Andrew Berman's Private Library

Architect Andrew Berman was asked to build a writing studio, and his resulting building is an absolute gem box.


Private Library from A Space In Time on Vimeo.

Thanks to SuperForester Jon for sharing!

Passive Solar Homes Go SuperNova!

(via treehugger)

(via trendir.com)

Folks is talking about Passive houses!

Using a mix of excellent insulation, high efficiency appliances, and an ingenious heat exchange system, passive solar homes use a fraction of the energy their normal counterparts use, and there is no sacrifice made in the looks department.

Thermogram of a Passivhaus building, with traditional building in background.

Here's a marvelously dry video tour of the Sustain-O-Casa of David and Harriet Borton.
The Borton's charming Troy, New York abode has been built with a number of design elements that keep its energy use in the ultra-low category.

Firstly, their house has huge windows on the southern facing side, allowing sunlight to heat the interior, while the northern side has very few tiny windows and is more heavily insulated.

As Mr. Borton helpfully explains, the 250 square feet of windows on the south side of his house generate approximately 60 million btus of heat, which is the equivalent of 500 gallons of heating oil. All for free, from the sun, just because he pointed his house in one direction. Amazing.

The Borton house is so efficient that the morning sunlight that comes through a window turns dishes on a rack into a radiator for the kitchen.

The video also includes a quick rundown of the Borton's three solar arrays, including a tiny little 25 year old chip of a panel that kept the family with a working fridge, telephones, and lights/t.v. at night when a snowstorm in the mid 1980's knocked out power for a week.



Here's the Passive house wiki.
Here's a US Passive house site.
A Passive house post from greenlineblog.
A wonderful piece in the Times about Passive houses around the world.

Thank you to David and Harriet Borton for allowing us the informative peek into their situation. The Grieco Brothers Christian and Christian for shooting the viddy, and to the Green Buildings Open House, for hiring the Grieco Brothers to shoot the viddy of the Bortons.

Here's the Green Buildings Open House affiliate site.

Sustainability can be fun!

Awesome Architecture: "Shell House" by Kotaro Ide

Deep within the mystic woods of Karuizawa, Japan, you find the “Shell House”, an architectural wonder created by Kotaro Ide. Take a peek inside!

Imagine that, a structure built around its environment rather than on top of it. Amazing work! It is important to note that our homes are not strictly within the square footage of our living quarters but rather, are made up of our entire environments. This structure takes us in that direction. It shows us the beautiful nature in which man-made and natural environments can blend together to form breathtaking habitats; a trend I personally hope to see a lot more of.

Namaste,
Carla

Daniel Libeskind Tower for NYC!

Good Morning!

This just caught my eye on Inhabitat:

This proposal is for a building at One Madison Avenue (at 23rd street). 

"Daniel Libeskind recently unveiled a soaring green skyscraper for New York that is constructed of mostly glass and stands to be the city’s tallest residential structure at 900 feet. Dubbed the New York Tower at One Madison Avenue, the 54-story apartment building features a series of ‘sky gardens‘ cut out from its facade that provide green space and terraced balconies for residents. Terraced gardens are becoming quite popular as a means for people to have an outdoor connection, fresh air, and even a place to grow their own food."

Here is a link to an article in New York Magazine where Daniel Libeskind discusses this spectacular building. 

I normally wouldn't post about buildings that are not in the process of being built, but the thought of living down the street from where I currently reside, high in the sky with a wonderful garden outside of my door, got me very excited! 

Please bring more nature to us city folks!!

Thank you Inhabitat and Daniel Libeskind!

Have a wonderful day!

Niki   

The Sky is Falling! - #56 Leonard St. NYC

Herzog & de Meuron's residential building on 56 Leonard Street, NYC.




Amazing.

50 Amazing Buildings Around the World

Behind every one of these wonderful buildings is an architect who thought: "Awww, why not?"

Here's the entire gallery via villageofjoy.com

Baumraum - a Tree house

At some point in your life you probably built a tree house. Or wanted to. It's just cool to have your own space above the ground separated from the rest of the world, right?
That's probably the exact thing that Andreas Wenning thought when he created Baumraum. Wenning is a German architect and furniture designer who started the previously mentioned Baumraum. It's actually just a tree house, but for grown ups.


