Copeland Casati, founder of Green Modern Kits and Green Cottage Kits, just sent over a link to her newly launched website for Green Cabin Kits.  They have two designs that are customizable: CornerHouse (top 3 renderings) and The Dogtrot Mod (bottom 3 renderings).  They’re quite slick, aren’t they?  CornerHouse is an expandable design that’s versatile enough for urban infill or some rural location in the middle of nowhere.  You choose.  The Dogtrot Mod is also expandable but a little different.  It features an open court in the middle to ventilate and separate the living spaces.  Both kits were designed to accomodate rainwater collection and solar power generation.

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The founders of Noble Home, based in West Somerville, Massachusetts, saw first-hand the manner with which homes were being constructed in the United States  — big, cheap, toxic, and out of the price range of many families.  So, they set out to create a new way.  Their home kits are versatile, easy to put together, sustainable, affordable, and healthy.  They offer elements such as greenhouses, root cellars, water collection, solar, wind, and even human-powered energy! 

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Starting earlier this month, the NY Times began publishing the blog of Lou Ureneck, chairman of the Journalism Department at Boston University.  The blog was given a name we’ve seen before, From the Ground Up, and will document Lou’s journey building a cabin in some picturesque scenery of western Maine.  Take a gander at what he’s written so far and it may conjure up thoughts of Henry David Thoreau’s own cabin near Walden Pond.  That’s a purposeful analogy, though, because Lou channeled a bit of Henry while pushing the envelope of frugality with this interesting endeavor.  All in, the $30,000 cabin and $32,000 swath of property promises to be quite the retreat. 

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