KitHAUS recently shared photos of a prefab writer’s studio installed in the Brentwood area of western Los Angeles. The building was made with bolt-together aluminum framing, windows and doors with low-E glazing, and SIPs that are CFC, HCFC, HFC, and formaldehyde-free. The new studio is from KitHAUS‘s standard K4 module. K4 has 187 square feet, assembles in about four days, and costs from $39,750.
San Diego-based DuChateau Floors, maker of luxe natural flooring, just announced a new collection that replicates the popular look of reclaimed barn wood. The Heritage Timber Edition is made with FSC-certified European white oak and then distressed with surface scrapes, nail holes, notches, and saw kerf marks reminiscent of salvaged textures. Heritage has an environmentally friendly, zero-VOC, preservative-free, hard wax oil finish with planks of 7-7/16″ wide. Pricing starts at $12 per square foot.
This is the first LEED Platinum home in Athens. Designed by Lori Bork Newcomer, principal of Bork Architectural Design, Inc., the 2,632 square-foot home blends native materials to maintain neighborhood context and contemporary design to suit the aesthetics of owners Lori and Quint Newcomer. Lori and Quint self-contracted the build for about $125 per square foot and, perhaps more impressively, the home uses about the same amount of energy as one a third the size.
When the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago wanted a “smart” house on their grounds to showcase energy-efficient and healthy living at its best, architect Michelle Kaufmann was a natural choice to design it. After all, her passion for sustainability, coupled with an impeccable eye for style and plenty of award-winning projects under her belt, has made Michelle an authority on good green design. The Smart Home: Green and Wired exhibit has inspired thousands of visitors with its perfect mix of high and low-tech green building techniques, materials and gadgets in a friendly, modern setting.
Current and recent projects for Michelle Kaufmann Studio include a sustainable neighborhood, a co-housing complex for some very with-it Franciscan nuns, and several private residences for green-minded clients. With so much hands-on experience with many of the materials and technologies we write about here at Jetson Green, I was eager to pick Michelle’s brain.
I proposed a series of open-ended questions starting with “What is the one green product …”, hoping the busy designer would find it a fun, thought-provoking exercise. Luckily she did — and I hope you find her responses as illuminating and insightful as I have!
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