Njoku Housing

2010-07-28T17:37:00.001-07:00

http://www.hydraform.com/

Team Germany - Solar Decathlon

2010-06-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Team Germany won the 2009 Solar Decathlon with their project that featured BIPV that was fused into the facade of the home. Some of the questions that this brought up was the efficiency of the BIPV facades as opposed to classic roof-based PV panels.

Germany’s Solar Coated surPLUShome Wins Solar Decathlon!

by Bridgette Meinhold, 10/16/09

The final results just rolled in from this year’s Solar Decathlon, and team Germany’s sleek surPLUShome finished first in an incredible upset victory! The German team took top honors in the Net Metering and Engineering categories this morning, steamrolling the competition to secure their second Decathlon win. This year’s home features a sleek, dark facade that is almost completely covered in photovoltaic panels and can provide more than twice the amount of energy it needs. Check out our cool video from America.gov about the house after the jump!

A far cry from the Team Germany’s 2007 entry, the surPLUShome pushed the envelope in every respect, from the use of new technology to non-traditional architecture. The competition really came down to solar production and energy efficiency, with the goal of designing and building a net zero home. So it’s really no surprise that Germany was victorious, considering their very rigorous and impressive Passivhaus building standard.

The surPLUShome is a two-story cube covered with a 11.1 kW PV system with panels on the roof (single-crystal silicon), sides, and front (thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide). Inside, a single multi-functional room operates as kitchen, living, dining, bath and bedroom. Furniture is multi-purpose as well and folds away to make space when not needed. Other important design features include custom-made vacuum insulation structural panels, a boiler/heat pump system that provides hot water and warmth, and automatic louver-covered windows.

Team Germany, made up of 24 students, hails from the Technische Universität Darmstadt and achieved great marks in all of the categories, scoring a total of 908 points out of a possible 1,000. Team Illinois won 2nd place with 897 points, while Team California, favored to win earlier this week, took 3rd place with 863. Congratulations to all of these teams on their incredible projects! We hope that many of the technologies and advances in design we saw during the Decathlon will filter out into commercial and residential homes around the world.

Ward Blake Architects

2010-06-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

I really like the design of this home in Wyoming and think that it rhymes with the direction this project is taking given that it shares the contrasting of textures, contemporary feel, and earthen materials.

Wyoming Modern

In Jackson Hole, a Contemporary Hillside Residence That Defies the Expected

Architecture by Tom Ward, AIA, of Ward + Blake
Text by Peter Haldeman/Photography by Roger Wade

Published June 2006

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In the winter of 2001, Karen Warshaw, an antiques dealer from New York, and her husband, Peter, who is retired, flew to Wyoming, for a ski vacation in Jackson Hole. The slopes happened to be a little bare that season, and the Warshaws ended up pursuing another favorite American pastime—real estate hunting. Somewhat less typically, they came across their dream property in less than two hours.

“You’re 7,000 feet up, and you have a 360-degree view,” Karen Warshaw says of the five-acre ridgetop site the couple ultimately acquired. “Most of that is the Tetons, which we think are among the most beautiful mountains in the world. South is Jackson, east is the Sleeping Indian Mountain, and you can also see the elk refuge in Jackson Hole.”

Arriving at their dream house took a little more time. The Warshaws knew that whomever they hired to design it had to be well versed in both Jackson Hole’s strict building codes and its harsh weather conditions, so they limited their search to local architects. They also knew that, in terms of style, they wanted to get as far away from their conventional New York existence as possible (their English country-style house in Westchester County was decorated by the eminently traditional Mark Hampton). But they didn’t want a look that was predictably western. “I think what they call western architecture is what people who’ve seen a lot of western movies imagine houses are supposed to look like,” says Karen Warshaw. “There are so many materials besides logs.”

It’s a safe bet that no western movie has featured residential design of the sort conceived for the Warshaws by Jackson-based architect Tom Ward. In lieu of logs, for instance, there are flat expanses of concrete, glass and wood. Instead of a looming lodge or a rambling ranch house, the residence takes the unassuming form of a sequence of rectilinear volumes stepping down its hillside site. Their canopies are not heavy-timbered A-frames but flat roofs planted with wildflower sod. There’s no wicker-filled rear porch—just a series of concrete decks ringed by a meandering channel of water.

“We pretty much set the homeowners’ association on fire,” Ward recalls. “Then one of the residents said, ‘There’s a giant clause in our covenant that says the architecture should reflect the intrinsic values of the site—and this house does that in spades.’ ”

The house’s slope-hugging profile, winged and sod-covered roofs and rock-colored concrete planes all honor its spectacular location. The site’s most conspicuous intrinsic value is its views, and Ward’s stepped design fully exploits the vistas while conforming to the homeowners’ association’s 22-foot height restriction.

One enters the residence roughly at midlevel, where a view of the Grand Teton explodes through a window on the other side of the house. The master bedroom and guest rooms look out on the mountains both from inside and from their respective decks, and the living, dining and kitchen areas upstairs enjoy the head-spinning panorama that originally seduced the Warshaws. (The kitchen cabinets were placed below counter level to preserve the views.)

2010-06-04T12:41:00.001-07:00

The Better Brick: 2010 Next Generation Winner

This year’s winner—a bioengineered brick, conceived by a young American architect—may be modest in physical scale, but it has the potential for global impact.

By Suzanne LaBarre

Posted May 12, 2010

8 comments

Brick built the ancient citadels and hypocausts of the Indus Valley and ornamented the Chrysler Building, that great monument to the machine age. But in recent years, it has had a more sinister legacy: environmental menace. Tossing a clay brick into a coal-powered kiln, then firing it up to 2,000˚F, emits about 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. Multiply that by the 1.23 trillion bricks manufactured each year, and you’re talking about more pollution than what’s produced by all the airplanes in the world. The winner of the 2010 Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition proposes a radical alternative: don’t bake the brick; grow it.

In a lab at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor, sprouts building blocks from sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride, and urea (yes, the stuff in your pee). The process, known as microbial-induced calcite precipitation, or MICP, uses the microbes on sand to bind the grains together like glue with a chain of chemical reactions. The resulting mass resembles sandstone but, depending on how it’s made, can reproduce the strength of fired-clay brick or even marble. If Dosier’s biomanufactured masonry replaced each new brick on the planet, it would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 800 million tons a year. “We’re running out of all of our energy sources,” she said in March in a phone interview from the United Arab Emirates. “Four hundred trees are burned to make 25,000 bricks. It’s a consumption issue, and honestly, it’s starting to scare me.”

This year’s Next Generation competition asked entrants to invent a “small (but brilliant and elegant) ‘fix’” for the designed environment. Jurors saw space-saving clothes hangers and solar-powered window shades and souped-up planters. Dosier’s bricks are certainly small—in lab tests so far, about the size of a Lego—but with further research, their impact could resonate all over the world. Consider the prospects in countries like China and India, where outdated kilns put brick production among the top coal consumers. “There was a strong feeling among the judges that the award should go to someone dealing with an issue on a global scale,” says Chris Sharples, a juror and a principal of SHoP Architects. “Here was a very simple concept defined by scientific method and an example of how you can come up with some very innovative ways to solve basic problems.” Choosing it as the winner was, he adds, a “no-brainer.” It was also a testament to the value of an architect who knows her way around a microscope.

Dosier, 32 years old, isn’t the first to dabble at the crossroads of microbiology and chemistry. In Precambrian times, bacteria created geological formations through a process that scientists would only begin simulating 3.45 billion years later, growing ground-firming minerals in oil patches and contaminated soil. Nor is she alone in trying to green the humble brick. Intrepid entrepreneurs have tamped everything from fly ash and plant refuse to car tires and plastic bottles into a neat little block and called it a brick (thoroughly peeving the brick industry, which will tell you that anything short of clay and shale is just a cheap imitation). Dosier’s act of alchemy was to apply science to design. “There are thousands of examples of microbial mineral precipitation in the scientific literature, but few if any of them have been explored for use in fabrication of construction or design materials,” Grant Ferris, a geology professor at the University of Toronto, who conducted early MICP studies, writes in an e-mail. “This is what makes Professor Dosier’s work so compelling. Bioremediation and industrial applications look out!”

The first lines of Dosier’s résumé would hardly peg her for a chemistry nerd: an undergraduate degree in interior architecture from Auburn; a semester at Rural Studio under Sam Mockbee, who sermonized, Messiah-like, about “architecture as kindness”; a master’s in architecture at Cranbrook, the free-flowing essence of everything hard science isn’t. Just before graduate school, Dosier threw away her worldly possessions—her clothes, her typewriting tables, her precious antique glassware. In retrospect, it’s when much of her thinking about materials in design took shape. “I was questioning this idea of ownership, and I got really interested in chemical processes, researching what materials are made of, what you can add to them to change how they grow and die,” she says. Soon, she was building furniture out of salt and calcium carbonate (a compound found in shells), then watching it evaporate in the forest like an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture. Her master’s thesis, a salt-composite handrail, cleaned germs off anyone who touched it, before wearing away to a flimsy scaffold. “I wanted to show,” she says, “that architecture can do more than just exist.”

To develop her ideas further, she needed a firmer grasp of the technology. So she did what any aspiring scientist would have done: she headed to the toy store and bought crystal-growing kits. Lots of them. “My favorite was a crystal-geode kit, where you seeded plaster of Paris with crystals and placed it in an aqueous solution of crystal-growth media,” she says. The kits taught her invaluable chemistry basics: keep your solution wet (otherwise nothing will grow) but not too wet (otherwise nothing will grow), and keep the room cool (otherwise nothing will grow) but not too cool (otherwise nothing will grow). And so on.

This informal education continued apace at North Carolina State University, where she landed a visiting professorship in 2005. She audited classes on materials science and pored over books like Bio-mineralization: Progress in Biology, Molecular Biology and Application. By then, she had familiarized herself with research on growing solids for industrial uses and knew she wanted to adapt it for architecture. She sought out mentors, including the microbiologist José Bruno-Bárcena, who became, in matters of scientific inquiry, the Anne Sullivan to her Helen Keller. “From an architecture–interior design background, I always wanted to go big, and my experiments would fail 98 percent of the time,” Dosier says. “I felt like I needed to buy Chemistry for Dummies. He started opening the door of my mind on how to think.” Bruno-Bárcena encouraged her to narrow her focus. When she announced she wanted to grow brick via microbes in either waste mineral water or a porous skeleton, he suggested she limit herself to the latter. Another mentor, James Patrick Rand, an NCSU architecture professor, convinced her to train her attention on developing basic bricks instead of more complex building forms. Like Bruno-Bárcena, he saw value in simplicity. All the while, she read: Introduction to Industrial Minerals;Microbial Sediments; Biomineralization: Cell Biology and Mineral Deposition. “Ginger is not at all fearful of the science of construction materials,” Rand says. “She readily engages chemical processes—things many architecture students and practitioners are afraid of.”

It’s true: architects don’t do this sort of thing. In a great disservice to themselves and their profession, they avoid science the way poets avoid calculators. “Typically, architects are not involved in the development of building products and sustainable technologies,” SHoP’s Sharples says. “We rely on experts outside the field, so often these green products are just applied directly to our designs.” Put another way, when architects have a hand in producing new materials, they exert more control over how buildings perform. That is Dosier’s coup.

Yet for all her toil, her first successful experiment was somewhat accidental. At the University of Sharjah, where she moved in 2007 to teach full-time, she spent two years trying to develop a brick with different microbes, material proportions, and pH levels. Everything failed.

(It didn’t help matters that the first bacteria cultures she bought from India and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were duds.) Then one afternoon, she threw together a bunch of scraps from some old, ill-fated tests, for kicks. Practically forgetting about it, she revisited experiment No. 112 a week later, only to discover that the medium had transformed into a “baby brick,” as she tells it, a four-by-two-by-one-centimeter proof of concept. “I was shocked to find that it had worked,” she says, “and glad that I took detailed lab notes.” The magic formula was in allowing the right concentration of bacteria to fester just long enough.

The months since have been an exhaustive exercise in reproducing and strengthening the results. She has repeated the combination more than 30 times, experimenting with assorted sand grains and aggregates, like recycled glass. She has also explored various manufacturing techniques. Traditional casting is the most obvious method, since it requires few resources—formwork, sand, bacteria, and the calcium chloride–urea solution, almost all of which is available locally, both in New York and in the UAE. Rapid prototyping is another, decidedly less democratic option. In the future, Dosier says, she’ll be able to program the brick’s precise composition, then fabricate it layer by layer on a 3-D printer. The technology poses countless design possibilities. Ball-shaped bricks: Why not?