This is one of the many designs Baumraum offers. All the designs are more or less custom made, that means that there is a list of designs that are fine-tuned to your wishes and your tree. I must say I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the houses. Take a look at this picture taken from a Baumraum house in Austria.

You can actually sleep in it! How does that do on the awesome-scale?! And look at those windows. You are waked and the first thing you see is a sea of green leaves, you hear a variety of birds and all of a sudden you feel a little closer to nature.

It should be noted that Baumraum houses are tree-friendly (yay!) their construction requires no nails or screws in the tree. So the tree's vessels stay intact and it certainly won't get sick. But how does your house stay up in the air then? An intelligent question, Baumraum uses steel cables that are connected to the ground and pieces of extremely sturdy textile that are montaged onto the tree.

For €20.000 (roughly $25.000) Wenning's company will make sure you get a professional tree house up your tree.
Think about the possibilities such a 'baumraum' can give you. It's an awesome sleeping place, you can use it as a terrace and have a drink while the sun sets on that warm summer day or you can make it into a place where you can break away from the stressful day-to-day life.

-jdh

Sweet Solar Panel Building in Williamsburgh!

I was walking around Williamsburgh last weekend and came across this brand new building on Metropolitain.

It appears that some delightfully clever architect has clad the southern face of the building in a gorgeous set of solar panels! How clever.

I wish I knew more. (If anyone lives near there, would you be so kind as to snap a pic and send it in?)

I think it looks great, and I'm very curious how much power it will generate.

Must investigate further!

In the meantime, I checked on Google maps and found that we can do a tasty little before-and-after.

Before.

After!

Double-sweet. If you are near, why not go check this place out? Please tell us who the builder and architect are.

Here is map, go find.

Hotel Experimenta

A hotel usually gives you everything you need to get through your day. A bed, a bathroom and preferably a bit of food. So theoretically you don't have to get out of the hotel building to survive.

With this idea Dutch designer Jan Konings created Hotel Experimenta. It's consists out of just one room, but that one room has a view.

What appears to be a blue/green colored box with a vague purpose turns out to be a hotel. As Konings himself calls it "an inverted hotel", you can't stay in to get your breakfast; you have to get out.

The moment you make your reservation for Hotel Experimenta the streets turn into the hotel corridors, the city becomes the lobby and the city's inhabitants facilitate the activities and guest services.

As it's name says, Hotel Experimenta is an experience. It's part of a design exhibition in Amsterdam which is stretched throughout the city, and reservations are welcome until 2 November.

Hotel Experimenta

-jdh

Travelodge: revolutionizing your average hotel

Take a look at this photograph for a moment.

It looks like an average harbor or other place where big amounts of shipping containers are stacked, not? Well nothing is what it seems because this is actually a hotel in the making.

Yes indeed, with the use of shipping containers this Travelodge hotel is the first one to be built so incredibly fast. In fact, it was built in just 20 days. Located in Uxbridge, a London outskirt, this hotel offers a rough 120 rooms rated at 50 pounds each.

Some minor point about the thing is that the containers are brand new, it would have been fabulous if they had been used before. But anyway, Travelodge says that it is possible to melt the containers to steel if it's broken down. But why isn't it possible to reuse them just as your regular container? Hmmm.. anyway, here's a picture of what it looks like right now.

Looks pretty cool, especially if you keep in mind that the thing has been built in under a month time!

-jdh

FabPreFab: Modernist PreFab Housing!

(pictured is kitHAUS's K3 Module)


Morning All,

SuperForester Jon, (who is truly a fountain of great information,) just sent us word of FabPreFab.

In a nutshell, FabPreFab is a newsletter you can sign up for that keeps you informed about Modernist Prefabricated Housing.

Like the Zero House.


Or Alchemy Architects weeHouses.


Or H-Haus's Cube Series


Prefabrication = Made ahead of time.

So much time and energy is saved when housing is factory constructed, then shipped and assembled in place. Truly, a build that could take months and months could be done over a week, or even hours. Prefab is smart and clean.

Watch:



There you see the 2.5 hour build time for the Hive B-Line prefab house. Yes, more time was needed to build the foundation, but a two and a half hour assembly time? Cripes, that's fast!

Want to be on the FabPreFab list? Click here.

