A lot of effort has gone into developing transparent solar cells lately, since they could be attached to windows easily with no loss of light. But CSEM, a Swiss non-profit technology company, has now developed white solar cells, which can easily be integrated into a building’s walls.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole apartment at the snap of your fingers? Turns out you can, sort of. The Portugal-based design firm OODA has come up with innovative, unique free standing volumes, which can turn any room into a home, and can be folded down into a box for transport. OODA has recently transformed derelict buildings in the city of Porto into affordable accommodations for tourists and seasonal foreign students, by using these volumes.
The South American firm MAPA Architects recently unveiled the first of its Minimod (which is short for Minimal Modular) tiny homes, which can be used for a variety of purposes, from a tiny vacation home, to a hotel. In other words, these modular units are incredibly adaptable and can be assembled together to form a dwelling of any size. The separate units resemble shipping containers at first glance, but that is not what the company is using to construct them.
Spark Architects has come up with a unique urban farm concept called Homefarm, which is primarily aimed at improving the health and life of seniors at a Singapore retirement home. Homefarm is an aquaponic system, which is easy to manage and therefore ideal for seniors to work on. (more…)
Here is an tiny home built out of a recycled shipping container that is a great example of just how easy it is to create a comfortable and functional home using one of these awesome building blocks. The home was ingeniously designed by Brenda Kelly of IQ Container Homes, and built from a single 20-foot shipping container.
Earlier this year a team of students from the University of Technology in Trondheim designed a very sustainable hut as part of a design- and building workshop. They were assisted by Rintala Eggertsson Architects and several others. The international seminar that the workshop was part of was focused on the future of eco-tourism in the Western Ghats region in India. And the main purpose of it was to find sustainable solutions, which would benefit both the local population as well as help preserve the environment in the region.
