Yesterday, First Lady Laura Bush, architect Robert A. M. Stern, and landscape architect Matthew Urbanski unveiled the design of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. Located on the east side of SMU's campus, the design will complement the consistent Georgian architecture of the rest of the university. And when complete, the $250 million building will be LEED Platinum certified.
Architect and interior designer Johnna Barrett, Barrett Design, Inc., recently launched a set of five modern green home designs ranging in size from 1,800 to 2,500 square feet. Offered for sale on Sustain House, the designs are contemporary and provide for energy savings of 20-30% above a home built to code. The plans also include a LEED checklist designed to facilitate the earning of a LEED Gold or Platinum level certification, assuming an optimal site selection. Check out these five homes in the Modern Forest Series … do you have a favorite design?
There's been a lot of talk of the i-House ever since Clayton Homes announced its launch in about January of this year. The home is contemporary, affordable, and energy efficient. Landowners Bob and Melinda bought a 37-acre swath of land in 2006, hoping to someday build a home on it and live the good country life. They're 95 miles from Louisville in western Kentucky and had an i-House delivered just about a month ago.
Last week at Greenbuild 2009, Perkins + Will unveiled its new Precautionary List, which tracks 25 of the most common dangerous chemicals found in commonly used building materials. The list provides an explanation of the properties of the chemicals with suggested alternatives. Some of the chemicals on the list include: arsenic, lead, urea formaldehyde, and cadmium, just to name a few.
This video of Blu Homes recently hit the Innovation Economy column of The Boston Globe. In This New House, columnist Scott Kirsner gives us a look at the folding prefab technology that Blu Homes uses for homes built in their Littleton, Massachusetts factory. The folding style of construction presents an interesting new wrinkle to prefab, and Blu is able to save transportation costs by shipping more house and less air.
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