The April 08 issue of Metropolitan Home features an article entitled Urban Eco-tecture by green guru Eric Corey Freed. The focus of the article is an 8,500 sf warehouse in San Francisco’s SoMA District. Jason Shelton and Amy Shimer bought the warehouse and hired architect Anne Fougeron to convert the place into a modern live/work location. The result is an intriguing fusion of modernism, sustainability, and adaptive reuse.
Check out these cool tile tapestry patterns from Heath Ceramics. I’m partial to the flemish bond gunmetal (shown top left and below). Heath Ceramics has a factory/kiln in Sausalito, California where they create these incredible tiles. Their Tapestry Collection has three patterns: argyle, stitch, and flemish bond, which can be face-mounted in 12×12" squares. Prices vary depending on the pattern, but if you’re looking for a specialty application, try the overstock tiles offered at 75% off retail.
This is Oulu Bar & EcoLounge in Williamsburg, home to Brooklyn’s first living wall installation. The 2,500 sf building was designed by Evangeline Dennie and it’s currently seeking LEED Gold certification. You’ll find a few different photos below, including a before shot, for your viewing pleasure.
What do you think? The green wall makes quite the design statement, doesn’t it? It’s tough to deny the modern appeal of vertical greenery, I say.
This is a refreshing story of a another innovative green home in Chicago. Frances Whitehead and James Elniski recently had their green home featured in NY Times. It’s a fantastic rendition of green adaptive reuse. Check the images of the living rooftop and two twirling turbines (by Windside). Those turbines cost about $40,000,including installation, and provide about $500 per year in savings. Still, the owners don’t mind the payback of 80 years because their perspective is guided by the realities of a carbon cluttered world. Drastic times require drastic actions?
This live/work residence has some of the following green features: cellulose insulation, geothermal heating and cooling, solar thermal hot water and cooling, photovoltaic panels, rainwater collection cisterns, and water-saving appliances and dual-flush toilets, etc. Perhaps the greenest feature of all is that the building used to be a blighted, 3000 sf, brick warehouse on a chunk of land with a contaminated underground gasoline storage tank. Ugh … removing USTs can be nasty, expensive, and fraught with administrative burdens, too.
If you’re on the West Coast and want to check out modern prefab a la Dwell, the experts of modern prefab, now’s your chance. The Dwell NextHouse by Empyrean – Silicon Valley will be open for tours to the public March 29-30, 2008. The 2,400 sf prefab was designed to accommodate natural light, solar orientation, seasonal shading from vegetation, and prevailing wind movement, and also to contribute to passive heating and cooling.
Plus, for a sneak preview of the inside of the Silicon Valley NextHouse, I’ve embedded a little video from sallyTV founder, Sally Kuchar, interior designer for the project. I think you’ll enjoy the over dub …
Project Profiles
