Inhabitat

INHABITAT’S AT WEST COAST GREEN!

It’s day one of the huge West Coast Green expo and conference at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. We’ll be bringing you lots of coverage during and after the event, and most exciting of all – we have our very own booth – full of gorgeous goods generously donated by Branch Home and OHIO Design. This is our first ever trade show booth and we are very excited! If you are here, come stop by and say hi to us…

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SOLAR 2 ECO-CENTER IN NYC

It’s no secret that buildings account for a tremendous amount of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Between the energy they consume during operations, and the resources and materials necessary to build them, there are fewer culprits more guilty than buildings in the current climate crisis. As a response, the AIA and Architecture2030 made official the 2030 Challenge, with the goal of achieving carbon-neutrality for all new buildings by the year 2030.

Though that date sounds like it’s a ways off, the goal is ambitious and the outcome would be dramatic. But there are numerous committed builders and designers who have made it their business to hit the target much sooner. Kiss + Cathcart Architects, for example, are working on Solar 2, the new visitors’ center for the New York-based sustainability and community hub, Solar One.

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BUILDING GREEN: A how-to for the Green Builder

Here at Inhabitat, we frequently focus on the latest green designs or sustainable products, but on occasion we come across wonderful publications that absolutely deserve to be brought to our readers’ attention. Building Green by Clarke Snell & Tim Callahan provides green-minded home builders with 615 full color pages of meticulous writing, sequential how-to photos, and basic building logic. This book chronicles the process of building a small picturesque getaway cabin constructed of cob, cordwood, strawbale, and alternative wood framing for the individual walls – and then they cap it with a green roof!!

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GEOTHERMAL HOUSE: Maryann Thompson Architects

Growing up in a Marcel Breuer House would make one no stranger to modernist aesthetic and space. Thus, architect Maryann Thompson was privileged to come across such clients when she was commissioned to design a house for a family of four that would open up to the outdoors rather than shutting it out. Thompson’s Geothermal House, as it came to be called, unfolds in “layers of interlocking spaces.” As one travels from the northern public side of the house to the southern, more private end, one follows the sun’s path, naturally stepping down the sloping site. Continually referencing the outside through the interior of the house, the horizontal planes jut out into the landscape.

But this house goes beyond simply embracing nature visually; you guessed it – a geothermal heating and cooling system is employed.

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CYCLOC AT 100% Design

Cyclers of the world unite! Designer Andrew Lang has come out with an innovative new bicycle storage device, called the Cycloc, which allows you to hang and lock your bike to a wall. Not only does it free up your hallway space (who wants to try to trip through a bunch of bikes in the middle of the night), but its also extremely secure and stylish to boot.

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RE-CYCLE STAGE: Bike Storage with a Twist!

An intriguing project emerged at the London Design Festival’s Eco-Design Day: the Re-Cycle Stage. This bicycle storage shed/community event stage is a creation of architect Christos Choraitis.

The Sanford Housing Co-op had a growing bicycle problem; over a hundred bikes cluttered hallways and fire exits because there were no secure places to store them. A solution was needed to keep bikes on the property, so Choraitis and other residents skilled in woodworking, environmental design, and carpentry stepped forward to help out their co-op in the New Cross Gate neighborhood of London (all residents are required to work for the co-op in some fashion, in addition to paying their rent.)

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WEST COAST GREEN

For those of you who are in the San Francisco area this week, we encourage you to join Inhabitat at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where we will be making our way around West Coast Green, a huge 3-day conference and expo on residential green building.

Inhabitat will be covering the entire event live, with ongoing follow-up from a number of speakers and exhibitors. Managing Editor, Sarah Rich, will also be hosting web-cast interviews that will be posted here in the following weeks. Be sure to check back for more information.

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CUSTOM MADE FURNITURE by Karen Ryan

Karen Ryan debutted her charming “Custom Made” chair collection at 100% Design this year and captured our hearts with these weird, wacky and wonderful hybrid monster chairs made from salvaged furniture bits. Each chair is a completely unique work of art, and as much an exploration of consumption and disposability as a practical, functional seat. These funny chairs sort of remind us of the Beetlejuice aesthetic – and we mean that in an entirely good way.

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[RE]DESIGN: Sustainable Design in London

Our favorite part of London design week this year is [Re]Design: Good and Gorgeous? – London’s only design event dedicated exclusively to recycled design. Focusing on good, gorgeous, sustainable home design, [Re]Design “supports designers who don’t want to make landfill…” Shouldn’t we all support that?

