Stunning Eco Home To Be First Andalusian Zero Carbon Footprint House!
Preston D K in Jetson Green
The team at Diseño Earle was kind enough to pass along some info and images of their stunning design of The Eco Home -- a knockout that's aiming to be the first 'zero carbon' footprint home in Andalucia, or even Southern Spain for that matter! D Earle designed the home with two objectives in mind: (1) zero carbon footprint, and (2) reduce operating costs to almost a self-sufficiency level. The 6995 sf home, which is absolutely enormous, will be built with 75% less waste than a traditional design and operate 80% more efficiently than a similar sized home. And although the home design was constrained by the narrow, non-flat site, you can tell there was no restraint in creating the ultimate, luxury, green pad.
Michael Pollan Interview “What’s Wrong with Environmentalism”
Beth Bader in Green Options
Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, discusses biofuels, the food crisis and the future of sustainability in this interview with Yale Environment 360. The new online green magazine is published through Yale University, and edited by Roger Cohn, the former editor of Mother Jones and Audubon.
Today's archidose #218
John in A Daily Dose of Architecture
Here's a few shots of The Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil by Alvaro Siza. Photos by Arqfeevale, who has many more shots of the building.
Montreal’s hotel boom
Chris Erb in Spacing Montreal
The Gazette reported today that, within the next couple years, Montreal will be home to Canada’s first location of the prestigious Waldorf=Astoria Hotel (artist’s rendition above) to be built at the corner of Guy and Sherbrooke: Local real estate company Monit Investments will spend $200 million developing and building the Waldorf=Astoria Hotel & Residence Montreal on what is now a parking lot it owns near Guy and Sherbrooke Sts.
Art Center Puts Gehry Building Plan on Hold—Or Not
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
Earlier this month, we told you about the tensions a-brewing at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and seriously flustering students, faculty, and alumni, many of them not averse to a good petition or two. Hanging in the balance were ambitious plans for the school's expansion, which were to include a $50 million design research center designed by Frank Gehry and championed by the Art Center's controversial yet charismatic president, Richard Koshalek. What a difference a week or so makes! "The Art Center thing has blown up and fizzled out, and they are not renewing Richard's contract," UnBeige editor emeritus Alissa Walker tells us. Further complicating the blowup and fizzle, the school announced that the Gehry building plan was off, only to declare yesterday that the board of trustees had confirmed "the school's commitment to going forward with its pending application to obtain zoning in Pasadena for its Hillside Campus Master Plan." We're still confused but direct you to Alissa's roundup in The Architect's Newspaper for the full scoop on the players, issues, and architecture involved.
Metal Shutter Houses / Shigeru Ban
David Basulto in Arch Daily
Starchitects are all over New York, giving an extra value to new condos in Manhattan. A few months ago i visted the Herzog & de Meuron and Bernard Tschumi projects on the lower east side, and they looked quite impressive. While most people didn’t liked the Tschumi’s Blu Condo, despite it’s iconic image, i had mixed feelings with HdM’s 40 Bond St. But on West Chelsea a new 9 unit condo is under construction, designed by japanese Shigeru Ban. The project is located on the south side of West 19th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues in West Chelsea’s art gallery district, right next to the High Line, the Hudson River Park, Ghery´s IAC Building and Jean Nouvel´s 100 11th.
Vacant space vs. New development
Merten Nefs in Projetos Urbanos
The Dutch “New Map” joins planning information of all municipalities in the Netherlands and gives a rather good idea of what the country will look like 10 years from now. Another project, called “The Old Map of the Netherlands”, gathered information on vacant lots and buildings. When these two maps are put together, one finds that most vacant spaces are actually located outside the new development of housing, offices, commerce and leisure. This means that the potential of vacant space remains unused in Dutch urban planning. It also means there is still a bright future for squatting movements, just pick up the list and go…
Bibbly-O-Tek
owen hatherley in sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy
What should a library look like? What are its functions, what spaces does it need, and what should it (sigh) symbolise? I'm writing this next to Charles Holden's Senate House. A portland stone skyscraper built in the late 1930s, it is best known as one of those urban-myth 'Hitler's headquarters' (there were a few), and was certainly the inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministry of Truth. Hearteningly, the actual content of this block is mainly educational, including two floors devoted to the University of London Library, which, if Market Stalinists have their way, will become fee-paying, thus shoving more people into the already cramped British Library up the road. When I was working in there on my MA, I loved the narrow alcoves, the endless Kafka corridors, the strange views - all free, unlike hoity middlebrow antiquarian arsehole-fests like the London Library.
Interesting Character, David Fisher, Wants to Build Twisting Tower in Dubai
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
Sometimes where it's a slow morning for design news, we head to our go to solution: Dubai. Only there can you immediately find something strange to talk about. Case in point, it's being reported that occasional architect David Fisher, who has never designed a skyscraper before, has decided that he wants to construct an 80-story building in Dubai that will rotate and twist and spin on command and will have extra amenities like wind turbines sticking out everywhere and elevators that will lift cars all the way up to people's apartments, no matter what floor they're on. All of it sounds just completely insane, including Fisher himself, but then you remember that it's Dubai, so the building will likely exist by next year.
For whom the bell tolls
Geoff Manaugh in BLDGBLOG
Earlier this week, the Long Now Foundation looked at earthquake dampers inside skyscrapers, focusing specifically on Taipei 101 – a building whose unanticipated seismic side-effects (the building's construction might have reopened an ancient tectonic fault) are quite close to my heart.
