This fridge has a fantastic retro appearance and could save you a lot of money on your utility bills.  Designed by SMEG, it’s a compact 9.22 cubic feet and uses only  305 kWh/year.  That makes it one of the most efficient it its class according to the government’s energy guide, which is used to rate all Energy Star appliances.  This stylish fridge isn’t big — it’s under 5 feet tall, but maybe it will encourage you to trade space for style and save energy as a result. 

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HOM Escape in Style made its debut at Dwell on Design this weekend and drew a considerable crowd.  Apartment Therapy said HOM was their favorite home on display, and Curbed liked its interior design.  Of the three models that HOM plans for production, the (smaller) 1000 sf design was exhibited throughout the weekend in LA.  HOM designs cost in the $200 psf range, which calculates to approximately $200,000 for a 1000 sf house.

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This is a Flatpak house in Aspen, Colorado.  I stumbled upon these shots in Flickr, so I don’t have much background on the project.  But we’ve featured a modern Flatpak home before in the Goodwin-Wise Flatpak.  Flatpak houses each have their own particular and interesting features, but the Flatpak system is the same.  It’s a menu of components for living that includes walls, cabinets, bathrooms, kitchen, and various built-ins.  The components are fabricated and designed to meet the needs of the site and owner.

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Wentworth Commons is a 51-unit, 65,800 sf affordable housing complex in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood.  As a home for at-risk and formerly homeless families and individuals, Wentworth Commons has been recognized for its trendy aesthetics and functional green design.  The $13 million project has a slew of green features, including a 33 kWh PV system that provides 25% of the building’s power, a hyper efficient mechanical system, extensive use of locally sourced materials and rapidly renewable materials, and native plantings and bio-swale to reduce storm water runoff. 

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Oceanside Glass Tile offers an absolutely beautiful line of glass tiles.  Not all tiles contain recycled content, but a good amount of them do.  The recycled content is according to the tile color.  For instance, cobalt, has almost 75% post-consumer content.  The great thing is that you can see which colors contain recycled content, and how much, right on their site; there is a simple table that makes it easy to evaluate your color choice. 

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