For those of you who work in a professional design office, you know how quickly we become inundated with samples of all sorts. From rubber to glass and everything in-between, we can’t help but find ourselves on the receiving end of sample shipments, momentarily entranced by the possibilities of their novelty.

A recent contest sponsored by carpet manufacturers Bentley Prince Street and Tricycle resulted in some of the best examples of upcycling we’ve seen in a while: from wine carriers to benches, these designers took to the task of finding real, new uses for their excess carpet samples. The winner of the contest was the Rugburm lounge chair, pictured above, designed by a group at RSA. The design incorporates 42 samples and takes advantage of their flexible and weight bearing properties.

Sarah Susanka of the “Not So Big House” series held a session as part of the AIA Convention last week. Her ongoing books have thus far been a great resource for distilling our ideas of a house into what truly makes a home. She has made a visually compelling case over and over again that “comfort has almost nothing to do with how big a space is.” Rather than relying on the size of a space, we should turn instead to the design of a space to fit the way we live.

Sarah was speaking on her latest book, entitled “The Not So Big Life: Making Room for what Really Matters.”

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The Exposition at this year’s AIA Convention was overwhelming, to say the least. After traversing the floors for over three hours, I think we might have seen half of the exhibits, and perhaps only absorbed about twenty percent. For the most part, we did not find a lot of new developments from the many new green products and materials that were displayed at Greenbuild last November. However, there were still some cool things to take in, provided you could find them….

The American Institute of Architects 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition starts this Thursday in San Antonio. This year’s theme, “Growing Beyond Green,” highlights the many facets of sustainability that face the design community today. In a relatively short time span, green building has evolved from an amorphous concept into a sophisticated set of parameters for high-tech design, complex engineering, and yes- new liabilities. So much change in so little time ensures that this year’s convention presents huge opportunities to explore new technologies, practices, and products.

As San Antonio locals, we will be covering the convention, along with Inhabitat’s official AIA representative, Evelyn. Just a few of the highlights include:

+A special presentation by Al Gore!!!*

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We love stumbling across ways to incorporate nature into our urban lifestyle, and birdhouses always seem to do this effectively. We’ve featured birdhouses many times before, ranging from clean and modern to the purely practical. These simply constructed boxes caught our eye when we spotted them at Notcot, though truth be told, we took them for mailboxes at first glance.

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The Dutch design shop Atelier Bomdesign features several products fabricated from recycled materials. By far, our favorite is the Booklamp (or Boeklampen, in the native tongue), a clever take on reading light- proving that books are for both learning AND lighting. Used books are beautifully re-crafted and shaped into shades that emit a soft glow. As they are handcrafted, the Booklamps are perhaps more art than everyday fixture, and are priced accordingly (200-400 euros).

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
It’s a great start to simply use less. But how about living in less? Friday’s New York Times published a great article on a few pioneers of smaller living. Forget the McMansions; no need for a 2,500-square-foot “starter home.” These folks have turned their backs on the desire for extra bedrooms, opting instead for a more “distilled way of living.” The article profiles buyers of several tiny (and mostly prefab) dwellings we’ve profiled at Inhabitat, from the 65-square-foot Tiny Tumbleweed Homes to the palatial 700-square-foot weeHouse.

Click here to read the article.

Samples! Product representatives have opened our eyes before about their company’s sustainable efforts. So we were thrilled to receive this sample bracelet from 3form, a company that makes laminate panels for walls, doors, stair treads, tables- pretty much anything you can think of.

The bracelet is fabricated from the company’s Ecoresin, which is a non-toxic polyester resin. (They also offer a line called 100 Percent, which is made entirely from post-consumer HDPE.) Rather than sandwiching bamboo, glass, fabric, or any of the other popular materials inside the Ecoresin, 3form created a version which they call Ithemba, which translates as “hope” in the native language of the Xhosa – a people of South Africa.

As global leader of the bizarre world of upscale development, Dubai has yet another feat of both engineering and excess in the works. The latest spire to be added to the desert landscape will be the Time Residences building in the City of Arabia, a 200-unit apartment tower – that will rotate! The complex will turn a full 360 degrees over the course of a week, utilizing stored solar energy to power the turning mechanisms.

+ Gulf News

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The Sawfish has been around for a couple years now, but we took notice after spotting it at Greenbuild two weeks ago. The timber provided by this robotic logger received accolades as one of Building Green’s Top 10 Green Building Products, which were announced during the conference. The Sawfish is a remotely operated lumberjack vehicle, developed to harvest timber from underwater standing trees. Triton Logging Inc. estimates that there is over 5 billion linear board feet of usable timber submerged in the forests of British Columbia’s lakes and reservoirs – and that’s less than 5% of the potentially viable timber worldwide!