As it happens, Taipei 101 includes a 728-ton sphere locked in a net of thick steel cables hung way up toward the top of the building. This secret, Piranesian moment of inner geometry effectively acts as a pendulum or counterweight – a damper – for the motions of earthquakes.
Canada’s Shimmering Solar Collector Sculpture
Mike Chino in Inhabitat
Earlier this week Cambridge, Canada welcomed a stunning new interactive sculpture that casts a shimmering set of lights against the night sky. Constructed atop a sun-dappled hill, Gorbet Design’s Solar Collector sweeps the skyline as a gracefully ascending corona of light-laced beams. The interactive installation serves as a conduit for both solar energy and creative input, soaking up sunlight and simple web-based controls throughout the day. Upon nightfall the installation synthesizes its stored reserves into a glimmering light show.
Juan Herreros (from former Abalos & Herreros) won the 2nd place on the international competition for the new builings of the CEA Cadarache Research Center. Long buildings reduce the impact of the construction in order to keep the forest density.
From the architect´s description:
The project consists of five pieces of architecture located in a forest rich in biological activity. We have con-
cluded of our visit to the site, that the best option is to inhabit the forest without exceeding their height, making architecture as a new species that respects, protects and enhances the forest, until create a new balanced system in which buildings and trees are sharing rights and obligations. With this we will not competing with the size nor the presence of a large reactor or reduce the value of the ecosystem of a wooded garden at the foot of the buildings.
Our deployment strategy is compromised to build without altering the conditions of the forest, to inhabit the forest without violence creating a symbiotic architecture with its microclimate and its density. To do so, we are disclaiming to open large breaks on the continuity of natural cycles and are proposing to build linear buildings of optimum and constant width that occupies corridors from which have been lifted only the required trees, allowing the maximum proximity of the remaining facades. The original density of the forest will always be present and architecture appears filtered through the foliage.
International Private Competition: Second Place
Client: C.E.A.
Architect: Juan Herreros Arquitectos
Project Director: Juan Herreros Guerra, Jens Richter
Collaborators: Verónica Meléndez, Paola Simone Structure: INTECSA-INARSA S.A, INGENIERIE STUDIO S.A.S Sustainability: CENER (Florencio Manteca) Graphics: Jens Richter Constructed Area: 23,410 sqm
Hopefully you're eating good, hanging out with friends and family, and enjoying this day that we celebrate. Keep it real, keep it careful, and we'll be back with you as always tomorrow morning.
Architects: 3LHD
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
Project team: Saša Begović, Marko Dabrović, Silvije Novak, Tatjana Grozdanić Begović, Irena Mažer, Marin Mikelić
Collaborators: Paula Kukuljica, Lucija Staničić, Marija Babojelić
Project: 2004
Construction: 2005-2007
Site area: 687 sqm
Gross floor area: 396 sqm
Footprint: 159 sqm
This family house for a couple with children is located in the green residential part of the city of Zagreb. The former family house was built in the 1950s on a steep hill slope and did not fully use all the advantages of the site nor did it meet the requirements of contemporary living standards. The beautiful view to the city and large garden was not valued appropriately.
On both sides the site is bordered by a street and a high building. These contextual facts determined the concept and the shape of the new project. The “L” layout with closed fronts “protect” the house from the street and the neighbouring building. At the same time the garden has been redesigned with all the main rooms in the house oriented towards it.
The living room, dining room and kitchen form a unique space and together with a swimming pool are built into the ground. In this way, being at the same level and separated from each other by a glass wall they bring the garden into the house. The house entrance is above, at street level, together with garage, storages, closet-space and studio. The family area is above the entrance space along with the living and dining rooms.
The materials used for the façades correspond to the spatial organisation of facilities. The living and dining spaces are separated by glass walls which completely open the living space to the outside; on the other hand, the bedroom walls are alternatively panelled by wooden boards.
Forget the fact that I lived in Japan and absolutely love its culture, I didn't know that Toyota had a homes unit. And they've been in the business of making homes for over twenty years! The company adapts automobile manufacturing technology to build stylish, earthquake-resistant homes for sale within Japan. The Toyota Homes unit accounts for only .5% of the company's $262 billion in annual sales, and Toyota would like to beef that up a little bit. Plus, with the roll-out of the plug-in hybrid beginning in 2010 (remember all that discussion here about solar homes and plug-in hybrids replacing gas stations?), Toyota would like to do more with their environmentally-friendly, prefabricated homes.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Toyota Homes are built from six or more modules in under 45 days. They have a conservative home model called the Smart Stage that sells for $200k. It's about a 1000 sf, two-story home. There's also a more expensive, custom-built 2600 sf home that sells for around $800k. Toyota Homes are strong and guaranteed for about 60 years, which is twice the average lifespan of a home in Japan.
As you might imagine, homeowners are also Toyota car owners.
The company sold 5000 homes in 2006 and 4600 homes in 2007 (due to the housing slump). But what's interesting about that number is that it shows how effectively homes can be manufactured using the same techniques that are used in the auto industry. And the Toyota Homes unit is profitable, too. That's some pretty incredible scale, if you ask me.
Plus, imagine the purposeful relationship of a plug-in Prius, Toyota Home with solar panels, and technology that charges the car during off-peak hours. If you can do this, you're not only going to stick it to the oil man, but you're going to stick it to the coal man, too. I like those odds.
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