Tag Archives: green homes

25+ Shipping Container House Plans

Container homes are a very popular trend in design and architecture today. Using a storage container as a living area might seem like a wild idea, but you might be surprised at just how practical it can be. Modern shipping container homes are so sophisticated that they even rival the traditional home. You can have…

Cheap Off-Grid Cabin Built For Under $300

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…

Visit A Small Writer’s Shed & Haven In London

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…

On The Smaller Side Of Houses, Meet GreenPod

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….

Welsh Designer Creates Portable And Sustainable Homes

Mark Waghorn is a Welsh architect who has designed two homes that conform to the Wales One Planet Development guidelines for sustainable homes.

Panama Jungle Features Plastic Bottle Village

Far south, a few degrees north of the Equator, the plastic bottle is being smartly repurposed as a residential building insulation material. We visit Panama, where on an 83-acre jungle locale, 90 to 120 planned homes will be insulated by thousands of plastic bottles which have been recovered from the waste stream. The individual behind…

Hobbit House Micro-Community Growing In Washington

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…

Chicago Tiny House Design Competition Winners

Winner of the tiny house competition

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…

Team Orange County Focuses On SoCal Issues In Solar Decathlon 2015

Team Orange County's entry into Solar Decathlon 2015

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…

New York City Team DURA Designs Stackable Post-Disaster Home for Solar Decathlon 2015

DURA House, designed and built by NYC College of Technology

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…

Seattle’s NEXTHouse, by David Vandervort (Gallery)

Since we announced SunPower’s $16,000 December giveaway, we’ve gotten a few emails about the home pictured in the article. That’s the ultra-green NEXTHouse designed by David Vandervort- a 3 bed, 2.5 bath home and shop built in Seattle, Washington. Designed to be an supremely energy-efficient home, the NEXTHouse features a number of “green” technologies like…

Skinny Houses Adapt to Site Constraints

One of the most important decisions that gets made when designing a building, if not THE most important decision, is where to build it.  Site conditions can affect how big a house is, its shape, its orientation across cardinal directions, and- as such- how energy efficient the home has the potential to be. The skinny…

Pre-Cut Steel Buildings Snap Together Like Legos

Architects admire steel framed house

The flexibility and simplicity of steel framing systems draws many clients because there are no interior load-bearing walls, so remodeling or reconfiguring rooms when needs change is a snap. “When children leave at 28, you can easily knock down walls.  And when they return at 32 you can erect them again,” BONE founder and president…

Shipping Container Home Can Triple In Size

G-pod Shipping Container Home

There have been a plethora of posts about shipping containers hitting the web recently – and why not? Shipping containers are cheap, durable, and available– and are as easy to ship as a traditional RV.  This particular shipping container home is a bit different, though: it can expand! Designed by G-pod, a Hong Kong and…

Prefab Bioclimatic House Made Entirely of Wood

Bioclimatic prefab house exterior

Take a look at this beautiful prefab home, with wood structure and finishes, featured on ArchDaily. The commission had very clear premises: very tight budget, deadlines, and an energy-efficient construction – it inspired this prefab bioclimatic house, fashioned to Passivhaus energy demand standards. The architect, Alventosa Morell Arquitectes, decided to design a completely prefabricated wooden…