-glaze windows.
A self-proclaimed advocate of eco-friendly design, Michaelis did his best to source materials responsibly, bringing them in from all over Europe. When scanning the list of environmentally-conscious construction choices, though, I couldn’t help but question the impact of digging into the earth in order to essentially build a mansion without breaking the rules. But details are sparse in the article released today from CNN.com. We may have to dig a little deeper to get the whole story.
At FutureFactories, inconsistency is of the essence. The question that drives the company’s concept is “If it costs the same to produce similar parts as identical ones, why produce two products the same?”
Using rapid prototyping techniques, FutureFactories has created what they call “living consumer products,” which grow and change on the screen during their digital design phase, and are frozen at various points in their mutation to produce infinitely varied and unique forms. A template defines the general aesthetic and function of a design, but no two resulting products are exactly alike.
Designer Lionel Theodore Dean worked in automotive design before transitioning to interiors and lighting. His past designs have won international lighting awards, and one joined the ranks of Ikea’s futuristic lighting category. The one-of-a-kind aspect of his current Rapid Protoype line adds real value to the products, feeding the voracious appetite of bespoke design fans everywhere.
Calling all San Franciscans!!!! Join us this Saturday, October 20th, and turn off all non-essential lights from 8-9pm, Pacific Time.
So what exactly does one hour of lights out in the city do? Lights Out San Francisco estimates that as much as 15 percent of the energy consumed on an average Saturday night will be saved by turning out lights for merely an hour.
A group of designers in Miami recently launched PIE, a company that designs and manufactures a diverse line of furnishings and accessories for the home. An acronym for Project Import Export, PIE uses primarily eco-friendly materials, such as rattan, liana (a vine), bamboo and water hyacinth.
The “Fold 01″ at right is made of 100% bamboo. Below, hanging lamps of aluminum (presumably recycled) and mulberry fiber do a nice job of carrying off the “woven” look without being too bohemian. Project Import Export debuted at this year’s CA Boom II and is now working hard to share PIE with the world. Check out the full line at their website.
Last week I attended the opening of the Bay Area Furniture Art exhibit at the Blue Room Gallery. One of the designers that stood out to my green-hunting eye was Todd Laby, whose company, Rhubarb Decor, aims to improve the perception of green furniture through “aesthetics with ethics.”
Laby’s “Slant” collection of plyboo (bamboo plywood) bookshelves brings a smart concept to eco-friendly materials and simple design. As you can see from the image above (please excuse inadvertent product placement), the “Full Slant” allows books to recline naturally, unlike most shelves where books lean awkwardly in search of comfort and inflict gradual damage on their spines (much like a human, no?). The Full Slant has two siblings, Slim Slant and Wall Slant, to accomodate your spacial needs. It’s a family of modern La-Z-Boys for your books.
Last week, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was host to a solar village constructed of the 18 entries in the 3rd annual U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. Defending their title, the University of Colorado won the competition, prevailing in three of ten divisions. Judged on several requirements including architecture, energy balance, communication of ideas, and comfort, the projects produced exceptional case studies on the integration of renewable energy with practical building solutions.
While the formal aesthetics ranged from conventional wood siding to what could only be compared to an Airstream, each entry was designed to generate enough solar power to fuel a modern lifestyle - transportation included. Constructed at each team’s respective university, the homes were then disassembled, transported, and reassembled at the competition site, educating visitors while raising the profile and viability of sustainable living.
New York City produces around 50,000 tons of waste every day. If you need a mental picture, imagine 25,000 SUV’s. Now imagine all of them in a single heap in the South Bronx. Such is the reality of waste disposal in the Big Apple. Nearly all of the trash from the five boroughs ends up in one place, and it’s no surprise that the people living there are low-income people of color. Neighborhoods like this are the evidence that social injustice and environmental degradation are inextricably tied.
In a number of cities around the country, from the South Bronx in New York, to the Bayview in San Francisco, residents of these neighborhoods are organizing against perpetual dumping in their communities, which carries grave health risks, not to mention the unattractive appearance and odors emanating from garbage and sewer plants. Sustainable South Bronx is one such organization. Founded by Majora Carter in 2001, the group has implemented a number of sustainable community development projects with the mission of advancing “the environmental, social and economic rebirth of the South Bronx.”
As consumers become more enamored with super-sized food, homes and vehicles, it is refreshing to see the simple and efficient structures of Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Founded on his personal philosophy and desire for low-impact living, Jay has committed himself to the idea of “subtractive design,” rejecting typical spatial assumptions and opting for clarity through conscientious use of space.
Jay’s little handcrafted dwellings range from 40 to 500-sq-ft and have been designed to accommodate a multitude of needs, whether a home office, vacation home, or full-time residence. The varied models can be customized, made road-ready for portability, even connected together to form cluster communities. Like a rustic version of the Micro-Mini home that we profiled earlier, the quaint cabin-like designs of the Tumbleweed house are markedly efficient in plan and section; they cleverly utilize lofts for sleeping areas, wall and overhead spaces are used for storage, and retractable furnishings fulfill multiple functions.
