Could you ever imagine being envious of people who live in Shipping Containers? Well, now you can, because the Cove Park project is just that good. A dreamy water side home complete with a grass roof.
Cove Park is a centre for established artists situated on the west coast of Scotland in 50 acres of spectacular countryside.
In 2002, Container City created three en-suite accommodation units (known as ‘cubes’) to act as artist retreats. In order to blend into the rural surroundings sliding glass doors were installed that lead out onto the decked balcony that extends over a lake with beautiful views of Loch Long.
Due to the success of the first three units, three more have been commissioned and are due for completion in June 2006.
Cove Park is situated on a 50-acre site overlooking Loch Long on the Rosneath peninsula. Located on the fringes of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, the peninsula is an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Another Shipping Container Concept Home. This one is by Zigloo a firm out of Canada. We have covered some of their designs in the past, including a really cool Floating Ocean City. This concept design is made from three shipping containers, to create a 800 sq. ft. home in the country side or an urban infill. The architect says he would like to deliver these home at around $150 per sq ft.
(via zigloo.ca) The WelcomeHome totals 800 square feet on a small footprint. Perfect for a get-away cottage, a quick guest home, an environmental infill solution. The design lends itself perfectly to an off-the-grid solution utilizing wind power, solar power, solar hot water, passive air circulation organic spray-foam insulation and a green roof.
We’ve written about urban farms before, how the future of farming might rely on giant skyscrapers, using hydroponics or other systems to feed our growing cities. New York Magazine has decided to do a feature on this as well, and has named it Skyfarming.
(via nymag.com) "A Columbia professor believes that converting skyscrapers into crop farms could help reduce global warming and make New York
Urban farming has always been a slightly quixotic endeavor. From the small animal farm that was perched on the roof of the Upper West Side’s Ansonia apartment building in the early 1900s (fresh eggs delivered by bellhop!) to community gardens threatened by real-estate development, the dream of preserving a little of the country in the city is a utopian one. But nobody has ever dreamed as big as Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University, who believes that “vertical farm” skyscrapers could help fight global warming."
The New York Magazine article is based on Dr. Dickson Despommier work and essay on Vertical Farming. He has recently updated his essay and we will include part of it here: Essay 2
Residence for a Briard came out of conversations with the owners who found an old bungalow in Culver City and initially considered a renovation. After discussions with architect Whitney Sander they realized that they could take advantage of his Hybrid House to build a ground-up duplex for only slightly more than the proposed reno budget.
The gauntlet they threw down: to build the greenest house that had ever come out of the Sander practice.
The third issue was Hobbes, the Briard for whom the home is named: not only a huge dog but a huge factor that influenced everything from stair design to finishing materials. This is an instance when it was important that a design “go to the dogs.” Hybrid House was one of the things that attracted the clients to the Sander. The firm’s strong design reputation was important too as the client is one of the founders of the Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles. The short list: very modern, very green, very dog friendly. Residence for a Briard is the greenest Hybrid House ever built. Strategies and materials include: greywater systems, passive heating and cooling strategies, cistern to capture rainwater for watering landscaping, recycled blue jean insulation, sunflower seed wall board, bamboo flooring, marmoleum, structural steel frames from recycled steel, and more.
Case Study House for the 21st Century? Continue Reading / See Additional Photos
Casa 205 on a hillside in Vacarisses, Spain. designed by H Arquitectes.
The setting of the project is a plot with steep slopes and a great amount of trees and bushes. The aim is building a house without causing any serious impacts on the land. The house will be built on a natural rocky platform. This platform will also be used as either the exit or the garden of the house. The architects and the property developers have agreed on minimizing land movements in order to build the artificial landscaped platforms. The target is to make good use of the existing land shelves. This will allow us to preserve the natural physiognomy of the wood. The only uneven area will be the path ramp, which will cross the piece of land diagonally. This artificial ramp will communicate the street with the different plot levels.
The inner layout of the house is based on a lineal sequence of rooms of different proportions linked to the structure. There are great sliding opened areas, which will provide both harmony and versatility. The house can work as an open-plan space or as individual, closed spaces.
Coming soon to a building near you: green! Starring: rooftop gardens! Natural lighting produced by: low-emmissivity glass! And introducing: natural ventilation! All helping to reduce the building’s operating costs by a glamorous thirty percent. And that sexy hilltop site won’t need a facelift — the architects, KMD in San Francisco, will only disturb ten percent of it during construction to reduce the impact it has on the natural landscape.
That’s hot — in an environmentally responsible sort of way.
Talking about the new headquarters for Cinepolis, the sixth largest movie multiplex chain in the world. It won’t make its debut in Los Angeles or New York. It’s not an innovation for a super-green city like Portland or Chicago. The Cinepolis Headquarters is a little further south, in Morelia, Mexico.
I’m not sure what I like more: the weeHouse website or the weeHouse itself. As far as prefabs go, the weeHouse is similar to the Micro-compact in that it arrives by truck, factory-built and ready to live in, and it can be set down just about anywhere. Even on your roof.
Framed in wood and steel and floored in sustainable bamboo, the house is can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. From the LiveRight studio apartment-sized to the 2 bedroom SleepTight, the weeHouse was “inspired by sustainable design principles such as building small and efficiently.” But unfortunately, that’s about as “G” as the wee gets in the base model. If wee want greener materials and systems (solar, a green roof, etc.) wee have to request them.
So, many of you might already know this, I am a product of the cow poking state of Texas. Yep, I know, it doesn’t seem possible, how could a good looking Twisted Green Juice Guzzling Black Monkie like me be from Texas? Well, I not from there, I was just trapped for a while. Most of my non-Monkie family still lives in Austin Texas, which just happens to be the greenest, most forward thinking city in that entire state. Austin is even the birth place of Whole Foods, how cool is that. So, when I saw this story about a green house made with Rammed Earth, in Austin, I had to post about it, even though it is not the type of place I would go for. It’s a very traditional designed home, and here at G Living we lean towards the sleeker modern side.
This 5000 sq. ft beast of a house is interesting because it uses one of the oldest building techniques know to man, Rammed Earth. Before humans ever figured out how to make concrete, they where using Rammed Earth, to build their cities, temples, and their high protective walls. By pounding a mixture of dirt, grass and clay between forms, ancient societies, build very efficient structures, which can stand for thousands of years. And since the rammed earth walls are so thick, they enable the buildings to maintain a steady temperature all year around.
We stumbled across a very cool green pre-fab building project in development in Italy, which shocking enough will only cost a little over $100k U.S.
Details from MC A
This research project explores the design of a 100m2 home that is low cost, high quality with zero CO2 emissions and a low environmental impact. A building that brings back the pleasure of living and repays the investment cost with the energy produced. The architectural design integrates photovoltaic panels, solar capture during the winter months, circulation of air in the summer months and other passive environmental strategies that render the residence a bioclimatic machine.
The building cost is kept to a minimum by using light and flexible pre-fabricated building systems: structural elements, integrated services, and mobile elements such as sliding-removable-supple wall panels for internal divisions in the apartments. External walls are made from modular panels. The material changes – glazed or opaque- creating an elevation that is dynamic materially and spatially integrating balconies, terraces and loggias. The structural framework allows a variety of apartment sizes adapting to the different spatial needs of the occupants.
A look back at Architects Whitney Sanders Briard House
Now that the rain is gone (for awhile, anyway) we are back on track. The prefabricated shell was completed six weeks ago, and the erection of Green Sandwich Technology panels, and rough framing inside, has filled up the time since.
These images show the green sandwich being installed. It’s an amaziung material: able to create tall buildings at a single bound… it almost arrivces with a cape. These panels are 28 feet tall, and were erected in ten days. The material also allows for on-site changes. For instance, this week we will add and subtract: literally. I will direct our installer to cut a bit here, add a bit there, to sculpt, quite literally, a 28-foot tall sculpture. What I am trying to do, recalling our original model:
Post by Sander Architects Client Thomas Small (The Briard House)
Hello and thanks for visiting! I am Thomas Aujero Small and along with Joanna and Hobbes, am one of the owners of this house. There is so much to say about this house and how we have all arrived at this point in time that I don’t know where to start. But maybe I should start with Whitney, as it really is entirely his fault. We never intended to build a house, at this stage in our lives. We wanted to move out of our town house and move up, modestly, into a different house, that we might improve or renovate. We searched and debated, over a couple of years. We decided on Culver City, as the last affordable place on the west side and looked seriously at a few properties. Our real estate agent, Colin Maduzia was a joy to work with and infinitely patient. We gradually discovered that the Rancho Higuera neighborhood was exactly what we wanted, and that Carson Street was excellent. Beautiful, mature laurel fig trees and wonderful old street lamps line the sidewalks of a long block that ends in a cul-de-sac. You can walk to downtown Culver City in ten minutes, and the Helms Bakery complex as well. The new transit station for the Expo Line of the light rail that will go downtown will also be built very nearby, hopefully within the next few years. So, location, location, location, we found a gorgeous, sustainable location. Walking, and public transit, what a surprise in central Los Angeles!
Post by Sander Architects Client Joanna Brody (The Briard House)
Hello everyone and thanks for visiting. I am Joanna Brody, one half of the Brody-Small client. I own a public relations firm that focuses on social and environmental causes and issues (www.brody-pr.com – shameless plug #1). Commissioning this house has been nothing short of an amazing experience and a total blast. When we tell people we are building a house, responses range from “I’ve always wanted to do that” to “I hope your marriage is strong” to “Are you still speaking to your architects?” Well, we are privileged to be able to do this, our marriage is stronger than ever, and not only do we still speak to our architects, we socialize with them on a regular basis and they have become dear friends! (www.sander-architects.com – shameless and totally deserved plug #2). And we have an amazing contractor to boot, Sean Icaza of Icaza Construction (shameless and totally deserved plug #3).
Now we gave this team some tough, tough criteria: A piece of art (Whitney only does art), green and inexpensive. It’s sort of like the saying – You want it fast, cheap and good? Pick two! Well our amazing team is succeeding on all three fronts. We have been blessed with a talented, creative and push-the-envelope group of architects, designers, builders and subcontractors who are excited to bring this project to life despite – or maybe because of – the ultra-challenging brief.
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