The future poses countless obstacles, too. She’ll have to figure out how to create a strong brick without squandering raw materials, and how to scale up for mass production given that the chemical process is inherently slow. (Dosier’s blocks take a week to grow; clay bricks can be made in two days.) But the most pressing hurdle is that the biobrick pollutes. Microbial-induced calcite precipitation spews tremendous amounts of ammonia, as scientists affiliated with Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, discovered recently when they tried the chemical process on contaminated sand and soil. “High ammonia concentrations result in environmental eutrophication and eventually, via microbial conversion to nitrate, the poisoning of groundwater,” the Delft researcher Henk Jonkers writes in an e-mail. If the bacteria continues to convert ammonia to nitrous oxide, he adds, it can produce a greenhouse gas 320 times more powerful than CO2. “The results show that working with natural processes is not necessarily equivalent to sustainable practices!”

Dosier plans to capture emissions before they transform into noxious gases. A closed-loop system would recycle waste back into the brick-production cycle using organic buffers (carbon filters, for example), though she acknowledges that it would require “collaborations with additional researchers and scientists in various fields of environmental study and industrial ecology.” (Crystal-growing kits can’t do everything.) A regular designer would’ve bowed out of the game by now. But Dosier, versed as she is in the methods of both science and design, welcomes—and is perhaps ideally suited to overcome—the challenge.

In the meantime, she dreams about actually putting the bricks to use. She wants to field-test them on a large expanse of desert north of the UAE–Saudi Arabia border, where Bedouins, the seminomadic tribes who populate the Middle East’s sandy wilds, hitch their camels seasonally. And a friend from Cranbrook, who works in humanitarian aid, invited Dosier to join him in Ethiopia this summer to “get this material going.” A rash of violence ahead of this month’s elections postponed the trip indefinitely, but Dosier remains optimistic.

“Even if [Ethiopia] doesn’t work out, I can think of plenty of regions here where I would like to work,” she says. “The lab is fun to work in. But seeing if it could really happen? That for me is the whole deal.” Maybe then, brick buildings will no longer be villains of the green age but monuments to it.

2010-06-04T12:18:00.001-07:00

Our friend's from http://www.masslab.org/ are making hospitals in Rwanda...

2010-06-04T12:13:00.001-07:00

One of our old professor's from South Africa built

RWANDA'S PRESIDENTIAL PRECINCT: Here are some construction pictures

: pretty amazing: http://picasaweb.google.com/bellamyjk/BuildingInSouthAfrica

2010-06-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.betterbricks.com/

Integrity Block

2010-06-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

See article below about green building materials, including bricks/blocks. Of note is the Integrity Block, which is the product of a start up based in SF (surprise surprise). I can imagine that their product is on the pricier side, but I wonder if they have any provisions to implement or manufacture them on the East Coast?

CleanBoard Turns Sun's Heat to Drywall

The startup plans a Southern California factory that will use its own solar thermal plant – not to make electricity, but to generate heat to bake traditional gypsum-based drywall without burning fossil fuels.

The growing green building sector has drawn in a number of startups promising to bring new energy efficient and eco-friendly formulations of traditional building materials to market (see The Year in Green Building and New $100M Green Building Fund Launches).

San Francisco startup CleanBoard, however, wants the $17 billion drywall industry to know that its "zero carbon footprint" product won't be any different than the gypsum drywall they've been seeing for decades – except that it will be made using the heat of the sun.

CleanBoard founder Rod MacGregor has been manufacturing drywall in China and importing it to the United States under the Bedrock Building Materials brand since 2005.

Now his new company has developed a system of using mirrors to collect and concentrate the sun's rays on a heat collector, which then heats a transfer fluid that will be used to heat drywall ovens to up to 200 degrees Celsius. Excess heat transfer fluid will be stored in pressurized chambers for up to 24 hours, to make drywall at night or on cloudy days.

It's a bit like solar-thermal plants being built by BrightSource Energy or Ausra, except that the heat is used directly, instead of using it to boil water and spin a turbine to make electricity, MacGregor said.

"We only want heat to power an oven," he said. CleanBoard, which is privately funded, has developed the patent-pending technology itself and plans to have a Southern California plant making test amounts this year and be in full production in 2010, he said.

Using solar-thermal power for these kinds of "industrial process" heat needs – especially those at lower temperatures – has long been a potential sideline for solar thermal power plants. But a 2008 report by the International Energy Agency found that there was a lot more opportunity for solar-thermal in industrial heat than the 25 megawatts of power then in use for it worldwide.

Think of a sheet of gypsum drywall as "a brick of energy," MacGregor said. Making drywall uses about 1 percent of the U.S. industrial energy supply, which represents about one-third of the country's total energy usage, he said. In the case of drywall, energy represents nearly half the costs of a finished sheet, he said – "The rest is mud and paper."

CleanBoard's solar-thermal system should be able to deliver heat for baking drywall at an equivalent cost of about $3 per million British thermal units, or BTUs, MacGregor said. Getting the same amount of energy out of natural gas hasn't been that cheap in the United States since late 2001, and has cost more than $6 per million BTUs over the past year.

Drywall is one of a growing number of building materials that startups are trying to make "greener," by reducing the energy used to make them or replacing materials with more sustainable ones.

They include Los Altos, Calif.-based Integrity Block, which makes building blocks from rammed earth, Carlstadt, N.J.-based Hycrete, which makes waterproof concrete, and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Serious Materials, which makes its own version of environmentally friendly drywall.

One way companies can claim greater environmental sustainability is by buying carbon offsets, or paying for projects around the world that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a certain amount – a method that some critics call greenwashing (see Carbon Offsets: To Define or Not to Define?).

CleanBoard is already buying carbon offsets to allow it to sell a "zero carbon footprint" drywall at prices close to those for premium drywall, MacGregor said. Once the company's solar-thermal drywall plant is up and running, the company will use that solar heat to do away with most of the company's greenhouse-gas emissions related to energy use, and buy offsets for the remainder, he said.

MacGregor expects production to be about 2 million square feet in 2010, 10 million square feet in 2011, and 100 million square-feet of drywall a year at top volume. He expects he'll be able to find a market for the material for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings, which make up a growing part of many builders' portfolios (see Green Building: Cheaper Than You Thought).

CleanBoard also improves its environmental profile by using 100-percent recycled gypsum from construction waste and the calcium sulfite that's a byproduct of coal-fired power plant smokestack scrubbers, MacGregor said.

Still, the fact that CleanBoard is using gypsum, a product that's originally mined in open pits, differentiates it from other "eco-friendly" drywall makers. Serious Materials, which raised $50 million in 2007, uses a low-heat chemical process to make its EcoRock drywall material out of non-gypsum sources using less than one-fifth the energy of the traditional stuff.

Kevin Surace, Serious Materials' CEO, noted in an email that using solar power to dry gypsum is an idea that's been around for decades, whereas his company has come up with a new means of making drywall from new materials.

"Industrial processes should be redesigned from scratch to simply use less energy, period, not just use solar to waste energy on very old material science," he said. Serious Materials' drywall also beats its gypsum counterpart on strength, mold resistance and other qualities outside of energy efficiency, he said.

Still, Marc Porat, chairman of Serious Materials and founder of another green building startup, CalStar Cement (see Here Comes the Green Brick), said he supports different ways to make more environmentally friendly building materials.

"I don't see competition as being other green companies," he said. "I see competition as being the energy challenge and climate change."

2010-05-31T14:06:00.001-07:00

FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2009

Rebate for home-grown New Jersey solar panels?

New Jersey residents interested in installing solar-energy panels on their rooftops--and those in-state companies that manufacture the panels--would both benefit from a new rebate plan under consideration by the state Board of Public Utilities.

Scott Fallon reports in today's Bergen Record that:

"The New Jersey Renewable Energy Manufacturing Incentive would give homeowners an additional 25 cents per watt on top of the current $1.75-per-watt rebate. That means a house with a modest 2-kilowatt system could see a $4,000 rebate check to offset the often costly installation."

Providing impetus to the BPU program is S-2739, legislation sponsored by Bob Smith, chairman of the state Senate's Environment Committee. The Assembly version of the bill is A-3980 .

A number of other state legislators also have been doing their part to encourage solar energy's growth.

Solar-energy legislation currently under consideration :

A-2859/S-1538 Concerns biomass, solar, and wind energy generation on farms.

A-2994 Authorizes municipalities to require solar energy elements as condition of site plan or subdivision approval.

A-3062/S-1303 Defines "inherently beneficial use" for purposes of zoning variance and specifically includes facilities and structures that supply electrical energy produced from wind, solar, or photovoltaic technologies.

A-3208/S-2429 Requires the incorporation of solar panels in design and construction of new public school facilities.

A-3218/S-1096 Creates Solar and Wind Energy Commission.

A-3238/S-1065 Permits electric public utilities, electric power suppliers and basic generation service providers to enter into certain agreements with building owners for use of solar energy systems for such buildings.

A-3347 /S-2218 Authorizes DOT, NJ Turnpike Authority, and South Jersey Transportation Authority to permit BPU-certified persons to install and maintain solar photovoltaic panels on noise barriers erected on roads and highways

A-3520 /S-2441 "The Solar Energy Advancement and Fair Competition Act."

A-3616/S-2499 Encourages purchase of NJ solar panels and wind turbines for State projects and State-funded projects

A-3701/S-1953 Requires all new State buildings to have solar or geothermal energy systems, where feasible.

A-3845/S-2569 Establishes "Solar Equipment Purchase and Installation Assistance Program" in NJ EDA.

Solar-energy bills signed into law earlier this year:

A-1558 which requires developers to offer solar energy systems in certain new home construction, and

A-2550 which permits location of certain wind and solar facilities in industrial zones.

Related posts:
Long Island's solar grants frying up; PA's coming

Whistling past the...solar farm?

Renewable energy looking for a jolt in New Jersey

The alternative energy industry is DOA...or is it?

Two NJ bills would help green-minded builders

Other recent posts:

NJ Sierra Club says: Stimulate this, not that

Environmental Events in NJ & PA

Is carbon capture the political key to climate bill?

Feds' $2.4B to 'stimulate' carbon capture projects

Week's top environmental news in New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, New York and beyond: May 11-15

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0 comments:

Buffalo House to Weather Rainstorms in Kansas

Written by Susan Kraemer

Published on June 9th, 2009

Comments (7)

in Design, Energy Efficiency, Energy Production, Exterior Finishes, Passive Systems, Water Use & Plumbing

U of Kansas grad students have just completed their chic Buffalo House at Springfield in Kansas City, designed with a very elegant approach to sustainability.

We are seeing more climate conscious design in architecture: In this case; the rain screen.

A skin over the house is designed to manage and harvest occasional heavy precipitation, to provide protection from premature decay from moisture intrusion.

I like the way the rain-screen is carried up over the roof and mounted flush with the photovoltaic solar panels on the roof for a sleek look while also protecting the building.

Like a skin over the building; this Cumuru wood cladding is designed to shed rain water separately from the structure of the building. Rain screens deter rainwater intrusion into walls – by shedding most of the rain and by incorporating storage to reuse the rainwater – which you can see below the doors here.

There’s 8 other sustainable features, as well.

» See also: Discounted Home Energy Audits in San Francisco Bay Area with 1BOG.org
» Get Green Building Elements by RSS or sign up by email.

Rather than attacking the symptoms of moisture intrusion, rain screens tackle the source-the forces that drive water into the building shell. By neutralizing these forces, rain screens can withstand extreme environments. They appear to be effective in any climate and handle any weather condition short of a disaster.

All rain screens include the following elements:

Vented or porous exterior cladding
Air cavity (a few inches of depth is sufficient)
Drainage layer on support wall
Rigid, water-resistant, airtight, support wall

Integral gutters and downspouts are hidden behind the rain-screen. These then carry rainwater for storage in underground tanks.

The home also features passive solar heating through large expanses of south facing glass. These windows are protected from the summer sun with fixed sun louvers made of steel and Cumaru wood.

So as not to trap too much heat, low South-facing operable windows work in tandem with skylight vents in the north-facing roof-top pull hot air out of the top of the building for a thermal chimney effect.