Architectural conjecture, urban speculation, landscape futures… If any of these subjects intrigue you, you absolutely must check out the fabulous BLDGBLOG. My newest favorite blog is like the lovechild of conceptual art and paper architecture: filled with awesome explorations of landscape art, maps, and architectural philosophy.
One of the latest posts on BLDG that caught my attention is a discussion of Lori Nix’s Landscapes of a World-Gone-Wrong. The artist-photographer Lori Nix creates miniature landscapes “out of any material that will simulate a real landscape” and then photographs these sets, producing dark-humored visions of a world filled with disaster and apocalyptic decay. While her images resembles the work - or at least the working method - of Oliver Boberg and Thomas Demand, Nix’s work invokes a more readily apparent sense of humor, counteracting the potentially melodramatic “sky-is-falling” theme, and making it even more evocative.
Redstr / Collective is a cutely named Brooklyn design company with even cuter furniture. We especially love their Cha Plyboo series. Yes, we know the names are little loopy, but the furniture is so pretty, efficient, and sustainable that you just can’t argue with it. Redstr claims that their motivation in this design was to offer a “elegant table solution at an affordable price that was very eco-friendly.” I think they’ve hit the mark with this one.
Plyboo is an eco-friendly product manufactured from hand-harvested bamboo, and the designers have created the piece in such a way that there is very little material waste when the table is cut. The construction is basic slot-together pieces that can be assembled or disassembled in minutes for easy storage and shipping.
The Plyboo line is available at The Future Perfect (Brooklyn NY), Show (Los Angeles, CA), and Matter (Brooklyn NY).
While we’re working to change the paradigm of urban planning and development, it is always helpful to consider the language we use to further our objectives. Feilden Clegg Bradley, an architecture firm in the UK, has categorized their recent redevelopment in Swindon as a “groundscraper,” a term that encapsulates the idea of focusing on the earth in building techniques.
The building is the home of Heelis, the central office of the UK’s largest conservation charity, The National Trust. The original structure was a 19th century building owned by Great Western Railways. It sits at the heart of Brunel’s Great Western Railway complex, in a rusting industrial landscape.
After publicizing their Cradle to Cradle Certification a few months ago, Mcdonough Braungart Design Chemistry has announced the first six products to receive their official stamp of approval. The certification delineates a number of categories and requirements with which companies must comply in order to achieve certification. Like LEED status, Cradle to Cradle offers several levels that alert consumers to their degree of compliance. Products include the Steelcase Think Chair, Hycrete concrete additive, Victor Innovatex Eco Intelligent Polyester, and Haworth’s Zody Chair (pictured).
While we’re on the subject of biotech, here’s a bit of interesting news from Japan. Toyota’s non-automotive division has developed a shrub related to the Cherry Sage that absorbs air pollution more effectively than related plant varieties. Creators say that the Kirsch Pink shrub is 1.3 times more effective at both absorbing harmful pollutants and reducing the urban “heat island effect,” which causes increased temperatures in cities due to infrastructure that deflects sunlight and heat.
Toyota says that the seemingly unrelated biotech and auto industries are actually standing on common ground in that “they are both aiming to achieve a sustainable society.” While this statement makes me groan, there are those that argue that the only ones who can get us out of our mess are the ones that got us here in the first place. If this is true, the auto industry is bound for heroism in the years to come. Selling flowers seems like a good way to start making some environmentally-minded friends.
Genetic modification is a controversial subject. We’ve got corporations promising to reduce world hunger by introducing badly needed nutrients into staple food crops. The same companies sue farmers over ownership of corn whose seedlings were dropped by birds. Such omniscience is both awe-striking and highly suspect given the short past and unpredictable future of biotechnology.
In an artistic response to the advancement of biotech, Biopresence has become its own godlike entity. Biopresence is an art venture currently based in the UK, which, in short, aims to preserve human genetic material by inserting it into living trees. The trees thus become “living memorials” or “transgenic tombstones” for the humans whose DNA they contain. This may top cryogenics for unusual final resting options.
Founders Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel established the venture “with the purpose of exploring, participating and ultimately defining the most relevant playing field of the 21st century: the impact of biotechnologies on society and the human perception of these coming changes.”
We want to give a big shout-out to Cameron Sinclair, who has just been selected as one of three recipients for the 2006 TED prize, which honors individuals who are making a positive impact on people and the planet. A lofty task, no doubt, and one that is clearly being accomplished in giant strides by Mr. Sinclair, the founder of Architecture for Humanity, recent recipient of the Index:2005 Award, and contributor to the fabulous Worldchanging.
And if you are wondering about the picture, it’s an image of the TED prize sculpture, which is a magnetically-levitated sphere. A great symbol to represent the awe-inspiring efforts of the TED honorees. Congratulations, Cameron!
The Santa-Monica-based architecture firm, 
Faced with height restrictions when building his family home in London, architect Alex Michaelis decided to go underground. Observing a 6′ limit, he created a light-filled, spacious home that uses the lower climes of the site to achieve the designer’s goals. The home includes green features such as a glass roof with a grass top, solar panels, radiant heat, thermal wool insulation and double-glaze windows. 
