This is an Orange Alert for all you West Siders living L.A. The center of our green universe is about to lose it’s anchor. I am talking about Abbot Kinney, and all those greenish businesses which are starting to dominate the street. The anchor company epOxyGreen on the corner of Venice Blvd and Abbot Kinney is pulling up it’s roots and heading North. Well, only a few blocks North, to the traffic chocked artery of Lincoln Blvd. They are moving in with our friends at Sander Architects in the belly of the Orange Office. From the email Catherine sent over, it sounds like they leased the bottom two floors.
epOxyGreen over the last few years has transformed their business to focus on green design and home improvement. opOxyGreen grew out of opOxybOx which is a gallery and event spot. Some time ago, the gallery started filling up with green paints, bamboo floor samples and assorted furnishings. Now with a larger space and a prime location on one of L.A. busiest streets, maybe epOxyGreen is about to transform it’s self once again. Photos after the jump
I love a beautiful G bathroom where I can treat myself to some private, personal, spa- like luxury and nothing would go better in my dream bathroom than designer La Chanh Nguyen’s live Moss Carpet. My feet would feel worshiped if greeted by this beautiful patch of living moss after a nice bath.
The Moss Carpet elegantly lays nature at your feet. There are three types of moss (ball moss, island moss and forest moss) that go in a tray of imputrescible foam called plastazote.The humidity of the bathroom and the drops flowing from the body, water the mosses.
Aside from being gorgeous, practical and eco-friendly, you may also be able to derive some of the health benefits that studies have shown that walking barefoot on grass can have such as strengthening your immune system, improving circulation and lowering the risks of health problems such as arthritis.
But I mostly want one because it is incredibly cool.
Would you go to a hotel which has no rooms? A hotel designed using only 4 colors? A hotel which stacks it guest into pods to sleep for no more than 9 hours. If you have said yes to all the above, welcome to Hotel 9h Tokyo Japan
A home designed to live on the edge, literally. This house by Porto-based Correia/Ragazzi Aquitectos sits on the edge of many things. Edge of design, edge of a cliff and within the borders of a very special national park.
The owners, Mica and Eduardo Pinto Ferreira, have been Correia’s clients for more than a decade, and gave her carte blanche to create their dream house on the 5,000 square-meter site by the Cevado river – as long as no trees were cut and the 60 square-meter house (maximum allowed footprint for the site) was made of concrete. The house is located in Peneda-Geras National Park, along the Spanish border in northern Portugal, so the environment and its inviolability were crucial and the rules strict.
G Living started its life at a small desk tucked into the back corner of Sander Architects Venice California office. Starting our life inside the belly of an emerging green architecture firm, was very fulfilling and inspiring. I personally was able to see first hand, what a challenge it is to bring a building to life. Building anything in L.A. is difficult, now toss in innovative modern design ideas and green building materials and now you have something that will challenge even the best Architects.
So, when a special building like the Habitat 825 comes along it’s worth looking at in detail. This green leaning West L.A. Condo building was designed by LOHA Architects based in Culver City, just down the street from our current studio .
Habitat 825 draws inspiration from Schindler in developing new forms of contemporary lifestyle through the use of light, materials, color and common open space. This project provided an opportunity to address the critical issues of density, site and the cultural and social impacts that arise from building adjacent to a historical landmark. Attempting to “kick down the bamboo wall”, Habitat 825 and its expansive use of common open space creates an urban space without borders or property lines.
Even us gardeners with Black Thumbs, understands why plants love to live in green houses. They are basically no different than your average vacationer, they want to sunbath all day and be wrapped in a warm blanket of air? Wouldn’t it be nice if we humans could live in our own version of a green house. Something bathing in natural light, which always stays nice and toasty, even in the coldest of climates. Turns out we can do just that, even in a frigid place like Belgian, green houses are the perfect people growers. The home pictured above is a greenhouse in every sense of the word. As in a typical gardening greenhouse, this one is constructed from a prefabricated steel frame, alternating series of super-insulating transparent glass and translucent polycarbonate plates and extra insulation in the back of the house. The insulation in the back also serves the purpose of obscuring the views into the house.
Through the clever use of the insulating glass, the same heating effect that is found in a real greenhouse is successfully mimicked. This occurs when heat from the sun’s rays passes through the glass walls and warms up the interior whilst the insulation in the glass prevents the heat from escaping.
Pre-fab homes have been around for a while now, but here’s one worth watching on video. This design is called Mini Home, and as you can see, it’s well named. The design is basically a well-insulated trailer, with some smart design choices and green building materials. This trailer isn’t too different from a regular trailer you might find on a Texas lot, except for the materials and tasteful design. The one big difference is the cost. This trailer is coming in at $400 plus a square foot, which is amazingly high, even for a specialty trailer.
