Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category
June 22nd, 2009
Kansas City Prefab Home: A Green Gem in the Heartland
Stumble it!
As a native of Kansas City you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn about the new green prefab achievement in my home town. I learned about it from one of my favorite publications, Natural Home. They did a wonderful feature on the house, which you can read in its entirety here.
The 1,200 square feet house is a two-bedroom, one-bath home (remember in the eco-sphere small is good!) and is perched on stilts atop a hill. It has a wonderful view of downtown. It was designed by architecture students from the University of Kansas (KU), who are part of a program that focuses on sustainable and affordable design. It’s an excellent example of affordable, green design.
The home was built in six modular units in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. Then they trucked 40 miles to Kansas City and assembled. The house was designed and built over five months by the KU students. The owners paid around $150,000 for the house.
Natural Home also produced a nice video on the house – check it out.
Popularity: 10% [?]
June 10th, 2009
Dwell Tour of Energy Star Homes in Brooklyn
As part of BKLYN Designs 2009, a fabulous green design event that happens every May in Brooklyn, NY, Dwell Magazine toured five homes in the area to showcase innovative, contemporary and thoughtful design. Of the 5 homes we were so impressed with two of them because of their energy efficiency and use of sustainable materials. Sadly, we weren’t there first hand to tour the houses ourselves, but we may just have to make a trip to Brooklyn next spring to be there so we too can tour gorgeous homes like these.
The Dwell Homes Tour in Brooklyn was a chance for local designers to showcase their remodels and new construction as well as to inspire design enthusiasts who were on hand for the BKLYN Designs show, which ran May 8-10th. Our two favorite homes were designed by the same firm, Coggan + Crawford Architecture Design and built by Giancola Contracting. Each residence is ENERGY STAR rated and is a remodel rather than new construction. The Clarke Residence is part of the Star Complex, a two-unit building, while the Barr Residence is part of the Cobble Hill Lofts, a condo development in Cobble Hill.
Clarke Residence
The Clarkes and Andrew Giancola, the contractor for the project, reside in the two-unit Star Complex. It received its name after it became the first Energy Star rated building in Brooklyn. The beautiful remodel sits next to a church and even has views of the Statue of Liberty from its rooftop deck. When the new owners took possession of the building they wanted to retain as much of the original infrastructure as possible, but also update it and add on to create two residences. The original home structure was retained, refaced with stucco and given a number of new windows. Meanwhile, the addition was constructed from more modern materials like steel, concrete and metal siding.
With an Energy Star rating, this means the building uses 30% less energy than required by code. Along with the significant energy savings, the southern facade in the rear boasts many windows that let the sun in during winter months to heat the concrete floors, which provide thermal mass to help heat the interior. In the summer, the metal balconies for the fire escape provide shade to keep out the summer sun. All of the windows are Low E and Argon filled. The roof has been slanted towards the south for photovoltaic panels. Lighting is provided by energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and the air conditioner is non ozone depleting. Flooring for the rest of the house is either renewable bamboo or carpeting from Interface, which has a Cradle to Cradle™ certification.
Barr Residence
One of the duplex lofts in the Cobble Hill Lofts, the Barr Residence is also Energy Star rated and a remodeled building. Originally it was two story, long, dark industrial building, which was transformed into a beautiful residential complex. In order to let more light and air into the individual units, Coggan + Crawford designed an open courtyard into the middle to give each unit more windows and natural daylight. Each unit has a very open loft-like floor plan with remnants of its electrical warehouse past present everywhere.
During the remodel the original masonry shell, wood floor and roof joists were kept, minimizing demolition material that was sent to the landfill. Original concrete floors were also retained and refinished. And all appliances are Energy Star rated, and water saving devices like low flow toilets and faucets, and recirculation lines were used.
Both houses were constructed from existing structures with the expert knowledge from Coggan + Crawford are shining examples of sustainable urban construction. As homes and buildings in our urban centers start to fail, we can only hope that their reconstruction is done as well and as sustainably as these two structures have been.
[Update: The Barr Residence was incorrectly reported as being part of The Sillouette Condos. It is acutally part of the Cobble Hill Lofts.]
Popularity: 3% [?]
June 9th, 2009
A Steel Prefab Treads Lightly on a Desert Floor
Written by Susan Kraemer, courtesy of Green Building Elements.com
Steel is just about the most recyclable building material on earth. You could be well reading this in an office building built with steel originally smelted from iron in Julius Caesar’s day.
So it makes good green sense to build eco prefab houses with steel…
Steel does not spread fire. Building with steel allows for a lighter load, so it does not require a huge concrete foundation. Making concrete is one of the most carbon intensive building industries there are, producing the heaviest carbon footprint.
