Housing Apartment Units Trending Smaller Nationwide with Washington, D.C. as an Exception

An interesting article in yesterday’s EcoHome Magazine, the official publication for The American Institute of Architects, states that the micro unit trend toward housing is continuing to expand in the United States-with exception in the nation’s capitol.  This downward trend in size impacts the amount of energy used to heat and cool the unit making for an apartment that is more eco-friendly and sustainable.

The average size of a newly delivered apartment unit in the U.S. is now at 982 square feet.  Cities seeing a reduction in apartment size include the Texas cities of Dallas and Houston, Denver and Seattle.  Seattle has seen a 200 square-foot drop in apartment size from approximately 950 to 750 square feet since 2005.

The only urban area that is seemingly increasing its apartment unit size is in Washington, D.C., according to the piece.

The Merging of Prefab, Sustainable Dwellings With Eco-Friendly Transport

We’ve written about houses made out of recycled shipping containers and we’ve also reported on prefabricated, yet sustainable homes.  We have not, however, seen the two concepts merged together:  an ecofriendly, architecturally forward residence shipped in just one eight foot by 40 foot container.  A recent article in Fast Company focuses on Connect Homes, a company started by two architects that addresses the former difficulty of getting prefab, sustainable homes to consumers at an affordable price point.

“What we discovered is that industry wide […] they use these really large modules that are basically as big as the roadways will allow,” said Jared Levy, co-owner of Connect Homes, to Fast Company. Levy said that previously the cost of transporting just one module of a home around the U.S. could cost approximately $25,000.  Many homes require more than one module, with some using up to 10 such units.

Connect Homes says it can fit almost the entire home in the container and ship it anywhere around the world for $5000.  In addition, their homes have such features including bamboo floors, LED lighting,  complete steel framing, and sustainably certified woods, according to the piece.  Rather than the homes being price prohibitive before because of parts made in different locations and expensive shipping fees, centralized production and cheaper transport costs allow the home to total a more price friendly $105,000 to $400,000 for a sustainable residence.

The company is still in a start-up phase but a model home was recently on display at Dwell’s Silicon Valley Home Tour.  Three homes have been sold so far with another five expected to sell within the next quarter.

Covetable Castles that Will Make Both Friend and Foe “Green” With Envy

If you are in the market for a mansion or palatial estate, there is no reason these days why these home cannot meet significant sustainable criteria.  The Business Insider’s Meredith Galante recently wrote an article on the 10 most beautiful eco-friendly luxury residences as compiled from research on Sotheby’s International Green Living section.  These homes either had “LEED certification, solar panels or other smart technology,” according to the piece.

So if you are in thinking about that manse in Tiburon, Calif., that 120 plus acre estate in Fortunago, Italy, living large Jersey style or beach villa in Mallorca, Spain, check out the article here.  

Happy daydreaming.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-beautiful-eco-friendly-luxury-homes-2012-10?op=1#ixzz29aQeYlAs

Celebrity Designer Furnishes Her Newborn’s Nursery With Eco-Friendly Products

Celebrity eco-friendly designer Robin Wilson’s creations have been featured in publications including Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, Town and Country, Essence and House Beautiful.  But the job most dear to her heart came when she designed her newborn baby girl’s nursery using  sustainable, non-toxic and recyclable materials, according to a recent piece in today’s Huffington Post.

Wilson used Aura, a low-VOC paint by Benjamin Moore for the room’s violet walls, Flor carpet tiles that can be easily switched out if stained and can be sent back to the manufacturer at the end of their “life-cycle” for recycling, her grandfather’s rocking chair and even a soy mattress for the crib with non-toxic, washable linens.

Wilson is the ambassador for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America and looks for healthier alternatives for her design clients in home furnishings.  She suffered with allergies as a child growing up in Austin, Texas.  She is the author of Kennedy Green House with the foreword passage written by environmentalist, Robert Kennedy Jr.  Check out Robin’s baby’s nursery in her New Jersey home below.

Hollywood Power Couple Buy An Eco-Friendly Home in California

English actress Emily Blunt and her actor husband John Krasinki purchased a $2.15 million home in Ojai, Calif. back in June that runs on renewable energy technology, according to an article on TMZ.com.

The four-bedroom, completely eco-friendly home is over 4,000 square-feet on five acres and has giant solar panels that powers the residence through the sun’s rays.  Formerly the site of the first Ojai Foothills Hotel in 1903, the couple can now hike on the property’s surrounding trails, walk to a farmers market in town or swim in the home’s brand new pool and spa.