For maximizing filtered daylighting, a three-level steel frame with milky glass inside encloses the staircase for spatial separation but spreading daylight between the rooms of the house.

The sustainable features are:

1. Enough rooftop photovoltaic solar panels for a net zero electricity supply (90-100%) for an average home.
2. One on-site 1.2 KW Windspire wind turbine that could produce about 20% of the energy an average home (550 kWh a month) assuming wind speed of at least 12 miles-per-hour year round.
3. Geothermal heat exchange between the house and the below-ground 55 degree temperatures year round, providing a constant starting point for both heating and cooling.
4. Epoxy coated gyp-crete floors for interior thermal mass to prolong passive heating and cooling
5. Passive solar design: low South-facing windows with sunlight access to thermal mass in the floor.
6. Heat-chimney effect created with roof ventilation in North skylights for expelling hot air
7. The framing wood was recycled from an ammunition plant.
8. Recycled materials in interior finishes such as the composite recycled paper countertops.

and of course

9. The rainwater reclamation using a wooden slat skin to keep water off the building and stored in underground tanks. Cumaru is one of the hardest woods on the planet and can be harvested sustainably.

But it comes from South America, so there is quite a carbon footprint getting it to Kansas City.

Subtracting from the Volume by Adding Program...

2010-03-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

2010-02-02T19:59:00.000-08:00

Inhabit

SMIT’s GROW: Solar and Wind Photovoltaic ‘Leaves’

by Emily Pilloton, 03/01/08

Our friends at Ecolect, the go-to sustainable design and materials community, have launched a monthly spotlight on sustainable design called Limelight – and the first feature is tough act to follow. Teresita Cochran’s sustainable design group, SMIT (Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology) has a compelling new project called GROW that’s an innovative and aesthetically arresting solar and wind power solution. Combining the best of green tech and ecology, GROW draws inspiration from ivy growing on the side of a building – resulting in a hybrid energy delivery device of flexible, ivy-like fluttering solar leaves that provide power via both sun and wind.

After a serendipitous collaboration with her brother, Samuel Cochran, during his undergraduate studies at Pratt and her graduate studies at ITP/NYU, Teresita began working on Samuel’s Industrial Design thesis project, GROW, by cutting leaf-shaped solar panels. What eventually followed was GROW as SMIT’s first product offering, which now exists in 2 versions, GROW.1 (currently at the Museum of Modern Art until May 12th, 2008 in the exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind), and GROW.2, a residential application built on top of a stainless steel mesh system, allowing ivy and other crawlers to grow with it.

Using a series of flexible solar cells as leaves, GROW takes the shape of ivy growing on a building- the leaves are solar cells while the wind that causes them to flutter is harvested as viable energy using a series of piezoelectric generators on the underside of each leaf. SMIT hopes that the modular system will be readily available in stores such as the MoMA store or Design Within Reach in the coming 1-2 years, in addition to other retail methods allowing consumers to access the technology via multiple channels. GROW also integrates an energy monitoring system called WATTg for GROW’s users to visualize their energy consumption and generation. The leaves are made of 100% recyclable polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities.

We love the simplicity of the idea, the natural inspiration, and the idea of bite-sized solar panels fluttering in the wind on the side of a house. Gorgeous and green equals a great idea!

Ecolect will give one sustainable project the Limelight every month. To be considered for upcoming months, email limelight [at] ecolect [dot] net with an overview of how your sustainable project is making an impact.

+ Teresita Cochran interview on Ecolect
+ SMIT

Interface Studio: 100K House

2010-02-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

100K House

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LOCATION : Philadelphia, PA / STATUS : Construction complete / PROGRAM : urban infill houses / LEED for Homes Platinum

In collaboration with Postgreen, ISA is developing a production housing line that is focused on the modest, green, urban infill market. The homes range in size from 800-1400 SF and rely on both standard features and user customization. The first two houses have been built and we expect quite a few more to roll-out in the next 18 months. House #3 is being built to the German Passivhaus standard.

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Passive House

2010-01-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

Loading Dock 5 uses passive house concepts for a few of their housing projects. They are 10-15% more for cost of construction, but can almost eliminate cost of heating/cooling

Snug and Tight

Passive houses are airtight buildings that use heat from appliances and even the occupants' bodies for warmth. They have thick insulation, are oriented to maximize winter sun and use a heat exchanger to warm outside air that circulates throughout. The result is a house that needs little or no extra energy for heating, even in very cold climates. While they are increasingly popular in Germany and Scandinavia, passive houses have yet to make inroads in the United States. Here is one approach.

Loading Dock 5/ CMU Construction

2010-01-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

Passive House detail at 174 Grand St

by sam on January 7, 2010

What looks a bit like a racing stripe running horizontally around the top of the building is actually not decorative; instead it addresses a problem that we, and i guess many others, completely overlooked: a C.M.U. parapet wall is a massive thermal bridge!

What normally happens: The structure of the building is constructed of concrete, and the walls and roof are insulated on the exterior. This is absolutely a good thing, as exterior insulation is far superior to cavity insulation of the interior stud walls. What has been historically overlooked, however, is the fact that by not wrapping insulation all around the 42″ high parapet (NYC building code) we create a huge cooling rip for the building. As you can see in this Therm model (heat transfer modeling software), the upper corner is much cooler than the other interior surfaces and so condensation is more likely to occur here (grey: concrete, yellow: EPS, blue: XPS).

One way to solve this problem is to use a different concrete-based material which has a similar fire rating to CMU but is a much better thermal insulator: A.A.C or Autoclave Aerated Concrete! AAC has an R-value of up to 1.25 per inch, compared to 0.07 (hr*ft2*F / BTU*in). This is quite easy to see in the different isotherms:

Here’s a last close-up shot how CMU and AAC come together. The metal strip you see in the photo is the flashing detail which will terminate the roof membrane later…

Compressed Earth Blocks (CEBs)

2010-01-19T22:23:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about how it would be possible to incorporate CEBs or mud bricks into the project both from a design standpoint and from a feasibility standpoint (will it be up to code in the area). It makes a lot of sense from a cost standpoint (although may be costly from a labor standpoint) and its definitely green.

The company I worked with in Mexico (www.echale.com.mx) built a business around them, but the question is whether any rendition of them make sense or can work here in the states outside of the SW. I came across this video from the show Renovation Nation for a project in Falls Church, VA.

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/renovation-nation-mud-bricks.html

Also, check out the company called sustainabledesign.com. They seem to be keen to the earth block concept and have done projects implementing them. Admittedly, they don't do urban infill, but nevertheless. http://www.sustainabledesign.com/portfolio/

Shigeru Ban's Naked House

2010-01-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

NAKED HOUSE - Saitama, Japan, 2000



Having met the client only once, I was again considering what to do about the project of this house, when the client sent me a facsimile making precise requests. What he wanted was described as a house that “provides the least privacy so that the family members are not secluded from one another, a house that gives everyone the freedom to have individual activities in a shared atmosphere, in the middle of a unified family”. After reading his fax, I knew that I should take up this challenge. The site of the house sits by a river and is surrounded by fields with greenhouses here and there. The external walls made of two sheets of corrugated fiber-reinforced plastics and the inner walls made of a nylon fabric are both mounted on wooden stud frames and sit in parallel. In between are attached clear plastic bags, carefully stuffed with strings of foamed polyethylene for insulation purpose. Through these bags a soft diffused light fills in the interior of the house. The house consists of one unique large space of two-story high in which four personal rooms on casters can be moved freely. To reduce weight and optimize mobility, these rooms are not very large and hold a minimum of belongings and fittings. They can be moved accordingly to the needs of their use. Placed against the walls of the house, in front of the heating or air-conditioning units, warm air or a cooling breeze can flow into it. They can also be put side by side and create a larger room, when their sliding doors are removed. They can be taken outside, on the terrace, for the full use of the space inside. They can also work as a supplementary floor for the children to play on top. This house is, indeed, a result of my vision of enjoyable and flexible living, which evolved from the client’s own vision toward a living and a family life.

Las Palmas Parasite

2010-01-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

the walls are made of a cheap laminated recycled wood product.

Dutch Parasite

It's a cool little green house –

– but it's also a "parasite" built "to exploit scarce urban space in an innovative manner."
This and other parasites use "unusual urban situations" to "create new forms of habitation by developing lightweight, flexible, low-cost structures that could be installed in left-over spaces where services and access already exist or are near at hand. The present prototype [above] is connected to the water and electrical supply of the Las Palmas building [in Rotterdam]. The form of the structure was determined by the lines of access and services in the 'host' building, by the existing structural parameters and the architects’ aim to achieve a sculptural appearance."
Meanwhile, you can also build such structures in New York: "All it takes is a building permit."

2010-01-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

A house by MOS. A simple example of a house composed of layers of interior and exterior space. http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/4952/floating-cottage-by-mos.html

2010-01-13T23:25:00.000-08:00

This is a little long but informative..

Radiant Heating

Radiant heating systems involve supplying heat directly to the floor or to panels in the wall or ceiling of a house. The systems depend largely on radiant heat transfer: the delivery of heat directly from the hot surface to the people and objects in the room via the radiation of heat, which is also called infrared radiation. Radiant heating is the effect you feel when you can feel the warmth of a hot stovetop element from across the room. When radiant heating is located in the floor, it is often called radiant floor heating or simply floor heating.....

Brooklyn Health House - 93 Nevins St.

2010-01-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

93 Nevins St. is the location of 3 townhomes that will be certified by the American Lung Association Health House Program. The building is a former laundry facility that was burned out in 1980. The facade still exists, but the interior was rebuilt in its entirety. The home features solar panels, radiant floor heating (need to learn more about that) and recycled/harvested materials. To my knowledge, this is one of the few projects with solar panels in or around the city.

The blog post from brownstoner is dated - I think the project is done now.

October 9, 2006

OHNY Report: Double Your Eco-Friendly Pleasure

We stopped by the OHNY event at 453 Pacific Street to check out what will be upon completion the first buildings in New York City to be certified by the American Lung Association's Health House program. Until a fire gutted it on New Year's Eve in 1980, the building was home to laundry business. Going forward, the facade will be preserved while two new 3-bedroom townhouses--one with an entrance on Nevins and one with an entrance on Pacific--are created. Architect Tony Daniels, working with GreenStreet Construction, will be using mucho recycled, salvaged and sustainably harvested materials in the project. Solar panels on the roof and efficient radiant floor heating will also be employed. A publication called Natural Home Magazine will be tracking the building's progress over the upcoming months. Unfortunately, it seems to be one of those mags that doesn't like to put its content on the web, so maybe we'll have to follow it ourselves.
OHNY This Weekend: Lots To Do in Brooklyn! [Brownstoner] GMAP
93 Nevids and 453 Pacific [R&E Brooklyn]

MASSING TYPES

2010-01-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

516 OCEAN AVE, JERSEY CITY

2010-01-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

2010-01-11T18:42:00.000-08:00

Creative Commons

Craving not just a home but a proper piece of architecture, a handful of design- and business-savvy Dutch families banded together, hired an architect, and set about forming the community that would net them the houses of their dreams.

By:Jane Szita
Photos by:Dean Kaufman

Project Name:Villa van Vijven
Architects:Next Architects
Location:Almere, the Netherlands

Published in:Dec/Jan 10

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With the idea of communal living all too prone to conjure visions of student squalor or hippy homeliness, Villa van Vijven comes as a refreshing surprise. The strikingly sculptural bright orange building, reclining in the flat Dutch landscape, accommodates five families under a single, stylish roof. And there’s not a whiff of carob in the air.

Step into any one of its five apartments and you are convinced that you've entered an independent piece of architecture entirely. Though they vary in size (the largest is 3,200 square feet), each unit has a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape and its own distinctive layout, decor, and, of course, inhabitants. The group ranges from a business manager to a sports coach to an art historian. “We don’t necessarily see each other every day,” says Paula van Dijk (the art historian). “Often, we just say hello when leaving or coming home again.” Cees Noordhoek, a sales manager who lives here with his wife, Jacquelien, and three kids, adds: “It just doesn’t really feel like communal living.”

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Marianne Schram reads in her bedroom while her husband, Koos Sweringa, looks in from the stairs below.