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COFFIN SHELVES: ww.modcom’s Shelves For Life

At the [Re]Design 06 exhibition in London, the hip British design team ww.modcons explore the issue of disposability with their subtly ironic Shelves for Life. The artfully assembled slats of wood begin their existence dutifully propping up books and knick-knacks, but when their time is up, instead of getting kicked to the curb, these shelves convert into a coffin!

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100% DESIGN 2006 – First Look

Karen Ryan’s Second-Hand Plates

London design week is even bigger and crazier than New York design week, so its a great time to discover exciting new designs and rising design stars. Although most of us US-based Inhabitants were unable to skip the pond this year for the London Design festival, we’ve been fortunate to have a couple of friends in London reporting on the design exhibition. Sustainable design guru Kimberly Oliver (the lady behind Haute Green) has been scoping out the London scene this weekend, and sends the following report from 100% Design:

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SHAPE-SHIFTING BUILDINGS

photo: Tristan d’EstrZe Sterk, oframBFRA.com

Much of the talk about future-forward shelter design revolves around changing our perception of habitable spaces from static to dynamic structures. Particularly in prefab, architects are pushing the idea of the home as a large-scale appliance — something that serves and adapts to our changing lives. A recent Wired article brought this idea to light in the context of building design, where the entire envelope of a “smart” skyscraper can be designed to flex with changes in weather, climate and traffic.

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Quickup Camper

Since prefab is often implicitly about mobility, spatial efficiency and design innovation, Prefab Friday seemed an apt day to feature the Quickup Camper. The lightweight, carbonfiber and foam shell pops open into a mobile dwelling in thirty seconds, and closes down to a compact enough size to fit into a garage. Best of all, unlike so many other campers, it doesn’t cut your miles-per-gallon down to nothing. But to truly appreciate the beauty of the Quickup, you have to understand the sheer brilliance of the man behind the machine…

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ROCKY CHAIR by Guy Arzi

Feel like taking in a film at your favorite theatre but can’t find enough energy to move your caboose from the comfort of your cozy domestic den? Now you don’t have to. Guy Arzi’s bright and fun Rocky Chair, which is made from reclaimed cinema seats, sets the stage for the ultimate home viewing experience by directly channeling popcorn-infused good times at the local movie palace.

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OXYGEN GREENHOUSE

During the month of September, the city of Copenhagen is hosting Hot Summer of Urban Farming — eight temporary art installations that explore the use (and disuse) of urban spaces. The Oxygen Greenhouse, by Hartmut Stockter, generates fresh air for the O2-starved urbanite. The greenhouse has a tube and a breathing mask attached for the passer by who needs a hit of the pure stuff.

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LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL KICKS OFF!

Its September, and all of a sudden there are a million festivals and conferences launching everywhere – we can’t keep up! For you lucky Londoners, the London Design Festival is a huge, varied, 2 week long extravaganza of different design events all over the city. From the classic 100% Design to more cutting edge shows like Designers Block, 100% East and [Re]Design, there will be enough good stuff all over London to please any design palate. Coolhunting has got a good run-down of the must-see shows. Check it out >

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RYAN FRANK PLASTIC BAG CHAIR

Like the Hackney Shelf which we featured this morning, Ryan Frank’s Inkuku (Zulu for “chicken”) chair capitalizes on an aspect of contemporary urban culture to create a unique piece of furniture. Frank put a modern spin on a traditional African craft technique by choosing to use plastic shopping bags and recycled aluminum as the materials for his piece. The result is a heavily textured, brightly colored chair that would probably offer plenty of cushion with so many layers of thin plastic and trapped pockets of air. Its also an interesting commentary on re-use and recycling – now perhaps we can put all those plastic shopping bags to better use!

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RYAN FRANK’S HACKNEY SHELF

Here’s an ingenious idea that blurs the boundaries between furniture design, graffitti and conceptual fine art. London designer Ryan Frank strategically places white boards at various points in east London and waits for illicit decoration to begin. Frank leaves boards out for weeks until they have sufficiently “matured” into colorful pieces of street art. Once the boards have matured, they are removed and transformed into these colorful mobile shelving units – juxtaposing street art with interior environment. For the collectors out there: every piece is a completely unique slice of “recycled” Hackney street art.

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PARK(ing) Day is THIS THURSDAY – September 21, 2006!

image from last year’s PARK(ing) project, November 16, 2005 via www.rebargroup.org.

Surely by now you are well aware of Rebar and their fabulous project which turned an ordinary, urban, San Francisco parking space into a compact, makeshift park last year. Now, they are at it again, inspiring collective action by inviting YOU to participate in this years PARK(ing) project!! This is your last reminder to join Rebar, in conjunction with the Trust for Public Land, and show your support for public parks, pedestrian spaces, and urban art.