Love to all the thinkers thinking.

Special thank to Jon for the great intel.

-Team SuperForest

Kielder Observatory; observe the stars without doing harm

For my whole life I've been interested in the universe for a bit. Just a bit. But I've never been much into observatories and such. However, a few minutes ago I got a damn good reason to be.

It's named the Kielder Observatory and it's located in the UK. A few years ago some amateur astronomers wanted a new centre to watch their precious stars and a design competition was held. Charles Barclay and his fellow architects won

Above one of the early sketches. The building is almost entirely made up of Douglas-fir, so a woody structure.

More importantly it's claimed to be self-sustainable. The power need is fulfilled by a load of solar panels and a wind turbine which generates a rough 2.5 kW. Also there are placed composting toilets inside to forsee the astronomers in their sanitary needs. (To be completely honest, I visited wikipedia to learn what a composting toilet is. In fact it's a pretty simple application. Such a toilet manages to convert human waste into compost.) That's what I call self-sustainability!

Furthermore the Kielder observatory is the perfect example that an eco-friendly building can look good. (Damn good in my opinion).

Some more pictures through Dezeen.

-jdh

GreenPIX

With the Olympic Games coming up China almost reaches the headlines daily. Most of the time because of pollution and such things. However, thanks to a couple of bright New York architects this harmful trend can be put to a halt.


They designed a brilliant media appliance called GreenPIX (short for GreenPixel). The system stores solar energy while the sun is shining, and when darkness comes in there's illumination (like in the picture).
It's also called the zero energy media wall. Currently one of the first 'walls' is installed in Bejing, not far away from the site where the Games will be held (it's actually shown in the picture).
I hear you think, "what is the use of something like that?". For starters it's a nice piece of art, and furthermore it offers possibilities for the future. Imagine Times Square running on the sun, with not a single solar cell visible.
And at last, such an awesome piece of sustainable technology is inspiration for anyone brainstorming about being green.

-jdh

People I Love: Lot-Ek

Lot-Ek is an architecture and design firm right here in NYC. They specialize in rethinking existing structures and using pre-built objects as source materials.
I can't pronounce their name (Lot-eck? Low-tech?) but I can say I love their stuff!

Like their Recycled Airplane Library, which uses decommissioned fuselages as rooms.




Or their signature line of Container Houses built from retrofitted shipping containers.






And check out some of their amazing objects!

Like the Theater For One, a performance space where one actor performs for one viewer.



Or their Lightscapes



Or the TV Light



For these and other fantastical things, visit: lot-ek.com


Large and small, there seems to be little they cannot do.

If you are thinking of having a house built, or an office, re-done, or you need somehting designed, why not give a shout out to good ol' Lot-Ek, right here in NYC.

Eco-Cities

Okay, I have two very important names for you to remember:

Ready?

Dongtan and Masdar.

What are Dongtan and Masdar?
Our planets first two eco-cities. That's right, carbon neutral, energy EXporting, green cities. Right here on planet Earth.

Dongtan is in China, while Masdar is near Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

This is such an exciting time to be alive! The end of the fossil fuel era! The dawn of the Solar-Electric era!
Living today is like living at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but with better hair and less cholera.
No, I'm serious. With the rapidly evolving Global conciousness, and the incredibly exciting work being done with DNA and stem cells, plus the commercial exploration of space, the Earth is like San Fran at the start of the Gold Rush.

Alright, I'm mixing my metaphors here, but in ten years time you could move to and reside in a city that consumed no external power, had no waste, a city powered solely by the sun.

Life is sweet.


Masdar.
The Masdar Energy Co's site


Dongtan.
The Dongtan Dev. site

Wiki: Dongtan
Wiki:Masdar
treehugger article on Dongtan.
treehugger article on Masdar.

Swedish Wind!

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I'm talking about wind power!

The New York Times has a cautious article on Sweden's big push towards an all-renewable energy infrastructure.

Now, wind power does have its naysayers, (although, I've yet to meet one,) but wind power's plusses here so far outweigh its minuses, I say when it comes to nice, clean turbines heating my bath water and providing me light to read, the more the merrier.

Here's the article: nytimes.com



Which would you prefer in your backyard?
Coal Power.


Wind Power.


Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

-Jackson