A simple but charming loft apartment that takes advantage of high ceilings to get a lot out of a little space is shown at Loving.living.small, a blog covering small spaces. Above the front door, there needs to be a low ceiling – to create an entry transition that contrasts with the expanded ceiling height once you are inside. So, what to do with that wasted space? That hides the bedroom!

Squeezed into this tiny mews townhouse, space is at a premium.

The huge windows bounce light into the kitchen at the front …

…and a lot of heavy equipment! Tire bales are already used in building roads and levies and other cheap construction.
But that use is almost a waste considering the energy efficiency of the material. Walls built with these are rated between R-40 at a minimum and – by some calculations: up to R-200! Why not build your eco dream home with such energy misers?

Tire bales are packed into bundles of 100 old discarded tires, packed into heavy bales – five foot square bundles that are 2.5 feet high and weigh a …

A tranquil and refreshing design for a gorgeous and carbon neutral seaside Singapore house suggests not just the undulating movement of swimming fish, but makes reference to other cooling notions. But it is not all just beauty and grace.
Under this elegant home by Guz Architects is an incredibly innovative and simple tech cooling concept that I don’t think I’ve ever seen used before.

The green roof is an accessible roof deck open to the ocean breezes. Beneath it are the kitchen and the dining areas. The second billowing roof behind it …

I’ve noted before how the design vernacular is changing as we start to design for a climate changed future. Architecture is about the future, and has to protect us from what the future holds. Thus we see changes in the architectural design vernacular, with everything from butterfly roofs to catch water in the tropics, to adaptation to unstable melting permafrost in Alaska.

Another change in the design vernacular comes from the new cleaner energy sources that we can now use to try to head off …

Folksy Motel 6 spokesman Tom Bodet has long had a signature message, intoned in his folksy gruff voice: “I’ll leave the light on for you” at the economical chain of motel 6s throughout the USA.

But now the new message might need to change.  A much greener “our lights sense when you’re there and when you leave, and turn-off automatically when you don’t need them so they won’t waste energy…”

“…and our water-efficient showers and toilets save precious water too” – just doesn’t have …

There’s many ways to be green. One of the more overlooked is simple space reduction. Jakarta-based Chrystalline Architect designs a miniscule footprint with no windows into an elegant spacious  apartment for Mr Chou, who adores entertaining.

To make his guests feel like part of a bigger gathering, the dining room table is set into the mirror wall, appearing to levitate. Fun. An amusing joke. Wood floors throughout are sustainably harvested.

And who would guess that the dishes will be washed up here in what appears to be a hip …

Elegance like this doesn’t just happen. Fairies don’t make these sublime shapes. How are they made?

With brute force! But, that’s only after French/Dutch designer Francois Dumas has first warmed the rods to make “Sealed Chair”…. in, where else – his oven!

Once the rods have been warmed and softened in the oven, then, this Rube Goldberg-like contraption shapes the plastic rods by applying heat in strategic spots to melt the shape into the memory of the plastic rod.

Dumas likes to let the design indicate how it was …

Here in Northern California, most people simply don’t use pool covers. Yet the wasted energy it takes to heat pools is mostly wafted into the air because of evaporation. This means that heating pools is one of the largest expenses in a home, to say nothing of the greenhouse gases created if you are running a fossil fuel to warm the water.   That is all wasted.
People are skittish about laborious pool covers. But instead of laboring over a giant cumbersome pool cover, these light weight five foot individual pool cover …

Sweden’s Michael Johansson takes all that (always originally much needed! useful! desirable!) stuff that has taken over our lives.
Then he forcefully gets it under control, compacting it tightly into packed cubes of stuff, like his Rubik’s Kitchen, shown above. His work was shown at Copenhagen’s ‘Meaning of Void’ at Galleri Christoffer Egelund last month.

In A Stroll Through Space and Time, and his other pieces, he meticulously stacks and interlaces the disparate items to create highly composed, compact volumes and narrative assemblages.
Of course you …

The Benedictine Women of Madison just received the highest rated LEED Platinum rating in the US (63 out of 69 possible points) for their new monastery, Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison.

It was almost 100% recycled out of the former monastery there. Nine tons of building material were donated to Habitat ReStore, 8,628.6 tons were recycled, including the concrete which was crushed as a base for parking and paths and sculpted into berms, interspersed with porous concrete for capturing runoff rainwater. Only 12.5 tons went to …