Yet Villa van Vijven is a truly collective and collaborative project, financed and commissioned by five families (19 people in total) who wanted to build a home that they could otherwise never afford: an architecturally high-impact retreat set in extensive gardens, with great views of the surrounding landscape and nearby lake. Residents Johan Bouwmeester and Marlene Blokhuis got the ball rolling when they found the large plot to the southwest of the new and rapidly growing city of Almere, an hour from Amsterdam. The appeal of the relatively rural setting, just 10 minutes from the center of the city, was manifest, and the couple began inviting design-minded acquaintances to join in on the project.

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Nineteen-year-old Yvette Sweringa arrives at the villa by bike.

The next step was to find the right architect, one able to embrace the kind of co-creation process that the group needed to accommodate their five different dream homes under one roof. “Our first architect bullied us,” Noordhoek recalls. “But then someone told us about this promising young office, Next Architects. So we did two workshops with them and found that they were able to focus our rambling thoughts. That was enough to convince us.”

With the architect on board, the business of obtaining financing, permits, and other essential administration was handled, Noordhoek says, “in the same way we organized all details—by mandate. For every part of the process we appointed two managers, who did the field research, asked for competitive bids from suppliers, and had the power to act on behalf of the group. The group as a whole was presented with a detailed proposal for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote. We felt that discussions and emotions shouldn’t be allowed to run loose. We knew that only when we acted like professional managers would it be possible to build the house on schedule and within budget.”

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Paula van Dijk (left) poses with her sister, Vera.

The same tough principles were applied to the design process. “Difficulties mainly arose when individual preferences collided with another person’s interests,” Noordhoek says. “But in every case of conflicting preferences, we simply let the architect make the decision. Usually, that worked.”

“It was very different from having one client,” says architect Michel Schreinemachers of Next Architects. “With a group, you have another dynamic entirely.

Yet it worked quite nicely.” At many steps along the way Schreinemachers would propose several options, which the group would discuss and then return with feedback. The final decision, though, was always the architect’s. “If I’d suggested the eventual building at the outset, they would have walked away,” he adds. “They wanted something very industrial, or thought they did. But they always wanted something architecturally interesting, a landmark building, and this design grew out of our discussions.”

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Bob Krone and Paula van Dijk go for a walk while Lucas and Jillis Noordhoek lounge on the grass. Their parents, Jacquelien and Cees Noordhoek, chat farther to the right.

Schreinemachers visualized the space as a block of rectangles that he rotated to face different directions, adding and subtracting volumes to reflect the residents’ wishes. The result is a Tetris-like layering of interlocking shapes, each with its own character and its own signifying color as visualized in the plans. “When Michel finished his drawings, everyone had to choose the unit they wanted—it was the moment of truth!” Noordhoek says. “And each of the five groups went for a different one, which shows how well the architect interpreted our wishes.”

Personal wishes could often be indulged, given that the truly communal areas of the project are just the large garden (each family also has a small private garden as well) and what Schreinemachers calls “the public square” onto which all the front doors open: a glowing orange space carved out underneath the building, where the residents tend to leave their bicycles and bump into each other on the way in or out. This feature, van Dijk says, “gives the building a really playful quality, as does its great openness to the garden.” Schreinemachers reports that he achieved it “by raising the living room up to the second floor. You can walk straight into the garden from the living rooms, over the terrace.”

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Van Dijk's framed pictures stacked on the floor form an impromptu point of visual interest.

Schreinmachers chose orange for the exterior to reference the traditional orange-tiled rooftops of Dutch country buildings. Echoing the splashy chromatics of the outside, the residents quickly set about brightly painting their own interiors. In Paula van Dijk and Bob Krone’s minimal white space, for example, there’s a vivid splash of yellow, while Koos Sweringa, seeking a bit of formal instruction, attended a color course that inspired a whole palette of shades.

Color aside, the actual interior design was left to the residents themselves—to keep costs down they moved into bare spaces. Undaunted by empty expanses of naked walls and flooring, each family created an interior that satisfies their individual desires and shows a strong sense of ownership. Noordhoek (who took the green unit) sought ample floor space for his large family, and thus his unit is a generous 3,200 square feet. Bob Krone and Paula van Dijk (who took the red apartment) wanted “big, open spaces with long walls for hanging paintings and as few doors as possible.” Koos Sweringa and Marianne Schram (whose two college-age daughters usually stay at the yellow apartment with them on weekends) wanted a “live-in” kitchen that resides in the place of honor that the other families have assigned to the living room. They also have a capsule kitchen next to their bedroom on the second floor, plus a view of the historic tower of Naarden from the same room.

Though the architecture favors idiosyncrasy over uniformity, when it comes to each other, the residents are all quick to note that pragmatism is what they value most. They are unanimously keen to emphasize that they are best neighbors, not best friends. Thus, they maintain a fund for the upkeep of the house and are working on the idea of a shared amphitheater with a fireplace for the garden. But house meetings are kept to a minimum—far fewer than the twice-monthly gatherings demanded by the five-year development process. “The biggest advantage of living together is that we can use each other’s expertise,” Krone says. “Another advantage is that when you’re on vacation, there’s someone to pick up the mail, water the plants, and feed the pets.”

Even while enjoying all these advantages, “I think we all still wonder what on earth it was that made us go for this unusual design,” Noordhoek says, as he strolls through the garden. “But it just stands out in every respect,” he adds, turning to look at the villa. “It surprises me every day that we dared to do it. It really is the building of our dreams.”

ECO-BROOKLYN

2010-01-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

Brooklyn construction firm specializing in green renovation of brownstones. They have a showhouse in Carroll Gardens you can visit. They do dumpster-diving for reclaimed materials which sounds amazing and horrifying at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_OhUH7oJdk

http://ecobrooklyn.com/show-house/

HIVE MODULAR

2010-01-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

Hive Modular recently unveiled a brand new pre-fabulous house chock full of eco-friendly materials and lots of high-tech home system controls. Situated in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota, the new X-Line 003 is a 4 bedroom, 3 bath home that boasts clean lines and a sleek interior. There are a lot of prefab companies out there serving up brilliant concepts, but not all of them have actually built a house. Hive Modular has — quite a few actually — and they’ve got the project gallery to show for it.
The exterior of the new X-line 003 is constructed from fiber cement, steel, and locally-harvested cedar, which keeps things eco-friendly and super low-maintenance. One really interesting feature of the landscaping is their choice of material to build a retaining wall on the side of the house. Instead of using concrete, the owners chose to go with gabion baskets, which are the big metal baskets that hold rocks typically used for large retaining walls on the sides of highways. This clever idea is not only more durable than concrete but has a lower embodied energy. Could it also be more economical?
On the inside, you’ll find contemporary and sleek wood finishes. The envy-worthy bright red kitchen is actually Ikea, and the custom tables in the kitchen are from Eastvold Custom Woodworks. There’s lots of natural light facilitated by Low-E argon filled windows and doors. The entire house’s lighting system and thermostat are controllable via an iPhone App, which is exactly what all the cool college kids featured in their prefab designs for this year’s Solar Decathlon.

DWELL VIDEOS

2010-01-03T12:45:00.000-08:00

Dwell.com has an amazing video section featuring many green design strategies that are presented simplistically but fun and educational to watch. Here are a couple I thought were relevant:

Building Green in Harlem: Building The Green Dream Team
In this video series, Dwell follows a New York couple with a passion for building green through the challenges—and triumphs—of renovation, from finding the design-build team to finalizing the design.

The Bathroom Reinvented: Hyphae
Ecologist Brent Bucknum, principal of Hyphae Design Lab in Oakland, California, shares the ABC's of re-routing a home's waste water (greywater) to sustainably irrigate gardens and other green spaces. He takes us from his live/work space in Oakland to several residential sites around Berkeley that feature greywater systems in various stages of completion.

IJsselstein Housing Project

2010-01-02T00:03:00.001-08:00

Quick article on a project in Holland exuding the same concepts for this project. Interesting usage and placement of solar panels.

Run by the Sun

In Holland, being green is not a choice, it's a governmentally enforced obligation. Architects Han van Zweiten and Gregory Kiss's project makes a case for obeying the law.

By: Amara Holstein

Project Name: IJsselstein Housing Project
Architects: Kiss + Cathcart, Han van Zwieten Architecten

Published in: April/May 04

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In the center of Holland, just a short drive from Amsterdam, sits the small town of IJsselstein. Railway tracks divide centuries-old stone edifices like the local castle, monastery, and moat from spiffy row houses and apartments recently constructed to assuage the ever-mounting need for housing in this high-density country. Far from feeling like a fractured set of subdivisions outside the urban area, the city is a well-planned and integrated whole, with no detail left to a developer’s whims. As Dutch architect Han van Zwieten says, “In our new towns, the parking places, the parks, the banks, the trees—all of this is designed. In Holland, it looks like every piece of grass is designed.”

As part of this careful crafting of even the most minute of architectural details, sustainable concerns are taken into consideration. “General building practices in the Netherlands are well in advance of our own,” explains American architect Gregory Kiss of New York–based firm Kiss + Cathcart, who collaborated with van Zwieten on this housing project in IJsselstein. “The baseline requires much more efficient buildings than we are used to, on all levels, from the choice of materials to the amount of insulation in the building envelope to the durability of the building system.” In fact, going green is the law; the government requires a certain level of energy efficiency in all new construction.

So when van Zwieten and Kiss approached their commission to create a relatively low-cost 14-unit housing development in IJsselstein, the question wasn’t whether to incorporate sustainable elements, it was how. Both architects have a mission to build “solar energy projects in an elegant and charming way,” as van Zwieten puts it, so the decision to use photovoltaic panels in the IJsselstein project made perfect sense.

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The solarium was designed “to highlight the solar elements of these buildings as an articulated object,” explains Kiss of the protruding glass rooms.

An entirely clean source of energy, and a renewable resource, solar panels are always a nice choice, but are often prohibitively expensive for budget-conscious projects. Traditional crystalline solar panels cost about $50 a square foot—and are aesthetically reminiscent of NASA satellites, which works for some tastes but not for all. Kiss, however, has been working in the U.S. with thin film solar panels, a technology not yet readily available in the Netherlands.

Unlike crystalline panels, which are made with silicon wafers produced by the price-gouging tech industry, thin film panels are made by depositing a layer of semiconductor onto glass or a flexible polymer. A third of the price per square foot of crystalline panels, the black or dark purplish thin film panels “look more sophisticated and sexy,” says van Zwieten. The only downside of thin film, the same technology that fuels your trusty solar-powered calculator and digital watch, is that it’s about half as efficient as crystalline panels. Since thin film is so cheap, the easy solution is to use more panels to achieve the same energy output.

The result for the IJsselstein project is an attractive multilevel solarium on each unit that’s completely encased in photovoltaic panels—with the exception of a few windows that open to the outside—and provides over 30 percent of the total energy needs of each house. The glass cladding on the houses also helps the interior spaces feel larger than their 1,400 square feet; as Kiss explains, “The main living spaces were designed to be as open as possible, and we brought light from the solarium down the stairs.” Helga Dissel, a resident of one of the houses, feels that this goal was met in the design: “I like the house—it’s spacious.”

All in all, the project reflects the Dutch emphasis on conservation of space and resources—as well as innovative architecture. “In the United States, we have a culture that celebrates size and consumption for their own sakes—and on some level, the more resources we use, the more successful we feel. The lifestyle in Holland is a great counterpoint,” says Kiss. “As tight and as dense as it is, there’s a rich level of amenities and experience: You have your own system of bike paths, and the train and the shops are close by. It’s a very satisfying alternative to the way [Americans] live.”

Bill Haney of Blu Homes part 2

2010-01-01T23:47:00.000-08:00

Bill Haney of Blu Homes

2010-01-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

Santa Monica Eco Townhomes

2010-01-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

This project was designed by Jesse Bornstein and it embodies most of the principles that I want to focus on for this project (energy efficient, sustainable materials, fwd-thinking design, context) except for the affordability aspect.

Green on 19: Santa Monica’s First Multi-Family Eco Townhomes

by Danielle Rago, 07/21/09

Santa Monica-based architecture firm Jesse Bornstein Architecture, known for their environmentally conscious custom single-family residential homes, recently completed a sustainably designed and built 5-unit townhouse project aptly named “Green on 19 Townhomes” located in Santa Monica, California. Occupying a typical infill site within the city’s semi-urban grid, the project is “designed to support the modern lifestyles of its occupants, while supporting our global community’s need for energy efficiency,” principal architect Jesse Bornstein told Inhabitat.

