When Marc Porat bought the craftsman home built by the 20’s artist and architect Pedro de Lemos in 1936, he completely upgraded the home to PassiveHaus Net Zero energy standards, to demonstrate just what is possible, even with energy-inefficient housing stock.

Marc  is the co-founder of the only US company already building windows to PassivHaus standards of insulation. His company, Serious Materials began by innovating much more energy efficient and eco-friendly sheet rock, and has expanded to include “serious window insulation” …

What do you do with a bathroom that measures only about 16 square feet? Obviously, you won’t be  installing double sinks!
But actually, there are a number of other things you can do to give a small bathroom the appearance of more space, and to make it more functional as well. A few visual tricks can make a bathroom feel more spacious while a few storage solutions can make your bathroom appear larger and function better.
1. Install good light. Nothing opens up a room faster than good lighting. In the case …

ModCell is a British company that has come up with a very unique product that mixes pre-industrial  straw-bale building with a decidedly post-modern sensibility – by creating a building technique using prefabbed panels incorporating sustainable straw-bales.

But because straw bale construction is so unfamiliar to many people, researchers at the University of Bath arranged for a demonstration straw house to be outfitted with sensors to show how the technique is safe and effective: you can contact Balehaus@Bath for details.
Because straw can be grown …

1. Wow! What an easy way to let kids get a lot of exercise in a very tiny space. Simply attach a slide to the side of the stairs!

2. A bed that can’t be outgrown: this former baby crib simply becomes a sofa-cum-lions-den as the baby outgrows it!

3. A chair designed by Architect Michelle Kauffman – designer of the gorgeous Glide House prefabs, with a twist. This chair is actually made entirely  of Kauffman-designed building blocks. Just the thing to bring out the creativity in your budding architect!
This is …

Here’s, literally, a treehugger’s house.
It is built on a steep sloping grade which made it possible to set the main level of the house up into the tree canopy, to evoke the feeling of being in a tree house.
Extending out into the forest canopy, the recently completed Wilkinson Residence seems to disappear into its surroundings.

The musician client wanted a house that not only became part of the natural landscape but also suggested the flow of music…

…And this lovely house truly moves through the forest setting like a piece of music …

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 Caesars 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 …

U of Kansas grad students have just completed their chic Buffalo House in Kansas City, Kansas, 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 …

VisionDivision has an innovative entry in the Design for the Children competition to design a sustainable and culturally responsible pediatric clinic in the hostile environment of the desert of East Africa. Here is what inspired their entry:

“When we saw this competition, we felt urged to create a proposal. Insufficient water is one of the most severe problems in rural Africa. For many families it is extremely time consuming to collect and can easily start conflicts between…
….villages. We had an idea that we should create a dew/rainwater collector as a roof …

The deep Butterfly Roof

The traditional gabled roof that we are all familiar with was engineered to slough off snowfall. But in an uncertain post peak oil future of possible energy shortages and water shortages, more and more houses are showing up with roof-shapes engineered to harvest their own rainwater, and support solar power generation.

This creates a butterfly roof, the opposite of the traditional gable. Kangaroo House in increasingly drought ridden Australia has the same distinctive roof shape, for the same reasons.
This design for a zero energy house on the coast of …

I received a note from someone the other day asking how much it would cost to add a room to an existing house. She was interested in the “cost per square foot” for budgeting and planning purposes. She also asked what the best options might be. Figuring the cost of building a new house based on a cost per square foot is a tough thing to do because there are so many variables. Additions are even tougher to estimate. You could spend anywhere from $100 per foot to over $1000 …