While prefab construction is just beginning to influence the building industry in the United States, there are considerably more offerings for such ventures in Europe. Take for instance, Ari Leinonon’s SeaSauna: now built by Swedish prefab manufacturer Modern Living, the project was originally designed for the architect’s parents as the optimal way to experience the sauna.

The SeaSauna comes either as a kit or as a fully assembled unit, and can also be purchased with optional pontoon-like attachments, enabling the structure to float peacefully in the water.

For those of you who think that last week’s Greenbuild Conference was all about grass roofs and composting toilets, think again. One of the more diverse sessions was led by a group of chemists from the Green Chemistry Institute. Their concepts are not far from those advocated by the design community, such as Biomimicry and Cradle-to Cradle. However, these chemists are working to enhance human health and the environment by changing products at a molecular level.

Just think about the possibilities: Smog Eating Concrete!

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Well folks, we’ve got some good news and some bad news; The good news is that you’re currently reading one of the best weblogs for keeping up to date with all the latest and greatest materials in the green building world. The bad news is, we’ve already shown you most of the cool new materials gracing the Exhibit Hall floor – they’re all covered already in our NEW MATERIALS section. Unfortunately, we haven’t stumbled upon any new groundbreaking products here in Denver. But for those of you who couldn’t venture to the Mile High City, we’ll show you some of our favorites, and remind you of the broad range of exciting resources at your fingertips.

Not all prefab is created equal. Some, like Rocio Romero’s LV Home, are made for middle-income, modernist loving homebuyers. Others, like Ray Kappe’s Living Home, are a super high-end version meant for the well-off client. At the other end of the spectrum, we have Cubo Arquitectos‘ prototype for emergency shelters – definitely not the most permanent home around – but by far, a true take on building “prefab.”

Living in Texas, we’ve seen our fair share of cacti. So it goes without saying that we were intrigued to hear of the Urban Cactus, an architectural project in Rotterdam. Designed by UCX Architects, the future housing project will accommodate 98 residential units within its 19 floors. Because it sits on a harbor, the architects decided that the tower needed a natural “green” image – which has manifested itself in a stacked set of rotated, swoopy plates.

Jorre van Ast has a knack for realizing common problems that plague us in our daily lives – especially the ones we aren’t aware of. An industrial designer, his projects approach these problems with a sort of make-shift attitude, resulting in creative solutions that critique our use of everyday objects.

Alain Bertreau’s Instant Chair is a plywood transformer chair that folds down into one small flat sheet for storage, but pops into a sturdy seat in a matter of seconds. Using the latest panel cutting technology, the affordable Instant chair uses only a couple square feet of plywood. Berteau’s economy of means and materials is a refreshing change from the “more is more” mentality of everyday consumer furniture.

Alain Berteau, architect, interior designer, and product designer has designed some fabulously efficient chairs that are noteworthy both for their ingenuity and frugality of material. The Fence Chair effectively utilizes a single angle that allows it to be packed tightly for shipping and, once assembled; the individual chairs can be linked to form continuous seating for a larger group.

Last year, readers went crazy over our feature on the Streamgarden by Green Fortune, A Swedish company dedicated to “urban cultivation.” The Streamgarden helps aspiring green thumbs by taking all of the guesswork (and all of the effort) out of maintaining household plants. Now Green Fortune has unveiled another product: the Plantwall.

Yes, the Plantwall is just what it sounds like — a vertical wall of greenery. Plantwall allows for all of the enhancing elements of indoor foliage without sacrificing floor area. But the real innovation is in how it works:

Cooper-Hewitt, home to the National Design Awards, will put on its first ever National Design Week October 15th -21st, focusing attention on how our lives are enriched everyday by design. In addition to outreach programs, the museum is offering FREE admission all week, with ongoing events and speakers. Want to participate? Tell them what you think makes for good design. Visit this website by October 16th and vote for the People’s Design Award, or nominate one of your own. We were thrilled to see a few of our favorites already nominated, like Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio, and Rocio Romero’s LVL Home. Others might find the Pez Dispenser or thong to have been more inspriational in their lives.

Go Vote!

via Treehugger

One of the largest problems plaguing sustainable development today is the tendency to use the cheapest, most readily available land. More often than not, this results in the degradation of green space and uncontrollable sprawl. In a recent interview on Archinect, Julie Bargmann talks about dedicating her practice to doing something different: her D.I.R.T. (”Dump It Right There”) studio regularly takes on industrial sites, abandoned rail yards, or otherwise “undesirable” locations for development. Rather than advocating the superficial beautification of these places, she instead incorporates elements of the sites’ histories into her projects, layering them with cultural and ecological significance.

The recent fad of using wood cladding, louvers, and filigree as sun shading for buildings has left architects scrambling for a substitute material that’s beautiful, structurally stable, durable, and sustainable – - – oh, and reasonably priced.

