Home Design Find

Spec House in Maine Gets LEED – Teaches Zero Carbon Design

Richard Renner Architects designed this carbon neutral home as a spec home at the request of a local construction company, in Maine, because the state’s residents like to build sustainably. The state would qualify as the Sweden of the USA with 55% of its electricity coming from renewable sources – thanks to state legislation that [...]

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Architecture That Mimics Nature to Create a Breezy Micro-Climate

Privacy, yet with a feeling of open space is at a premium in our dense urban environments. Wallflower Architecture has created a very private space in an urban milieu for a Singapore client by the extensive use of screens that hide in plain sight throughout this design. [...]

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(Relatively) Small is Beautiful

Here’s a 30 X 60 foot house from Rockefeller Partners that makes good use of California’s gorgeous sea views and even manages to squeeze a garden into a typical tight lot size. Small houses are more sustainable, as they typically take less energy to heat and cool.

The entire front is open to the sea. Sea [...]

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Swimming Pool Acts as Thermal Storage in 17th Century Eco-Retrofit

What a relief it would be, in Britain’s chilly winters, to immerse yourself in this cozy sunlit pool. But that’s not its only benefit. This warm pool is itself a part of an eco retrofit of a 400 year old dwelling.

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“Glacier” Prefab House by Method Homes

Method Homes has a down-to-earth, contemporary design sensibility that informs their straightforward prefab homes.

Each uses locally grown and produced building materials such as certified Douglas fir framing material and reclaimed fir trim and cedar siding on the outside. Because the sample home here is built in a flood plain, it [...]

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Straw Building Blocks Make Warm Sustainable Homes

I’ve covered other straw bale construction techniques here before. This machine for tying straw into tubes on the field to build with, and these prefabbed walls of straw from a British company that stuffs straw into prefabbed wall-sized units near the farm…

…but these are the first straw bale building blocks I’ve seen. What [...]

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The Rich Learn Sustainable Living on Luxury Cruise

Here’s some green luxury travel. There’s no air conditioning at all in the Zambezi Queen – just natural cross breezes provide ventilation on this African cruise boat in Botswana, on the Chobe River that runs through the Chobe National Park.

Hot water is provided by solar thermal hot water heating soaking up [...]

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DIY Hot Water Retrofit Cuts Energy Bill Up to 70%

If you are a homeowner looking to take advantage of the new 30% tax credits to cut your energy bills, here’s a simple retrofit that attaches to a water heater, costs about $500 and can reduce your heating bill by 50% to 70%. If you use radiant heating for floors, rather [...]

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A Secret Forest Dwelling in the Heart of Singapore

I remember when I lived in Manhattan, how much I needed greenery. Here’s the house to answer that real need for city dwellers. The owner wanted this house, in the heart of Singapore, to feel just like living in a forest.
It certainly looks subversive; growing right up between two more traditional buildings… but what [...]

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Hyper-Efficient Wyoming Home Bucks 90% Coal-Powered State Trend

Who thinks advanced energy efficiency when they think of 90% coal-powered Wyoming? Not me. The average house in the state has to use over 800 kilowatt hours a month of the dirtiest energy in the US, to heat and power the same iPods and so on that in the other states take [...]

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