Using green technology to enhance as well as shape the overall design of the units, the townhomes are composed of a series of rectilinear forms topped with semi-transparent bi-facial photovoltaic solar canopies (meaning the panels are able to generate power from both sides simultaneously) that provide shade as well as generates over 3,000 kwh electricity per year for each unit.

The townhomes also boast other green technologies and materials such as an ethanol burning fireplace in the center of each interior that effectively warms each unit’s entire two-story primary volume, FSC-Certified bamboo for cabinetry and flooring, a lighting system made up of fluorescents and LEDs, low-flow plumbing equipment and fixtures, HVAC equipment that exceeds 90% efficiency and uses non-toxic refrigerant, as well as the use of rainwater for irrigation and urban runoff mitigation and 100% drought tolerant landscaping and drip irrigation.

While these sustainable technologies and materials are the most overtly green design practices Bornstein employs, he also uses natural light and ventilation to penetrate through interior spaces, creating improved living spaces that successfully integrating the built and natural environments.

Bridging the gap between green and modern design, these custom-made urban dwellings are as environmentally responsible as they are visually pleasing.

+ Jesse Bornstein Architecture

Via Jesse Bornstein Architecture

Spring Creek Houses

2010-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

This is a project that was developed by a consortium of affordable housing entities (community development corporations, construction companies, etc.). They completely prefab and modular and it was in East New York. I have my own personal reservations against projects are essentially the modern spin on public housing. I'll spare my ramblings against low income exclusively and in favor of mixed income. The company that constructed the homes was Capsys Corporation. They seem like one of the more solid modular construction companies in the nyc area. (www.capsyscorp.com)

Low-Income? You’re Kidding!

Two architects offer far more than lip service to affordable housing.

7 Comments | Add Yours

By Justin Davidson
Published Feb 22, 2009

The Nehemiah Spring Creek Homes, in East New York.

(Photo: Frank Ouedeman/Courtesy of Alexander Gorlin Architects)

With developers hibernating and sites lying fallow, New York is taking a badly needed break from construction. The pause comes with a lot of pain, but there is an upside to the downturn. Architects who had been outdoing each other in rococo excess finally have time to ponder “Now what?” and “Why?” They might turn for advice to the few who asked themselves those valuable, if unremunerative, questions during the fat years—architects like Alexander Gorlin, who spent years as a purveyor of modern châteaux before feeling ready to design residences for buyers of modest means.

Gorlin’s scruples resulted in the Nehemiah Spring Creek Homes, an enclave of 117 townhouses on a patch of landfill hard by Jamaica Bay. The neighborhood, developed by a consortium of local churches and subsidized by the city, still has the feel of a frontier settlement, deracinated and incomplete. But at prices starting at $158,000 for 1,600 square feet, the houses are filling and life is pleasingly mussing the design’s sharp creases. Eventually, the houses faced in glossy, varicolored panels and fronted by steel stoops will read as a 21st-century gloss on the brownstone. Spring Creek can grow into a thoroughly urban place.

Gorlin designed each story as a steel-bound box manufactured by Capsys on one of the borough’s last assembly lines. In a vast former foundry at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, workers weld together a frame for the floor, then shunt it to another station, where a concrete slab is poured. Other crews erect the skeleton, fill in the walls, hang cabinets, and paint until someone’s future home slides along a set of tracks, ready for the truck trip to East New York. (Because it stays off interstate highways, each unit can be four feet wider than a prefab imported from out of town.) When it arrives, this chunk of ready-for-living space is hoisted onto a stack of others, joined by stairways, and finished with a site-built façade.

Gorlin’s houses recapitulate the old modern values of efficiency, simplicity, and industrial uniformity, but you can also sense the architect’s straining for an extra smidgeon of variety and a few fillips. A chorus line of outdoor spiral staircases brings gratuitous grace to the rear. A stretch of three-story units has a musical gesture embedded in the glossy façade: an oompah alternation of flat front and protruding bay, overlaid with the windows’ repeating rhythm of one pane, then three. Working with the sparest of budgets, Gorlin has produced a work of minimalist rigor tempered by a humane touch.

Whereas he had the blank canvas of virgin turf, Susan T. Rodriguez of Polshek Partnership had to insert an eleven-story residence for the poor and the formerly homeless into the intricate fabric of downtown Brooklyn. The $45 million Schermerhorn House—which was developed by the nonprofit organizations Common Ground Community and the Actors Fund, and paid for partly by the city—could have become another plain brick warehouse for the indigent. Instead, Rodriguez has adorned the façade with panels of translucent channel glass, an extravagance justified by a frightful engineering problem. The building, cantilevered invisibly over the subway tunnels, is supported by massive steel trusswork. Glass weighs less than brick, and a lighter façade saved money on structural steel. Sometimes, thrift yields unexpected luxury.

The resourcefulness continues inside. Each modest but light-filled room boasts a miniature dining table that stows away against a built-in armoire. There are private offices where residents can confer with on-site counselors, a grassy terrace where they can loll, and even a black-box theater—a remarkable array of amenities shoehorned into a limited number of square feet. The design doesn’t bedazzle the eye, but it achieves the nobler goal of making hard lives a little easier.

Both these versions of affordable housing reject the utopian visions that once fueled modernists’ social zeal and scarred our cities with towers for the poor. Instead, in their quiet, pragmatic way, they prove what the marriage of philanthropy and government can achieve and demonstrate that pinched budgets need not translate into poverty of imagination.

Nehemiah Spring Creek Homes
Alexander Gorlin. Brooklyn.

Schermerhorn House
Susan T. Rodriguez. Brooklyn.

Straw Bale Walls

2010-01-01T20:49:00.000-08:00

The link below shows a home outside of Tahoe that was insulated with straw bale, which apparently retains energy very well, yet is extremely sustainable. After a quick google, it seems as if this is used primarily in the west and southwest and that there may be issues with code. Also, it seems as if there may be issues in keeping it from rotting. Regardless, its interesting to check out the quick clip.

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/worlds-greenest-homes-solar-dream-home.html

Project Frog Pt. 2

2009-12-29T22:28:00.001-08:00

Already posted on Project Frog, but just read that they received funding. Their niche is educational buildings. Interesting how they tier their product offerings.

Project Frog raises $8M for cheap, green modular buildings

November 25, 2008 | Chris Morrison | Comments |

To some, the idea of buildings that can be delivered by trucks conjures up visions of depressing rural trailer parks. But Project Frog’s designs offer a modern variation on the prefabricated building theme, with cheap modular buildings that are also energy efficient.

Project Frog’s buildings are making inroads in education and child care. Because they are well lit and comfortable, but snap together into well-defined floorplans, they work well for classrooms and play areas.

The company’s building units also offer variable energy options. Those who need the bare minimum will get a building that is simply low-energy, but extra options like ground-source heat pumps and solar paneling can push the buildings to be energy neutral, or even net producers.

This $8 million round comes in a bit short of the $8.6 million the company was hoping for when it raised the first $4 million tranche from RockPort Capital Partners. Other investors weren’t disclosed. Project Frog is based in San Francisco, Calif.

Post Green's Passive House

2009-12-28T22:52:00.001-08:00

Two Passive House Row Homes in Philly

Written by Preston Koerner | December 15, 2009 | read more: Energy Efficiency, Modern architecture, Residential, Townhouse

If you're in the area, the next project by Postgreen, the development company behind the award-winning 100k House, will be open for tours on Thursday, December 17. Dubbed The Passive Project, the tour will include two newly constructed row houses built to a rigorous and trendy German Passiv Haus standard. When certified, these homes -- located at 2318-2320 Amber Street -- should be the first to do so in the Philadelphia.

Talking about the M&M House shown in these images (Postgreen named one home after future owners Mario and Mel), Lloyd Alter of Treehugger recently commented: "[the M&M House] demonstrates that one really can mix simple, economical materials and good design with incredible energy efficiency."

Indeed, these homes were designed and built to be extremely energy efficient. The envelope is air tight and an energy recovery ventilator refreshes the interior air. The homes practically run without the need of extra mechanical systems, although there's a 2.04 kW solar array and solar thermal system that should lower utility bills to zero.

The Passive Project also includes dual-flush toilets, low-flow fixtures, a rainwater cistern, high efficiency appliances, Ecotop counters, custom bamboo kitchen cabinetry, finished OSB floors and stair treads, birch plywood detailing, and raised garden boxes in the backyard.

[+] Tour the Passive Project on Thursday, December 17, 2009.

Photo credits: 100k House.

Clayton Homes - IHouse

2009-12-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

Clayton is owned by Warren Buffett and has been the largest manufacturer since like 1934.

Clayton Homes Modern Green i-house

Written by Preston Koerner | January 8, 2009 | read more: Affordable, Modern architecture, Prefab, Residential, Single-family

5/3/09 update: Clayton Homes launched the i-house!

When a friend first shot me a link to an article about this i-house, I knew we had to feature it. This is a new, modern, green home designed and soon-to-be offered by Clayton Homes, the largest manufacturer of manufactured housing in the U.S. Clayton Homes started in 1934, smack dab in the tough years of the Great Depression, and since that time, they've sold ~1.5 million homes. If everything goes as planned with the i-house, Clayton Homes would like to be selling 2000 i-houses per year within 18 months of launching sales in May or so of this year.

The i-house gets its name from its footprint. The core portion of the home is 992 square feet with bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. The core is then dotted by an extended flex room and bathroom quarters, which also features an exciting rooftop deck. The configuration of the core and flex room forms an "i," but the flex portion of the home can be placed in other locations in proximity to the main part of the house, too.

Rumor has it that i-house will be sold for +/- $100,000, depending on the purchase of the flex room, but Clayton Homes is doing research still on how to price it.

The butterfly roof was designed for a rainwater catchment system, as well as to carry the optional $8,000 solar pv system (depending on the orientation of house). Amenities include IKEA fixtures, dual-flush toilets, bamboo flooring, recycled content decking material, Japanese-style climate control in each room, and low E efficient windows. Plus, with Clayton Homes’ manufacturing prowess, they’ve found that construction waste is kept to a couple garbage cans or less per home.

[=] Virtual Tour i-house

Another home design we’ve featured previously, the GreenMobile®, has received widespread attention, but according to our last followup with the designer, they’re still trying to get the prototype into production. So, from this vantage point, building and selling green, affordable manufactured housing is more difficult than it seems, and Clayton Homes’ i-House endeavor is good industry news. We can’t wait to step inside one ...

The Modern Modular

2009-12-28T13:41:00.000-08:00

A project by Resolution 4 Architecture, based in NYC and they did the Dwell House in NC that was developed by Wiedler. A lot of good language on their site and I would be interested in seeing the current progress with this project. "As labor costs continue to rise in America, it is becoming increasingly difficult to afford the high cost of building a quality custom home. By leveraging existing construction methodologies of prefabrication, we are designing custom modern homes based on a system of Modules of Use." (www.re4a.com).

Slice House (http://www.studio-st.com/project_slice.asp)

2009-12-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

Sustainable, affordable housing in Atlanta, GA by Studio ST. Need to find out more information about the actual project.

Libeskind Villa (http://libeskind-villa.com)

2009-12-27T23:20:00.000-08:00

Daniel Libeskind-designed villa (German) that is constructed of recycled materials and zinc. Very expensive, however.

Post Green Homes (www.postgreenhomes.com)

2009-12-26T22:35:00.000-08:00

Out of Philly. They did the $100k home (www.100khouse.com). They seem to have the same philosophical underpinnings that I am seeking given that they are going for the affordable subset and seeking to be at the cutting edge of sustainability and energy efficiency. Unlike many MANY of the other companies that have been highlighted so far, they are (a) on the east coast and (b) actually focused on urban infill projects.

Check this link for the actual spec on the 100k project. I think this is a good prototype to learn more about. I'm curious as to (a) what extent the design of the home captured neighborhood context, (b) what the envelope was made of, and (c) the specifics of their finishes (appliances, etc.). Pay special attention to the "Underlying Concept..." section on the bottom.

Jeriko House (www.jerikohouse.com)

2009-12-26T21:42:00.000-08:00

Louisiana based prefab company with aluminum interlocking type of construction technology. "Kit of parts" prefabrication they describe is like the computer. For the luxury subset. There's good verbiage to borrow on their website.

