In her Teardown Diary, Wall Street Journal columnist Nancy Keates forgoes the common practice of demolition and instead opts for "unbuilding." Usually referred to as deconstruction, unbuilding is when you disassemble an old structure piece by piece and salvage the usable parts. Ms. Keates found that the deconstruction of her home will cost about $4,000 more than straight demolition, but costs can vary project to project.
In this interview, G Living sits down with Peter DeMaria to talk about his work using containers in modern home design and construction. I was really impressed with DeMaria — he tells you everything you ever wanted to know about container architecture and talks about scalability, sustainability, mold, termites, insulation, design, etc. If you're thinking about using containers in your project, the ones mentioned in this interview cost about $900 – $2500 and are about 320 sf per unit. Great video!
SMC Furnishings is a small, New York-based company that creates handcrafted, high-quality furniture with earth friendly methods. In their tenth year of business, this company has been doing the green thing for longer than most. Even their workshop produces almost zero waste as they reuse even the smallest scraps for fuel. Almost all of their wood comes from reclaimed buildings, downed trees, or trees that are cut down because of disease or nuisance issues.
I opened up the local newspaper today, and much to my surprise, there’s news that the first, mid-rise container building in the U.S. is planned for downtown Salt Lake City. The project was designed by none other than Adam Kalkin, container architecture expert, and will be called City Center Lofts. The green, ultra-modern condo building will have eight units and a ground level art gallery.
Emeco* designs are simple, elegant, timeless, and award-winning, but did you know that their furniture is also super green? Emeco furniture is hand-made from 80% recycled aluminum — half of which is post-consumer (soft drink cans) and the other half is post-industrial (manufacturing scrap). Because of this, their furniture can contribute to LEED points in your green project (MR 4.2/5.1).
The second thing that makes Emeco’s furniture so green is that their pieces are made to last for at least 150 years! In this day of disposable furniture that lasts for maybe a decade, 150 years is an impressive lifespan. Emeco’s designs come in two standard finishes, brushed and polished.
Project Profiles