Here in L.A. the average house is coming in at $200 to $250 per square foot on the West Side, and the luxury ones are coming in at $350 to $500, depending on land cost and finishes. So, $400 for a small box is a lot. But with the economics aside, the idea is great and the intention is amazing. So, we hope the price can drop and the design expanded. We would love to see more sections working together to make up a whole house. Maybe two or three modules.
After the jump to the next page, there is a video by HGTV about the mini home. You get a full tour.
A cryptic club music pumping army of artist use shipping containers as a part of their building code DNA. I know, what? That is what I was thinking as I cruised the blog.platoon.org site. What I can gather from all the cryptic blog post and videos, is that this organization (Platoon), loves Shipping Containers, Military Clothing, Art and yes, having parties. To expand their parting capabilities they hooked up with Graft Lab Architects to design and build a new four story disco / art gallery out of their beloved shipping containers, in Seoul, Korea. The video above shows the building coming together and after the jump, a video of their original 3 container building. I love these guys. I think I may even start my own Platoon of G Container Heads.
In the world of Architecture, choosing to build your career and business on the leading fringe edge is a dangerous choice. Leaving the safety of the pack, just like in nature, might just prove to be unwise. So, when an Architect hangs out his shingle and declares, I will build my homes on a factory floor, he or she might just be committing business suicide. A few architecture firms over the last five years have done exactly that. They defined their business around a new way to be smarter, modern luxury custom homes, sustainably and most of all green. Predictably most of these companies have either failed already or are on the ropes. Higher start up cost, and the small pool of buyers is mostly to blame. This is why, when a company emerges successfully out of the start up phase and into full production, they definitely deserve a closer look.
One such company which has emerged out of the woods and seems to be on the road to success is Flatpak House, founded by Charles Lazor. Charles entered into the prefab housing market with a little more knowledge than most, since he is also a co-founder of Blu Dot, a flatpack modern furniture business. His approach to green prefab building is a little different than most of the other Architects as well. Instead of building the entire house in a factory, such as LivingHomes, and Office of Mobile Design, has done, he decided to build only the key components of the building. Using these components, the new home buyer could pick and choose which ones to use, like a giant lego set, to make their home. This flexibility is why Lazor calls his house “manufactured architecture” rather than prefab. (Also, like any good designer, he knows that naming, packaging, and marketing are essential to the success of a product.) “This way of designing is all about finding an answer to a problem,” he says, “rather than expressing the will of an architect. It’s the opposite of the individual genius model.”
Here is a very interesting interview we did with John Picard, one of the Advisors for the BP Oil company. His job was to help them go green. See how he explains their thinking at the time and how they changed the companies name for British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum. A name they thought would announce their new direction as world leaders in the new clean renewable energy market. Clean and green, is what BP wants to present, but reality is a whole other thing. Just ask the people living in the Gulf Coast.
John Picard is a name that you may not be familiar with… yet. This pioneer in sustainability has been quietly revolutionizing homes and businesses across the country. Here’s a brief history of his achievements:
– He started out as a builder and entrepreneur and is now a renowned building efficiency and sustainability expert.
- He was a core member of President Clinton’s “Greening of the White House” team.
- He’s president and founder of E2 Environmental Enterprises, whose clients include Microsoft, BP, eBay, Sony, Ford, The Gap, MGM, CAA and Live Earth, to name a few.
G / Video Okay I have been in search of a spicy raw cashew cheese recipe all day and just came across this video on making a cashew cheese by DeliciousRevolution, First time seeing her.
G / Style Beat the Heat With DIY Ice-Cube Bling You Can Make in 5 Minutes
G / Food how to roast an avocado and what to do with it when you do [5 ingredients]
G / Food Cashew Ricotta Cheese (No Tofu Needed, No Milk Needed) It’s light. It’s fluffy. It’s creamy. It’s ricotta cheese.
G / Style Sustainable fashion at its best. One garment, 20 ways to wear. Check out ecovogue 365′s Butterfli.
G / Food Botanical Recipe: Dill, Grated Cabbage, Red Radish & Sweet Pea Salad
G / Design It’s amazing how easy it is to now go completely leather free, with amazing leather like fabrics by Joseph Noble. They make a range of fabrics with feel better than leather and last longer
G / Food The Ultimate Sausage and Pepper Pizza – RAW It’s Rawfully Tempting!
G / Food Chocolate Fruit and Almond Bark – D E C A D E N T and H E A L T H Y! Sooo Rawfully Tempting!
G / Food The edible cups are made entirely out of agar agar (a gelatin substitute).