01 Sep 08

Prefab Homes // Jeriko House LLC

With figures for sales of existing homes declining for the sixth straight month and prices continuing to drop, so called ‘bubbles’ are bursting across the nation. Home buyers are finally in a position to shop for their dream house. With their new found power, these home buyers are taking their time and evaluating a wider range of options than they have had in years. Combine this with eager to please developers erecting more innovative and appealing new homes and you’ve got a situation primed for true advances in the housing market.

One of the most dramatic new entrants to the market is Jeriko House, a unique combination of top-flight construction and high-end design made possible by cutting edge technology and innovative engineering. The heart behind Jeriko House is Shawn Burst, a successful Louisiana businessman who’s vision for a better way to build and a better way to live created and guides Jeriko House. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the focus on new concept in housing has never been greater.

Mr. Burst expects a tremendous response from not only buyers, but also market watcher in the real estate and construction sectors. “I’ve found that keeping your eye on what’s possible is the key to finding solutions and making them available when their needed most. Home buyers know all too well what’s been out there for them to choose from for the past fifty years. The Jeriko House is the advance notice of a revolutionary approach that will set the pace for residential design for the next fifty years to come” he says.

Using advanced aerospace aluminum, stainless steel, and a patented interlocking system that maximizes modern engineering and construction methods, the Jeriko House combines super-strong materials and rigid construction methods with unparalleled design flexibility. Construction is completed in a matter of weeks, rather than the months it takes to build a traditional “stick built” house. But make no mistake – this is not the prefab house of past attempts that you may be familiar with. Due to the international design and engineering team, Jeriko House out looks, out feels, and out performs any home here to for, prefab or otherwise.

Burst feels that home buyers are taking their time in the current market because they are tired of repeatedly seeing the same house. “The Jeriko House will reach out to those who want this most important purchase of their lives to be the home they’ve dreamed of living in. The Jeriko house doesn’t look like any house you’ve ever seen. It isn’t build like any house you’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t feel like any house you’ve ever been in.” he says that, in a sense, the Jeriko House is “created” rather than built. “The Jeriko House is a home that will engage you, in ways far surpassing the experience of those who simply own their houses.”

Burst’s company is preparing for the launch of the Jeriko House within the next few months. It promises to be somewhat revolutionary in design, function, and perhaps most importantly, accessibility. It would seem that home buyers will soon get the superior product they have been asking for.

For more information on Jeriko House please visit www.jerikohouse.com.

Toyota in the game too...

2009-12-26T20:19:00.001-08:00

Toyota Throws More Weight Behind Its Homes Unit

Steel-Frame Houses Get Renewed Push, Tie-In to Electric Cars

By JOHN MURPHY

KASUGAI, Japan -- Toyota Motor Corp. has put millions of people on four wheels. Now, the global auto giant wants to put roofs over their heads, too.

Best known for its top-selling cars like the Prius and Corolla, Toyota is looking to apply its ecofriendly image and technical know-how to help boost sales of its small and little-known prefabricated-housing division.

Associated Press

A couple inspects a Toyota Home model house in Tokyo. The house's components were built on a housing plant's assembly line.

Since 1975, Toyota has been building steel-frame houses designed to withstand earthquakes and typhoons and keep out burglars. So far, demand for such durable homes has been modest in Japan, where traditional wooden houses are demolished and rebuilt every 30 years on average, nearly twice as often as in the U.S. Toyota's home business accounted for just 0.5% of the company's $262 billion in annual sales last year.

But with new Japanese government calls for sturdier home construction -- to cut down on waste created by home demolitions -- and heightened consumer interest in eco-conscious designs, Toyota hopes it will play a leading role in the years ahead in defining not only how the Japanese drive but where they live, too.

In the last year, Toyota Home, as Toyota's housing division is known, launched an aggressive advertising campaign to make more consumers aware of the brand, opened showrooms and hired architects to help redesign its lineup of homes -- which consumers complained had more function than style.

Toyota's aspirations as a home builder are also gaining new importance with the planned launch by 2010 of its plug-in vehicles, gas-electric hybrid cars with powerful lithium-ion batteries that drivers will need to recharge at home. The car maker is testing an electricity-monitoring system in its homes that would charge the vehicle during off-peak hours to keep utility bills low, while the car's battery can serve as an electrical backup, powering the home during blackouts.

Toyota engineers are also experimenting with using solar panels as house siding and powering homes with fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and air to produce electricity.

"At Toyota, we have certain technologies that we can apply to other fields," says Senta Morioka, president of Toyota's housing operations.

The housing business was the idea of Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota Motor, who saw the destruction from fire of Tokyo's homes during World War II and believed that his company's technologies could someday be used to develop more-durable homes.

At the Kasugai Housing Works in central Japan, one of Toyota's three prefab-housing factories, an assembly line of robots, conveyor belts and helmeted workers produced a steady flow of rectangular steel-framed cubicles finished with staircases, kitchen cupboards, bathtubs and toilets.

Most Toyota homes are made from six or more of these large cubicles, which are assembled -- like Legos -- on the building site. From its start on the factory floor to its final completion on site, a Toyota home can be built in 45 days, less than half the time it takes for contractors to build a typical wooden-frame home, Toyota says.

Like its cars, Toyota's lineup of homes is wide-ranging, with more than a dozen designs. There is the popular Smart Stage, a conservative, 1,000-square-foot, two-story home priced at about $200,000. Then there is the sleek, custom-built 2,600-square-foot Espacio Square for the Lexus set that sells for more than $800,000. Salespeople say nearly all home buyers are Toyota car owners.

At the Toyota Home showroom inside a Toyota-owned shopping mall near Yokohama, potential buyers are invited to step inside an earthquake simulator for a lesson in why a durable home is important in this earthquake-prone country.

Other displays focus on how Toyota's car technologies have been applied to houses, including a rustproofing process that preserves the house's steel structure for decades; a device to quiet engines that can help damp vibrations from foot traffic on the upper floors; and a single key that can be coded to open both the owner's Toyota car and Toyota home.

Toyota's home sales have risen slowly in the past three decades, peaking at just over 5,000 units in 2006 before falling to 4,600 units last year during a national slump in the housing market. This year, the company hopes to reach sales of 5,000 homes again. It has set a longer-term goal of selling 7,000 homes a year but hasn't set a specific deadline to reach that.

With sales so small and many companies trimming back unnecessary enterprises to concentrate on their core businesses, the question arises: Is this a business Toyota should be in?

Analysts say that while Toyota may realize some research benefits from its housing operations, it is hard to judge whether Toyota gains much financially from the enterprise or its other minor side businesses, including planting roof gardens, growing sweet potatoes in Indonesia and building boats.

"There are lots of places to hide in Toyota, so a wasted investment is very difficult to find on a balance sheet with so many assets," says Kurt Sanger, an auto analyst for Deutsche Bank in Tokyo.

Toyota's Mr. Morioka says the business is profitable, though he declines to give details.

Much of the unit's success will depend on a proposed law by the Japanese government that would provide tax incentives to home buyers who invest in longer-lasting homes. Most Japanese homes have a life span of just 30 years, compared with 55 years in the U.S., according to the Japanese government. Toyota guarantees its homes for 60 years, a feature that will help sales if Japanese lawmakers approve the tax break for durable homes.

Other than what it called a one-time "experiment" building a development of 50 homes near its truck plant in San Antonio in 2006, Toyota says it has no ambitious plans to build homes outside Japan. "It's way beyond what we're thinking right now," Mr. Morioka says.

CleverHome (www.cleverhomes.net)

2009-12-26T20:03:00.001-08:00

Prefab company based out of SF. Structured as a design/build and costs between $200-300/sqft.

11 Mar 08

Clever Homes LLC Prefabs Joins Forces With Premier Building Systems

Scott Redmond, CEO of Clever Homes LLC, an innovative multidisciplinary home design and construction systems company, and Ken Hawkins, general manager of Premier Building Systems, America’s largest panelized systems producer, announce a joint venture to develop new generations of materials and systems integration that will deliver precision-engineered, system-built homes for America. This is one of the largest manufacturing ventures for modern system-built homes in recent history. Homes have been built the same way for over 40 years, yet government- and industry-sponsored innovation has provided solutions which allow homes to be produced faster, better, more safely, and at lower cost. Few if any homes that are built today fully implement these proven new technologies. The JV announced today will leverage Premier’s nationwide manufacturing facilities and panelized systems experience with Clever Homes’ innovative, integrated architectural and technical capabilities to deliver beautiful, sustainable, high-quality modern homes with extensive potential for customization. Home projects using these systems are already underway in the U.S. According to Redmond, the homes produced from this joint venture will provide the best value, durability, and design flexibility of any homes in their class. The innovative homes are built using a proprietary panelized construction system featuring patent pending technologies, construction tools, and processes created jointly by Clever Homes and Premier. These advances in building systems will be integrated into the Clever Homes signature designs. “We are excited by the opportunity to work with Premier,’ says Redmond, “and to develop a new generation of panels that will improve the quality and efficiency of our homes as well as lower the cost and time to construct. This venture provides a home construction solution that is light years ahead of that used by any other panel provider or builder.’ “Premier will work with Clever Homes to revolutionize how homes are built in the U.S.,’ states Premier’s Ken Hawkins. “We believe our manufacturing and product expertise in panels is a perfect match with the panel-based designs and digital-based processes of Clever Homes. Every two hours, our facilities will be able to manufacture one home of the highest quality and the most sophisticated design possible in next-generation, off-site constructed homes.’ Clever Homes LLC is a multidisciplinary home design and construction systems company with headquarters in San Francisco, CA. The company promotes and develops proprietary building systems that integrate existing technologies while advancing and improving prefabricated construction methods. From core building materials to finishes and fixtures, Clever Homes make the most of existing technology, powerful partnerships and their own patent pending engineering. Full page ads can be seen in Dwell Magazine. Clever will be available at the PCBC Builders show at Moscone Center in San Francisco June 16-18, 2004. Home projects are underway with a number of celebrity and showcase customers. Clever is currently offering it’s CH showcase series homes. Other series, for various markets, will be announced in future years.

Reitsma + Associates

2009-12-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Module Mobile Home-type of construction in Queensland. Most interested in the elements of sustainability at the end of the entry.

15 Jul 09

Sustainable Prefab Design By Reitsma + Associates

Queensland-based architectural firm Reitsma + Associates is working on a villa project as light steel framing structural and self sustainable building services. The construction shall be as module mobile home and in their factory the constructors are going to build the pods and transport to the site.

PROJECT NAME : I-HOME
* LOCATION : REEM ISLAND , ABU DHABI,UAE
* CLIENT : ROYAL GROUP , ABU DHABI , UAE
* MAIN CONTRACTOR: REEM EMIRATES ALUMINUM LLC, AD, UAE
* ARCHITECT : REITSMA+ASSOCATES,QUEENSLAND, AUS.
* MANUFACTUR. LEAD: MODSCAPE,MELBOURNE , AUS
* PROJ. MANAGMENT : MODSCAPE/REA
* FOUNDATION : NPC LLC, AB , UAE
* MEP CONSULTANT : R&D DEPATMET OF REA
* MEP CONTRACTOR : PAL TECHNOLOGY LLC, ABU DHABI ,UAE

INDEX
1. Introduction & Features – i Home
2. Pilot Project
3. Manufacturing
4. Building Services & Sustainable Features
5. Costing
6. Sales Target & Revenue Projection
7. Investment – i Home Factory

* High quality in-house factory assembled modular construction
* Low Carbon footprint
* Comply with ESTIDAMA pearl rating system
* Comply with LEED rating for Homes
* 100 % recyclable materials
* High Indoor Environmental Quality
* High thermally insulated walls / roofs / façade
* Fast installation at site
* High levels of Energy efficiency
* Low Maintenance
* Pre-engineered structural construction

* Roof Mounted Solar PV panels
* Wind Mill Power System
* Floor Cooling System
* Solar Adsorption Cooling System
* Solar Boiler Hot Water System
* Home Automation System (wireless)
* Waste Water & Sewerage Recycling System
* Modular Electrical Cabling & Sanitary Modular Systems
* Modular HVAC ducting systems
* Potable Water Desalination System
* LED Lighting

OMD's Santa Monica PreFab1

2009-12-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.designmobile.com/samo1.html

Prefabricated design on a narrow lot could be an interesting model for infill development on the East Coast.