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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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.

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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As summer comes to a close, so does our weekly series on green building. Hopefully we have expanded your knowledge of applying sustainable concepts in your own home, whether it’s a studio rental in the city or a straw-bale abode in the country. Loosely based on USGBC’s pilot program LEED for Homes, the series has covered subjects ranging from community planning and transportation, to light bulbs and leaky faucets. If you’re arriving for the first time, or you want to review the series, here are the installments in order of appearance…
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Stuart Tanner Architects has created a breathtakingly beautiful modern getaway, tightly perched on a cliff between the Tasman National Park and the Pirate’s Bay Beach. Not only does this home offer unfettered visual connections to the flora and fauna flowing out of the park, it protects that environment by minimizing its physical and environmental footprints. Passive heating and cooling through cross-ventilation, on site waste water management, rainwater harvesting, and exterior sun screens are some of the more impressive architectural components that make the project green – in addition to all of those little things we can all do – such as low energy appliances, fixtures, and bulbs.

All images copyright Andy Ryan – www.andyryan.com

Okay, so at first glance, Steven Holl’s new eco-friendly building seems a little austere. But let’s put it into context: “inspired by the black rocks and white snow of the Swiss Alps,” it seems just about right. Designed in partnership with the Swiss firm Russli Architects, this official residence for the Swiss Ambassador in D.C. will be open and ready for business on September 16th. So what is it about Holl’s design that unanimously set it apart from all of the other Swiss-American teams competing for the job?

Well for starters, it was NOT designed to the USGBC’s LEED standards:

What is it about tree houses that we love so much? Their playfulness, the escapism they offer, and the platforms they provide into nature all come to mind. We have written about the 4Treehouse by Lukasz Kos before, but when we saw it again in this month’s Dwell, the gorgeous glowing image stopped us in our tracks. Posing as a Japanese lantern on stilts, Kos’ creation floats within the fir trees on Lake Muskoka, Ontario.

What’s more, the design frames spectacular views of the forest, from inside, out, down and up!

The very root of what makes a home green is how effectively it responds to its surrounding environment. You could say that this has defined the primary material pursuit of mankind for all time – building better shelters to keep us warmer, cooler, and drier. Many of the native building techniques employed centuries ago are still reliable in similar climates today, and used as optimal models for environmentally conscious architects. However, since global acceptance of the air conditioner in the 1950s, the benefits of responding to a unique climate have been left by the side of the road.

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One of the most beautiful, flexible, and complex prefab systems we’ve covered in the last year is the Ray Kappe designed Living Home. For better and worse, it was covered this week in the LA Times by writer Christopher Hawthorne in the article “Such a deal?” Although he addressed several shortcomings that bother us about the current prefab industry, we can’t help but feel he cast a harsh light on prefabs in general based upon this high end model.

“…the last thing the fledgling prefab movement needs at this point is aggressive marketing or more hype. What it needs is a reality check.” –Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times

above: entry by Coates and Meldrum

Anybody remember the launch of C2C Home a couple of years ago? It was an open competition for residential design using the values of sustainability set forth by William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle philosophy. We were highly anticipating the futuristic housing that would emerge through the collaboration of forward thinking developers, talented designers, and dedicated contractors striving to reduce our living footprint. Having heard little in the last two years, we were thrilled to learn that the first Cradle-to-Cradle house is nearing completion in Roanoke, Virginia.

So which entry was chosen? And what fabulous design is about to materialize as a monument to the principles of sustainable living? Here’s a hint: the competition winner (pictured above) will not get that particular honor………

Our highly scientific reader survey revealed that you want to see more flying houses! So here you go – and as a bonus, we’ll throw in some heavy machinery. It is this very image of prefab that many of us dream about: a modern, elegant, minimal space, gliding through the air, gently touching down where there was once only a blank lot o’ dreams. The delivery guys plug in a few hoses, collect a signature, and drive away with a smile – just like the guys who delivered your washing machine.

In alignment with that dream, Espaciao Minga and the design firm of F3 Arquitectos have developed this compelling prototype known as the Minga. We’re a little rusty on our indigenous Chilean languages, but word on the street is that “Minga” means something along the lines of “an act done by a community for the benefit of a single family”.

Welcome back to Green Building 101.

Last week we covered how to select an environmentally responsible location for your new abode; this week we’ll begin discussing ways you can improve upon any home site. The SUSTAINABLE SITES section of USGBC’s LEED for Homes Program outlines various “green” opportunities for reducing the negative impact your home has on the environment. The great thing about these principles is that most can be implemented anytime, regardless of whether you’re still in the design process, or if you’ve been in your home for a lifetime.

So without further ado, here are five measures you can take to create a more sustainable site: