Category Archives: Green Building
19
Mar
Mar
LEED Certification tells customers and employees that you have been intentional about lowering the carbon footprint of your new or renovated structure.
30
Dec
Dec
It’s more important than ever before to protect and heal the environment, which is why you will start seeing these 13 green building trends popping up everywhere in both commercial and residential spaces. There is a special and serious focus on sourcing sustainable building materials and discovering new clean energy sources. Check out these hot…
05
Jul
Jul
Clean boilers offer another element in the sustainable home toolkit and help to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
27
Sep
Sep
Rural Studio in Alabama has spent a decade perfecting the design of a tiny house that will cost less than $20,000 to build, including labor. Their first prototype was completed in January.
29
Aug
Aug
Alyssa Craft and Jesse Stafford completed a cheap off-grid cabin-add-on to the trailer they are living in while setting up their homestead in the Western US. The cabin was built to allow them to heat the air around the trailer and prevent the plumbing, and themselves, from freezing during the snowy winter months. The majority…
10
Aug
Aug
Bamboo is a truly remarkable green building material. It’s twice as strong as concrete and slightly stronger than steel. It’s also a renewable resource that needs little energy to grow, prevents soil erosion, provides biomass, offers wildlife refuge, and produces a healthy food supply for both wildlife and humans. Offering significant remediation from the effects…
09
Aug
Aug
A visit to Surman Weston reveals a delightful small writer’s shed situated in the heart of London. Surman Weston has indicated their firm was “…commissioned by an author and illustrator to design & build a ‘writer’s shed’ in the borough of Hackney. Capitalizing on their multi-disciplinary backgrounds the firm acted as designers, project managers, and lead…
05
Aug
Aug
Originally published on EdenKeeper.org Constructed with an eagle’s loft in mind, a newly renovated eco-lodge in South Africa offers a bird’s-eye view from a well-feathered nest. Overlooking lush vistas of Kruger National Park wildlife refuge, the view is so vast you might easily be inspired to sing a hymn in praise of Creation. Singita Lebombo…
12
Jul
Jul
A recent visit to treehugger has provided us with a great resource for the smaller side of the housing spectrum: GreenPod. It appears modular and prefab homes are finally gaining some mainstream traction, states treehugger author Kimberley Mok. For people interested in getting an eco-friendly home relatively quick, going prefab can be an easier route with less headaches….
24
Jun
Jun
The Thermoslate solar thermal system from Spanish slate company Cupa Pizarras is worth observing. Here’s why: a structure’s slate roof can absorb a massive amount of heat and because of this stone, it has good thermal mass and holds it for some time, reports treehugger. In the Thermoslate system, slate roof tiles are integrated with thermal cells…
18
Jun
Jun
HUmanihut is an Australian start-up company that makes refugee shelters that are highly portable and durable. They contain sanitary facilities as well as living and sleeping quarters.
11
Apr
Apr
For those ready to build a net-zero home, Acre, might be a good place to start looking. The Acre website states this company addresses architecture and construction from an entirely new perspective. “We want to replace today’s out-of-date houses with innovative, attainable, high-quality homes that are better for people and the planet. Our goal is to give families…
04
Apr
Apr
Inspired by the earth-sheltered tiny homes, often called Hobbit Houses, created by Simon Dale and others, designer, dressmaker and tiny house expert Kristie Wolfe is building a micro-community of three houses in Chelan, Washington. The first Hobbit Home is complete, and Wolfe hopes to have the other two done by the middle of 2016. Wolfe’s…
24
Mar
Mar
The winners of the Chicago AIA’s tiny house design competition were announced recently. Launched in November 2015, the competition solicited entries to address young adult homelessness in Chicago as part of the Tiny Homes Summit. The winning entry, “A House for Living In,” is composed of 11 336-square-foot units and one interior community space gathered around…
11
Feb
Feb
Auburn University’s design team at Rural Studio has achieved the lofty goal of building affordable houses for somebody living below the poverty line. Here’s how: The team did so by completing two pilot project houses priced at $20,000 apiece. Materials for the homes totaled $14,000 each. The Design Challenge For over a decade, architecture students at…
13
Sep
Sep
Team Orange County’s entry into this year’s Solar Decathlon addresses some of the issues found in the Southern California home market, including the use of solar energy and landscaping without water. Casa del Sol, as their entry is called, is inspired by the resilient and diurnal characteristics of the California poppy. It is designed with…
07
Sep
Sep
One of the teams in this year’s Solar Decathlon, is from New York City’s College of Technology. This team focused on the issue of providing disaster housing that can be easily transported and stacked, if needed, to provide a high density of housing in a small footprint. Team DURA (Diverse, Urban, Resilient, Adaptable) created a…
20
Aug
Aug
We still live in a time when we do plenty things that are very harmful to our planet. It seems we’re all aware that fossil fuels like oil and coal create a considerable portion of our greenhouse gas pollution. But many people don’t understand that we also do a lot of harm to our planet with…