OMD's SwellHouse Article

2009-12-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

PREFAB FRIDAY: Office of Mobile Design’s NEW SWELLHOUSE

by Emily Pilloton, 02/09/07

Jennifer Siegal has long been one of our favorite pioneers of prefab architecture. Always pushing the envelope, her Swellhouse has been a great archetype for discussions surrounding prefab design, construction, and the integration of green materials. This past December, her Office of Mobile Design completed construction of a new iteration of the Swellhouse at 334 Brooks in Venice, California, which was site-built, but stayed true to the prefab canon using an extensive modular grid system and Structural Insulated Panels (SIP’s). The grid system and exposed steel columns created an open yet ordered live-work space, while the SIP’s enhanced thermal and acoustic insulation. The 3100 square foot home consists of two separate structures that bookend a courtyard and pool. The home’s interior boasts high ceilings with exposed i-beams, a radiant heating system, and Ipe wood decking.

While it’s easy to mentally oversimplify the prefab construction process, picturing a fully functional house built in a factory and literally plopped onto a site, there are various degrees of prefabrication which range from fully-manufactured residences to the prefabrication of components, panels, or modules. In this case, Office of Mobile Design prefabricated the SIP’s in a warehouse, delivered them to the site, and set them in place manually.

Hive Modular (www.hivemodular.com)

2009-12-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

Design-oriented modular architect/builder out of Minneapolis. The B-Line Medium product is allegedly for urban infill. Not strong on design in my opinion.

The B-Line Medium Modern:

Flat Pak House (http://www.flatpakhouse.com/)

2009-12-25T21:05:00.001-08:00

Flat Pak House is a company out of Minneapolis that is focused more on the fabrication element than on the ZEB. Also, prices are $200-300/sqft. Great website, though.

Rocio Romero (www.rocioromero.com)

2009-12-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

Architect with a line of homes called the LV Series. Designs and builds to suit. Website has some good information on design/construction principles.

Modest House (www.modesthouse.us)

2009-12-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

Prototype home designed by Jeffrey McKean in upstate New York. Embodies many green/sustainable features. Built at $200/sqft, which is a tad rich for the target.

Modern Modular (www.modernmodular.com)

2009-12-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

Company that markets and facilitates the sale of modular products by a series of architect. I wonder what projects they have actually sold.

Stillwater Dwellings (www.stillwaterdwellings.com)

2009-12-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

Stillwater Dwellings Launches Green Contemporary Prefab Homes

Written by Preston Koerner | March 25, 2009 | read more: Modern architecture, Prefab, Residential, Single-family

If you didn't already know, or couldn't already tell, we're seriously interested in the prefab world. Showing off new companies and innovative homes is what we do, so it's our pleasure to talk about a relatively new company on the scene: Stillwater Dwellings. The Seattle-based company was founded by two architects and one builder/developer about eight months ago, and they're going to break ground on the first home in Bend, Oregon this month. Stillwater put a lot of work into elucidating the "all-in" construction costs of a home, and they're targeting prices in the range of $130 - 195 psf -- quite competitive really for the prefab market. They also have a refreshing philosophy about how to do things; these are their fundamental beliefs:

Quality, contemporary, prefab homes don't need to be expensive;
Building a new home should be fun, not stressful;
Eco-friendly building is not a luxury, it's our responsibility;
Construction costs can (and should) be predictable; and
Less house is more home.

Stillwater offers predesigned homes in the sd-s (Stillwater Series) and sd-m (Stillwater Mini) lines, and more flexible, custom designs in the sd-i (Interchangeable Series). The sd-s features homes ranging in size from 870 to 2,950 square feet, while the sd-m features simple, compact homes from 370 to 585 square feet. If you're a little more adventurous, the sd-i series includes 34 pre-designed main living, bedroom, and connector modules that fit together with a universal connector. Stack and fit together the modules as you like to create something custom.

Regardless of whether you go with an sd-s, sd-m, or sd-i prefab home, all designs include soaring butterfly rooflines, interior/exterior lightshelf visors, plate steel entry canopies, and efficient layouts that blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor living. I personally can't wait to see a few Stillwater Dwellings built, but what do you think?

www.livinghomes.net

2009-12-25T18:49:00.000-08:00

Living Homes is a California company that has a line of prefab, net zero homes. Similar to Parco. Pricey at almost $200/sqft at a minimum. Seems to mirror zeta communities in that regard.

ZEB - Standards (from Red Hook Green Site)

2009-12-25T18:45:00.000-08:00

Below are key features from Red Hook Green's project:

"Simple and cost effective sustainability strategies are used to conserve and produce energy, conserve resources, and create a healthful environment. This sustainability approach was developed though an extensive research project that included digital energy modeling, detailed life cycle cost analysis of construction components and their related maintenance and replacement costs. Here are a few of its features:

· 8kw annual photovoltaic generating capacity, grid connected.

· 8kw annual comprehensive household energy budget including heating and air conditioning.

· High performance building envelope that eliminates thermal bridging and achieves an average thermal resistance of R50.

· Wall and roof systems vented to eliminate moisture build up and use “smart” moisture barriers to allow air movement in warm months.

· Integrated south facing thermal solar wall generates warm air that is fed to the building ventilation system.

· Heating and cooling provided by high efficiency electric heat pumps.

· Whole house heat exchange ventilation system insuring air quality and recovering energy from conditioned air."

Red Hook Green

2009-12-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Red Hook Green is a project developed by Jay Amato and designed by Garrison Architects (they also did the Nzinga Townhouses in BedStuy). Billed as the first net zero product in New York City. They've received a considerable amount of press and it appears as if their blog is a strong PR mechanism (had bloggers vote on design). www.redhookgreen.com

Zeroing In: Redhook Green Is a Zero Energy Building, But What Does That Mean?

2009

Dec

by David Roth

0 comments

We know some things -- good things -- about Redhook Green, the just-announced "net zero" mixed-use development in (wait for it) Red Hook. For instance: we know that it has a cool look inspired, according to the designers at Brooklyn's Garrison Architects, by the shipping containers lining Red Hook's river frontage. (We prefer to think of it as an homage to season two of The Wire, but that's us) And we know, too, that the project's developer is a man on a mission somewhat greater than, say, Bruce Ratner's. Jay Amato, the entrepreneur behind Redhook Green, is blogging his butt off at the building's official site and seems truly to be on fire for the idea of living and working efficiently and responsibly in Brooklyn. And Amato also has gbNYC on his blogroll, so we can count "his excellent taste" among the things we know, as well. But what we don't know about Redhook Green -- and something we'll certainly be discussing a lot in 2010 -- is what exactly its "net zero" ambitions will actually mean in practice.

The Department of Energy has a pretty clear and comprehensible definition for a zero energy building (ZEB) at its posted guidelines -- "A net zero-energy building (ZEB) is a residential or commercial building with greatly reduced energy needs through efficiency gains such that the balance of energy needs can be supplied with renewable technologies." At the Redhook Green blog, Amato expands upon that definition somewhat: "Basically the ZEB concept is the idea that buildings can meet all their energy needs from low-cost, locally available, nonpolluting, renewable sources such as solar or wind power," Amato writes. "That building can generate enough renewable energy on site to equal or exceed its annual energy use." There are ZEB structures all over Europe, but Amato claims -- and he's right -- to have initiated construction on the first ZEB building in New York. Considering Redhook Green's striking look, efficient design, and positive reception from Red Hook bloggers (important, right?), it's tough to take issue with Redhook Green itself. Admittedly, gbNYC is a fairly easy sell on this sort of thing -- give us a thermal wall, heat pumps and "smart" wall and ceiling designs and we'll get your the blueprint of your building tattooed on our (notional) e-necks, basically. But.

But as promising as Net Zero building is -- and it's a great idea that would be an even greater reality -- the idea of simply generating as much energy as you consume does not necessarily lead to a net-zero (no caps) outcome. The most obvious reason for this is that Net Zero buildings aren't necessarily more efficient to construct (and are often more expensive and complicated to design and construct) than any other type of building, and -- as with LEED and its discontents -- a building's net-zero status is based primarily on pre-construction projections. There's no way to gauge how close to zero a net-zero building will be until it gets built and, as Stephen pointed out when I chatted with him online about this earlier today, there's also the question of how efficient a ZEB would actually have to be, when there are products like Renewable Energy Credits out there to be purchased to get a building back to zero.

This is pretty common to attempts to measure a building's elusive greenness, of course, and much of this opacity falls under the "Of Course" heading -- of course we don't know how efficient an as-yet-unbuilt building will be, of course REC's can be abused. But also, of course there's no reason to think that Amato is going to do anything less than an excellent (and impressively transparent) job with developing Redhook Green, which looks very much like one of New York's buildings to watch in 2010. But as Zero Energy Building works its way towards buzzword status, hopefully we will be able to pull some actual information from all that buzzing background noise and figure out just how these sorts of buildings are actually going to work -- or could be made to work -- in the real world. If they're basically nu-earthships, they're not worth much, but if ZEB's wind up representing even a part of the great leap forward in green building that they could, it could be the start of something big. No pressure, Jay.

2009-12-24T11:49:00.003-08:00

ModFab Project at Tallesin
http://www.taliesin.edu/pages/MODFAB.htm

2009-12-24T11:49:00.001-08:00

Parco Homes (www.parcohomes.com)
Pay attn to the "zero-net energy" link, the graphic they have with the sustainable elements is what we should create for this product

2009-12-24T11:48:00.005-08:00

http://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/r-house-by-aro/3173 - I'm sure you guys are familiar with Della Valle Bernheimer architects out of BK, but they designed an eco-conscious home called R-house in Syracuse that'll be built sometime this year. Their site is www.dbnyc.com - Pay attn to "Beach House" and "Just Green Housing" (the description of this project captures my thoughts for this project)

