Tom Bassett-Dilley recently sent us these photos of his prototype green garage on a 30' wide lot in south Oak Park, Illinois. The garage was built with FSC-certified lumber, a salvaged concrete slab, locally produced recycled content steel siding, and salvaged cedar siding. There's also a Live Roof green roof, which was designed to channel water into rain barrels for collection.
The local zoning required a two-car garage, but Tom didn't need both spaces. So instead of enclosing the space, the garage is open with a permeable gravel patio that accommodates an extra car when necessary. Due to the small lot, the open design also takes less space from the backyard and can be used as a patio area.
Tom's experience with his own garage led him to create Green Garage Plans, which states: "We see the garage as potentially transformative to the back yard environment and experience … unlike the ubiquitous cheap vinyl garages, the Green Garage is built to last, using as many local resources as are available."
Photo credits: Tom Bassett-Dilley Architect Ltd. 2009.
What a great idea, it looks good and I like the green roof which presume helps with insulation as well.
Very cool. We should be building all of our buildings to last, I dont know why we would spend money erecting something that we knew was going to need replacing in a decade or two.
-Tyler
Great idea and looks good too! Thanks for adding the rain barrel – not too many think to do that: http://www.aquabarrel.com/
Sweet ! It looks like it will work behind my Lincoln Square place. A variation anyway. Thanks. Now – How to go about re purposing old garage lumber ? Someone should write a book on that – an e-book. (probably do)