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OHIO DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHIC FURNITURE

We’ve raved about OHIO Design several times since we fell in love with the company’s innovative furniture back in 2005. So we were super excited to run into OHIO again at the Dwell on Design conference this weekend and discover that they have been massively prolific since the last time we checked in with them.

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AIA HOME TOURS

The last day of Dwell on Design brought fogless, downright hot weather to San Francisco. A perfect day to take a ride around the city and check out some residential gems. Guest writer Maryam Rostami braved the hills on on two wheels to scout AIA San Francisco Home Tours by bicycle! She picked her two favorites and gave us this report:

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SCRAPHOUSE DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE

Scraphouse made an appearance on Inhabitat last June when it made its debut during World Environment Day 2005 on the lawn in front of the City Hall in San Francisco. A sort of 3-D collage of found objects — primarily scrap material destined for landfill and recycling plants — Scraphouse was assembled in six short weeks.

Although no remnants of the building remain on the City Hall lawn, Scraphouse can be seen from conception to completion in print, online, and — as of tonight — on TV. Anna Fitch and her team have produced a 46-minute fast-paced documentary of the 6-week build blitz, which premiers today on the National Geographic Channel at 10pm (ET). Be sure to check your local listings for any time changes.

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DWELL ON DESIGN: Weekend in Review

In three days at Dwell in Design, there was enough to hear, see and discuss that we could keep the reports rolling out for days. We will bring you some specific product highlights before the conference fades into memory, but for now, the weekend in review…

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SOLAR POWERED CA SUBDIVISION

Once again, California seems to be leading the way in green building initiatives. Friday’s New York Times has published a video article on Carsten Crossings, a subdivision outside of Sacramento that has incorporated roof-integrated solar power on all of its homes, reducing energy bills by approximately 40 percent. Other options available include soy-based insulation and tankless water heaters. While the homes’ aesthetics have not improved upon the typical builders’ subdivision, Grupe Company has priced these homes comparable to …

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DWELL ON DESIGN: Day 2

(Photo-printed furniture by OHIO Design)

It was another fabulous day at Dwell in Design in San Francisco. The first half of the day focused on sustainability in building and design. The panel was very well-selected and each speaker’s remarks built upon the previous one, moving from current projects to urgings for us to look beyond our current definitions of “green”, to a final presentation centered around Bucky Fuller, which spoke to legacy and history as much as to our potential to design a very different future.

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YOUMEHESHE’S ORGANIC PREFAB HOUSE

At the last London Pecha Kucha event, Youmeheshe architects presented their small but tall ‘organic house’ — a wood pre-fab prototype that was Youmeheshe’s answer to a British-government challenge last year for architects to design an affordable house for under £60,000.

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PECHA KUCHA LONDON

Pecha Kucha – Japanese for the sound of conversation – is fast establishing itself as London’s place to catch-up on whats going on in the design world. It’s a grown-up version of show-and-tell that includes architects, designers, branding experts, and DJs.

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DWELL ON DESIGN: Day 1 – Affordability and the City

This afternoon’s Dwell On Design session focused on affordability and the city. The lineup included San Francisco architect David Baker, Los Angeles architect Brian Lane of Koning Eizenberg Architecture, John King, urban design writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dan Rockhill, professor at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Design, and a conversation with author Robert Sullivan and professor Dolores Hayden.

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DWELL ON DESIGN: Day 1 – Prefab

The first morning of Dwell on Design has just wrapped up, and as luck would have it on, on Prefab Friday, the morning session was all about prefab. The architect lineup included Linda Taalman and Alan Koch of the iThouse, Rocio Romero, known for LV and Fish Camp; Christopher Deam, and Joe Tanney of Resolution: 4 Architecture; plus two profs from the MIT school of Architecture, Joel Turkel and Larry Sass, and prefab historian/author, Colin Davies (shown lecturing above).

3.5 hours of non-stop prefab conversation can hardly be summed up concisely here, but here are some highlights and themes:

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Rooftop Prefabs

We have to admit that what first got us into the idea of prefab living was the prospect of never being able to afford to buy a house in New York City. We figured the only way our dreams of NYC home ownership would ever be realized would be if we could lease a high-rise rooftop and then stick a little prefab on top. We could have an affordable penthouse apartment with a view for under $200,000! Well, apparently we were not the only ones to have hit upon this idea…

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DWELL ON DESIGN STARTS TOMORROW!

I’m just about to hop a plane and head down to San Francisco for Dwell Magazine’s Dwell on Design Conference + Exhibition. The three-day event is packed with great speakers, panelists and home tours.

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