2009-12-24T11:48:00.003-08:00

http://www.superiorwallsnj.com

2009-12-24T11:48:00.001-08:00

www.barrettroofs.com

2009-12-24T11:47:00.003-08:00

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/05/bayonne_boxes_days_are_numbere.html
Bayonne boxes' days are numbered in Newark
By Bruno R Tedeschi
May 07, 2008, 6:41PM
George McNish/The Star-LedgerAn example of a box style home in Newark.
Bayonne boxes -- the narrow, three-story homes that sprouted up all over Newark during its recent housing boom -- are facing extinction.
After architects and city officials scrutinized the design of the dwellings, Newark has released a different set of criteria to make future homes built in the city less boxy. The city council plans to vote on the regulations at its next meeting on May 21.
If it is passed, then the new law will go into effect within 30 days of the vote.
"I hate Bayonne boxes," said West Ward Councilman Ronald C. Rice. "I'm glad we're changing the zoning so we can prohibit them."
The houses cropped up like weeds in the 1990s, accounting for most of the 11,000 new houses constructed in Newark in the last decade, said city planning director Toni Griffin. The houses were popular in urban areas because they provided home ownership to city residents said Carlos Rodrigues, the New Jersey director of the Regional Plan Association, which worked with Newark on the ordinance.
"They are cheap and easy to construct and they provided to ability to have a rental unit, which allowed for the owner to help underwrite the cost of the mortgage," Rodrigues said. "It was a proven product in the real estate market."
The traditional type boxes are stand-alone homes built close to eachother and feature a garage or driveway jutting out in the front. Most contain two or three separate units and are set further back from the sidewalk than older homes. Critics, including Mayor Cory Booker, say the cookie-cutter homes lack character, are bad for the environment and draw too many cars to the area.
In other parts of the country, they are called triple-deckers. In New Jersey, the name Bayonne box stuck because these homes cropped up in Bayonne after World War II.
Rodrigues said Newark joins Jersey City in targeting the box-style housing. The backlash, he said, began when neighbors complained that the boxy homes were replacing historically important or architecturally interesting ones.
The revised Newark regulations call uniform setbacks, additional windows, narrower driveways, larger backyards and increased space between houses. The city is proposing that the setback of all new houses must match the neighboring house that is closest to the sidewalk. For instance, if the house to the left sits 10 feet away from the sidewalk and the house on the right is 6 feet away, then the new home in between must be set back 6 feet.
If there is no other development on that block, the front yard setback must be 6 feet.
The city is also encouraging balconies, bay windows, stoops and porches and is calling for 30 percent of the front of homes to be filled with windows.
The minimum gap between houses will also be increased from two feet to three feet, offering more breathing room for residents and homeowners who may need to do maintenance work on the property.
The city is also recommending significant changes for driveways and parking. In order to encourage mass transit, officials plan to wave the 1 space per dwelling requirement if the home is within 1,200 feet of a station for the light rail, PATH train or New Jersey Transit bus station.
It is also decreasing the parking requirement from 1.5 spaces per unit to 1 space. The difference, they said, should shrink the size of driveways which dominate the front of the homes. Under the new ordinance, all parking spaces will have to be either inside the home, to the side or in the rear.
Driveways will also be capped at 10 feet in width and must include either mulch, gravel or grass in order to absorb water runoff. Griffin said the current designs, where the entire driveway is an impervious surface, leads to flooding in some areas.
http://dailynewarker.com/blog/2007/11/bayonne-box-symbol-of-newark%E2%80%99s-ill-planning/
Bayonne Box: Symbol of Newark’s Ill Planning
November 25, 2007 · Posted by Zemin Zhang
The three-family, triple-decker, aluminum-sided, front garage-dominated housing type, known as the “Bayonne Box,” has become the default housing type for new construction in Newark. Even the 2004 Land Use Element of City Master Plan urged to “provide more land which allows two-, three-, and four-family detached housing, which has become the housing choice for both public and private sector builders.” Meanwhile, the city has started to suffer from the devastating effects of the Bayonne Box proliferation. In its 2006 Newark Vision Plan, the Regional Plan Association called for alternative designs. In his first State of the City address on last February 8, Mayor Booker requested the city to “identify and encourage design alternatives to the ‘Bayonne Box’ model for two- and three-family houses.” The new Director of Community Development Toni Griffin is organizing a housing design symposium next Wednesday to introduce better design models and higher design standards (see below). What is wrong with the popular Bayonne Box? Is it just aesthetic embarrassment and construction defects?
To find out the genesis of the box, I called the reference librarian of the Bayonne public library last summer. She responded angrily, “People like to make fun of Bayonne.” Only after learning that I am a Newark resident, she pointed out, “We have moved away from that kind of development.” It is true that the small town of 61,842 residents has become much more forward-looking in its physical development. For instance, its redevelopment of the former naval base alone will create over 6,700 high density housing units, 750 hotel rooms, 340,000 square feet of retailing space, and 242,000 square feet of civic space. Many apartment developments have long included underground parking. “Newark Box. That’s what you should call it,” the librarian added with some satisfaction.
h4. Automobile Obsession
Over the course of last century, the American home, as well as all aspects of the society, has been designed to focus on automobile usage. The treasured machine takes a great space in repose, as well as in motion. As soon as technology improvements made the automobile less explosive and flammable, architects moved it out of the old carriage house and into the integrated living space. Frank Lloyd Wright was among the first in the 1920’s to design attached garages for his beloved Lincoln Continentals in his Chicago Oak Park house. Architects Keck and Keck’s 1926 modern structure, a forerunner of the Bayonne Box, featuring a dominant three-garage front with a wide curb-cut, was even named as a Chicago landmark in 1994. The garage has become the most massive exterior feature of new homes. Some New Urbanists call it “garagescape.”
The impact of a brutal garage, a paved front driveway, and a twenty-foot curb-cut in front of every new home can be devastating. In the case of Bayonne Box, planning for the most direct vehicular access, the frontal driveway location, and obtrusively parked vehicles destroyed the fabric of a healthy pedestrian-oriented neighborhood. In Ironbound’s Sumo Village, while negotiating with big cars on the sidewalk, pedestrians are often forced to witness the selfish display of a junk closet through those open garage doors. Furthermore, the Bayonne Box loudly promotes a destructive way to organize all aspects of life in our city and beyond through automobiles.
Some design remedies might try to mitigate the visual impact of the Bayonne Box through such means as a rear access lane or alley. However, the popularity of the box design among Newark developers is related to antiquated city ordinances for the minimum parking requirement, which required five to six parking spaces for a three-family structure. Many city planners call for adoption of a “maximum” parking standard, which restricts one parking space per 1000 square feet development, compared to four spaces now in Newark. Jersey City currently has an even lower ratio than the suggested maximum ratio for Newark. Given the mass transit advantages enjoyed by the city, homes with transit village designs will not only break the Bayonne Box model, but will also attract many different home buyers, who tend to commute to work by train.
h4. Urban Sprawl
With land of only 24 square miles, Newark is among the cities with the highest density in the country, even after the drastic decline of its population in past decades. However, those who pass by Newark along the Northeast Corridor are often amazed by row after row of Bayonne Boxes plopped up swiftly in the Ironbound section. Another missed opportunities for higher density urban redevelopment, which is ideal for creating jobs, bolstering city revenue, and improving the state’s energy efficiency if replacing these structures with sufficient office capacities. Some prominent transportation planners such as Martin Robins and Jeffrey Zuppan predict, “Nearly 11.5 million gallons of gasoline a year would be saved by increasing the number of jobs in downtown Newark, essentially doubling them, instead of locating them in the suburbs.” The city has to immediately stop building Bayonne Boxes here and to establish financial and zoning incentives for developers to build higher density units, and encourage companies to those locations where public transportation is readily available to their employees.
h4. Risky Finance
These expensive Bayonne Boxes rely on risky finance and count heavily on rental income for the owners. Some Ironbound developers are known for delivering a “secret” extra rental unit with all water and gas pipes hiding behind sheetrock for an easy do-it-yourself conversion. According to recent census figures, Newark is among the highest percentage (over 40 percent) in the nation where homeowners spend more than half their income on housing. Attracted by the American Dream in these multifamily Bayonne Boxes, working families have taken various risky loans to buy much more housing than they need, betting unrealistically on continuing increase in value of their properties and personal income. When these conditions failed to materialize and rental incomes fell short, many owners of Bayonne Box multifamily homes suffered from ruined credit, foreclosures, and broken hopes.
h4. Visionless Uniformity
Jane Jacobs espoused that a vital urban life rests on preserving neighborhoods of mixed-uses, mixed-users, and mixed-styles, with active residents and pedestrians as eyes and ears of a safe community. Newark has its own example of a lively neighborhood along Ferry and Wilson Streets, with vertical mixing uses in buildings, with a focus on retail on the ground floor and street level, and residential on the upper floors. The enlivened community creates an exciting presence of economic and social activities not only during the day, but also in the evening and on weekends.
Some early “Bayonne” design, such as the 1940’s garaged row houses on Holland Avenue of Bronx, at least paid great attention to the Tudor gables, façade details, chimneys, terraces, and stoops, in order to establish an individual identity for each house. However, the quick construction of Bayonne Boxes in Newark deliberately stands for a soulless uniformity, which leaves out any architectural details and street amenities. As the result, these houses effectively turn streets solely for automobile storage and movement. In one of the Sumo Villages off South Street, a great number of identical multifamily houses share a small corner play area for children, with dusty and broken equipment. Oh, Bayonne Boxes, what a community killer!
h4. Political Corruption
A majority of Bayonne Boxes in the city were built by three politically connected large real estate developers, who acquired public land with a deep discount, together with easy zoning variances, tax-abatements, and other perks. Other crony-turn-developers, such as Jackie Mattison, Emilio Farina, and Tamika Riley, who had little or no development experience, all had a hefty share of the 5,000 parcels of cheap city land. These cookie-cut shoddy constructions were often done by workmen under the condition that they got paid only after the houses were sold. While the current city administration is ready to lift the moratorium of land sales and to settle with developers, future public subsidies should not be on the land, but rather directly on affordable and sustainable housing that agrees with the city’s strategic plan and high design standards.
A Chinese proverb says, “It is not too late to mend the fold even after some of the sheep have been lost.” Some cities, such as Portland, Oregon, have adopted strict ordinances to guide development. For instance, three-quarters of a house façade must be house but not garage. Some economists and planners have long argued that the property tax is antiquated; for reasons that not only is wealth now held in many intangible forms, but also development in depressed urban center has been discouraged. Instead, some forms of land tax may encourage proper urban land use policies, discourage land speculation, and prevent shoddy constructions on cheap land. Obviously, the city has to go far beyond toothless and suggestive design alternatives to battle the Bayonne Box phenomenon.More links.

2009-12-24T11:47:00.001-08:00

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/11/thinking_outside_bayonne_box.html
Thinking outside 'Bayonne box'
By Laura Craven
November 28, 2007, 12:45PM
Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerHomes on on Jeliff Ave between Clinton and West Bigelow Ave in Newark have been called "Bayonne boxes,"
The three-story vinyl-clad homes that have sprouted up on narrow lots around Newark during the last decade have provided homeownership opportunities for thousands and much needed property tax revenue for the city.
Now Newark doesn't want them anymore.
At a design symposium at the Newark Museum tonight, 12 architects will present alternative designs to what Mayor Cory Booker derisively called "Bayonne boxes" in his State of the City speech earlier this year.
The cookie-cutter design has proven to be wildly popular for developers who often bought up city blocks and knocked out the multifamily homes in an assembly-line fashion. Others were wedged into lots between buildings, frequently set back deeper than the older homes to accommodate a driveway.

2009-12-24T11:46:00.003-08:00

http://www.buildersshow.com/generic.aspx?sectionID=1842
Development type of the 2-3 family subset in the transitional neighborhoods in NJ (Newark, Jersey City) are what's called the Bayonne Box. The major critiques are the lack of architectural significance (suburban looking) and the garages that are an inherent part of their design. From a development standpoint, they're easy to build and financially feasible. If you're a fly-by-night developer that has access to capital, you can find lots that come with plans for these projects. According the JCRA, councilwoman, and other politicos I've spoken to, there's strong momentum to find a viable design alternative to the Bayonne Box. This article that I'm pasting below quickly describes them. Pasting another article as well.

2009-12-24T11:46:00.001-08:00

http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/unique_spaces_the_dc_areas_first_net_zero_home/1550

2009-12-24T11:45:00.003-08:00

www.aeonsolar.com
Solar company in NYC area

2009-12-24T11:45:00.001-08:00

http://www.z-home.org/
Corresponds to the net-zero workforce homes above

2009-12-24T11:44:00.004-08:00

http://www.jetsongreen.com/2009/09/lopez-island-net-zero-energy-workforce-homes.html
Net-zero workforce homes

2009-12-24T11:44:00.003-08:00

http://www.projectfrog.com/products
Net-zero builder of schools and other institutions

2009-12-24T11:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.onionflats.com/nl_onion.php
Infill Developer - Thin Flats Project featured in ULI; Similar model to what I want to implement

2009-12-24T11:43:00.003-08:00

http://curbed.com/tags/nzinga-townhomes
http://www.greenbuildingsnyc.com/2008/11/12/nzingatownhomes
http://www.garrisonarchitects.com/

2009-12-24T11:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.garrisonarchitects.com/
They've done several green modular projects, including designing the Nzinga Townhomes in Bed Stuy - not sure if built ever

2009-12-24T11:42:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/realestate/13post.html?emc=eta1; www.newworldhome.com
Article on New World Home, which is a design/build company that does modular stuff with an old feel to it

2009-12-24T11:40:00.001-08:00

www.groarc.com
Designed/developed 1 Minvera St. in Jersey City - prototype for this project

2009-12-24T11:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.rattiganconstruction.com/
Developed precast concrete envelope home in Venice, CA; Could be same as above

2009-12-24T11:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.project7ten.com/site/index.htm; http://www.minimalproductions.com/
LEED Certified home in Venice, CA; company dedicated to concept

2009-12-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

Net zero home manufacturer in Northen Cali
http://www.zetacommunities.com/

Njoku Housing

Team Germany - Solar Decathlon

Germany’s Solar Coated surPLUShome Wins Solar Decathlon!

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In Jackson Hole, a Contemporary Hillside Residence That Defies the Expected

Architecture by Tom Ward, AIA, of Ward + Blake Text by Peter Haldeman/Photography by Roger Wade Published June 2006

The Better Brick: 2010 Next Generation Winner

This year’s winner—a bioengineered brick, conceived by a young American architect—may be modest in physical scale, but it has the potential for global impact.

By Suzanne LaBarre

RWANDA'S PRESIDENTIAL PRECINCT: Here are some construction pictures

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CleanBoard Turns Sun's Heat to Drywall

The startup plans a Southern California factory that will use its own solar thermal plant – not to make electricity, but to generate heat to bake traditional gypsum-based drywall without burning fossil fuels.

FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2009

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