And steel framing makes for construction simplicity: these homes are able to be erected by hand and do not require welding, special torque tools or specialized inspections. This allows an entire house to be framed and enclosed in less than five days.
Click here to read the rest of this article and see more photos.
Click here to learn more about other types of green prefab houses.
Popularity: 12% [?]
May 6th, 2009
Warren Buffett Company Debuts Line of Green Prefab Homes
Warren Buffett isn’t the world’s second richest man for nothing. He has an unsurpassed knack for picking good companies in strong industries at the right price. Most things he’s touched have turned into gold. So it’s exciting to see that a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary called Clayton Homes has just launched a line of green prefab homes (called the i-house) that start at under $75,000 (or about $105 / square foot) excluding site costs and shipping. Clayton Homes is one of the largest manufactured housing companies in the world, having produced over 1.5 million units since 1934. They’ll clearly get the manufacturing, financing and logistics right, but can they deliver the amenities, materials and compelling designs that prospective green homeowners have come to expect from green prefab?
The first models are quite promising. Even the base version comes with a lengthy list of standard green features, including:
- Well insulated exterior walls, floor and roof (R-21, R-30 and R-30 respectively)
- Andersen low-e windows
- Metal roof designed for rainwater collection
- No-VOC paint
- High efficiency heat pump
- Dual-flush toilets
If that’s not green enough for you, then you can pick from a long list of sustainable options that includes:
- Two to four kilowatts of solar PV panels;
- Bamboo flooring;
- Tankless water heaters
- Energy Star appliances
You obviously won’t get a LEED Platinum rating on your new i-house, but you will get a very low-energy and reasonably green home at a great price point.
The i-house website has an easy-to-use configurator that allows you to create a customized home and view pricing for options and delivery in your area.
Via Jetson Green
Popularity: 11% [?]
April 20th, 2009
Planes, Trains and Subway Cars!
It’s the ultimate way to recycle: reuse structures and adapt them for living and work space. Planes, cars, railcars, boats, subway cars, and trucks all have good bones that can easily be built upon and modified into something usable. We’ve been seeing a lot of these adaptive reuse projects popping up and wanted to highlight a few of our favorites.
Sleeper Car Studio Apartment
If you’re like us, as a kid you might have had an obsession with the Boxcar Children too. Their creativity and innovation to live on their own inside a rail car was inspiring and exciting. Like the Boxcar Children, Marc Riera designed this studio space inside of a 1949 sleeper car in Portland. The modern interior is complete with DSL, new stainless steel windows, grid connection, and incinerator powered toilet.
The 85 foot long car is surprisingly roomy with plenty of room for a kitchen, living space and bedroom. The sleeper car is located on a private lot in Southeast Portland and is actually on the market for $225,000. The rail car could easily be moved anywhere you want by simply hooking it up to a train engine and pulling it there on an existing rail line.
2-Bedroom Plane Hotel Suite
Airplanes also make for a good structural skeleton, since they deal with high speeds and repetitive landings and takeoffs. This 1965 Boeing 727 once carried globetrotters around Africa and South America, and now it serves as a swanky two-bedroom suite at the Costa Verde Resort in Costa Rica. Taken from it’s graveyard at the San Jose airport, the plane was transported piece by piece on 5 big trucks to bring it this resort on the edge of the Manuel Antonio National Park near Quepos, Costa Rica.
Set up on top of a 50 foot pedestal, guests of this hotel suite have inspiring views of the Pacific Ocean from their recycled room. The interior is paneled from tip to tail with locally harvested teak wood, and not as eco-friendly teak furnishings imported from Indonesia. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom suite also has a kitchenette, dining area and beautiful veranda, which is perfect for watching the sunset.
Subway Car Artist Studios
There are also a lot of empty subway cars being retired from active duty. An innovative art and design organization in London, Village Underground, decided to recycled ex London Underground subway cars into studio space for artists. The studio cars now sit on top of a Victorian warehouse, which is a flexible multi-use space for gallery shows, exhibits, parties and meeting space.
Artists, writers, film makers, fashion designers, musicians and more are welcome to work in the revamped subway cars at a very affordable low-cost rent. Only the original seating was removed, in fact all the levers and buttons are still in tact at the end of each car. Tables, chairs, couches, bean bags and power outlets were brought in to make them functioning for the artists.
Van Studio Apartment
The last example of creative and adaptive reuse of retired transportation equipment is an old transport van that has converted into a studio apartment. Dubbed the “Peggy M” by the owners of the studio, it gets 15 miles per gallon, but does run on biodiesel. The Ford Econoline-350 was almost completely outfitted with free things off craigslist - even an upright piano, table and chairs, work shop space, and two mattresses that hang overhead on a pulley system. The artists drove around and sold paintings out of the back.
Popularity: 11% [?]
