These days, you can't really attend a convention or exhibition unless there's a prefab and we think that's a great thing.  In this case, ideabox is at it again with a new iteration of their popular confluence prefab at the Portland Home & Garden Show.  If you're in the Pacific Northwest, go check it out through the 22nd of this month; if you're not, ideabox was nice enough to send us a few informal shots.  The 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom home has a tidy footprint, as well as updated detailing, Kohler fixtures, and Design Within Reach furnishings.  Simple living in a modern package …

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With an idea like this, you're going to win some prizes.  Morris Architects took home first prize, as well as $10,000, in the second annual Radical Innovation in Hospitality Awards, which was sponsored by the John Hardy Group and Hospitality Design magazine.  Some of the other entries were also unique, but this Oil Rig Hotel and Spa is particularly innovative.  To understand the innovation behind the adaptive reuse, a background understanding of oil rigs is necessary. 

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Ecolect, a website that helps designers, architects, and builders discover eco-friendly material alternatives, has launched an interesting service called GreenBox.  GreenBox is an annual subscription of green material samples that's shipped right to your door every three months.  Each GreenBox delivery includes 8-12 material samples, material information, sustainability specs, performance overview, cost profiles, and distributor information.  And it's all neatly designed to hang on the wall or cubicle or any other place you have in mind. 

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The project is The 1310 Condominiums, which is located in Portland, Oregon and one of the houses on the 11xDesign modern homes tour this Saturday.  If you're not familiar with the project, you may think it's new construction, but 1310 is actually a conversion of an old apartment complex into five modern condominiums. Designed by Brett Crawford Architecture + Planning for Brett Crawford and Dana Ing Crawford, with Brett Crawford as contractor, the finished project shows that meticulous attention was given to the small details.  And all that is paying off for the owners.  Three units are sold (with only two remaining one-bedroom units left), and 1310 received both a Built Honor and Sustainability Award from AIA Portland. 

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Since a ton of our readers are from the Portland area, I thought I would shout out to this modern home tour planned for this Saturday, February 21, 2009, 10 am – 5 pm.  Dubbed 11xDesign, the free open house features new buildings designed, financed, and developed by 11 Portland architects and designers.  Not all of the homes are green, but many of them are, and we've even written about two of them previously.  They're all in different stages of completion, but there looks to be some good places on the map.  Some of these well write about individually in the future …

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We’re always happy to receive green books in the mail, but what surprised us the most about The Gort Cloud was the fact that we’re in it.  Jetson Green is, apparently, a “trendspotter” in The Gort Cloud.  And after looking at it more closely, I’m guessing several of our readers and their companies have been named in it, too.  What is it?  The Gort Cloud is “the invisible force powering today’s most visible green brands” where “millions of people [connect] to green information through a vast, interconnected community.”

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