Blunt is best known for her roles in The Devil Wears Prada and The Adjustment Bureau.  Krasinski has played the part of Jim Halpert on The Office since 2005.

The Winner of the Solar Decathlon Europe Is….

Team Rhone-Alpes from Ecole National Supérieure d’architecture de Grenoble, France has won the Solar Decathlon Europe 2012 in Madrid with its entry of Canopea, a part of a larger bunch of vertically grouped modular homes called “nanotowers,” according to an article on Mother Nature Network.  The home’s design is inspired by sun-absorbing, rainwater-catching tree canopies and is the team’s architectural response to the lack of housing space in urban areas across France.

Canopea took first place honors in the architecture component of the competition as well as in the innovation, house functioning and comfort conditions contests.  Bravo!

Sustainable Home Interest on the Rise Say American Architects

Over 50 percent of residential architects polled in a recent survey say they’ve seen an increase in client interest in energy management systems, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Daily News.  This growing interest in sustainability measures include solar panels and triple-glazed windows.

The Home Design Trends Survey was conducted by the American Institute of Architects.  Other notable findings are an uptick in accessible home layouts for an aging population and wireless communication systems as the desire for home offices and telecommuting grows.  Once in-demand home features such as saunas, exercise, fitness rooms and media/theater rooms are not as popular as before, according to the survey.

http://www.aia.org/press/AIAB096013

The Taos Greater Earthship Community

A cluster of homes nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico are part of a community of residences with an almost zero carbon footprint constructed from natural or recycled materials that include recycled glass bottles and aluminum cans for the foundation and walls of the house, according to an article on Fox News.

These off-grid, fully sustainable structures are called “earthships” and use solar or wind energy for power.  Rain is caught on the roof and “channeled through silt catches into cisterns, then gravity-fed into a water-organizing module with a pump and filter,” according to the piece. Waste water and sewage is drained and filtered through gray-water systems.  Food is grown onsite through vegetable beds and indoor food production areas.  Gas for cooking this bounty comes from propane tanks refilled annually.

Approximately 750,000 people live off the grid in the United States with the number increasing by 10 percent annually.

A Potentially Cheaper Alternative to Traditional Solar Roofing

An exciting new report released by researchers to the American Chemical Society last month states that if a rooftop in every home in the United States contained just one solar panel, it would produce approximately half of the electric needed nationwide annually.  That said, solar panels have historically been too expensive for the general public to buy, making installation far from commonplace, according to an article in the International Design Times.

The financial constraints of buying such panels, however, have lessened a bit with the invention of solar shingles.  Dow’s PowerHouse Solar Shingle is a “thin-film photovoltaic power cell that takes the place of traditional roofing materials,” according to the article.  These shingles are still nevertheless costly, as the shingle includes copper indium gallium diselenide, a material controlled by the Chinese and expensive to purchase.  Dow claims, however, that each dollar spent on a shingle yields four times the amount in energy savings.

A promising and more recent development is a potential solar shingle made from a mix of copper and zinc.  Researchers from Dow and CalTech say “this new design is yielding record breaking solar energy results,” according to the piece.  Since these possible shingles are cheaper than the ones used with Chinese materials, it will hopefully bring sunnier days ahead in the development of solar technology.

 

The Heliomet SunBloc House: Designed to Fit On Top of Another Home

A design team from London Metropolitan University has entered a house into the Solar Decathlon competition starting this weekend in Madrid that literally can sit atop other homes in order to limit future suburban growth, according to an article from Inhabitat.com. The Heliomet SunBloc is a fascinating home that is designed to supply electricity and water to its own structure and the dwelling or “host” building it sits on as well.

The main material of the structure is a EPS foam that is relatively inexpensive, lightweight and can be broken down into pellets when the home is no longer wanted.  Shelves and furniture can literally be built into the foam of the structure which obviates the need for more “stuff” and is environmentally eco-friendly.  A PV array and solar thermal water system is also used and when photovoltaic panels lose their efficiency at higher temperatures, the cooling effect from the water helps increase electrical output and provide hot water that can then be used in the house, according to the Inhabitat piece.

The house was designed to be constructed in two weeks with blocks of foam cut prior to arrival at the construction site to eliminate excess labor and garbage.

http://www.sdeurope.org/?lang=en