Eight houses were chosen for Architectural Record’s special, web-exclusive list of Unbuilt Houses.  They’re all green.  If you take a look, you might notice something familiar.  You’ve probably seen many of them before.  Five of the eight homes have been featured on Jetson Green previously (links below).  I guess that means we’re doing something right (and fast), too.  My favorite would have to be Adjaye Associates’ design for the Make It Right Project in New Orleans. 

• Make It Right, Adjaye Associates
• Pasadena EcoHouse, Studio RMA
• Smart Home: Green + Wired, Michelle Kaufmann Designs
• Sycamore House, Kovac Architects
• ZeroHouse, Specht Harpman
• San Vicente Residence, Pugh + Scarpa
• Swell House, Studio ST Architects and Z-A
• Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Home, Coates Design Associates

Vampire energy, aka phantom loads, is estimated to cost U.S. consumers about $3 billion per year.  I know, it’s not really that much … I mean, if you break it down to the individual level, that’s only $10 per person ($3 billion / 300 million).  But the point is, it’s money that goes in the pocketbook of energy companies and their shareholders — it’s not going in yours.  The chart above is courtesy of GOOD, the magazine that always brings a full-page spread to otherwise obfuscatory information.

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It’s Friday and as I like to say, why not watch a little video?  If you’ve been to Dwell lately, you’ll know they just unveiled their new, completely overhauled website.  It’s super nice now, with easy access to images and information from their archives.  There’s also a new video page with content of some very interesting leaders in design.  Hence, the name for their new video series, Dwell Design Leaders.  I’ve embedded the video of Michelle Kaufmann above talking about prefab and the mkLotus.  The next video below is of David Baker.  I found his comments extremely interesting.  The last video below is Christopher Deam talking about his modern interpretation and design of the Airstream and his collaboration with Design Within Reach.  Very compelling, really inspiring.

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If you know me, you know I like to read.  You name it, I read it.  Books.  Magazines.  Newspapers.  Online.  Actually, I have a theory on book reading, which goes like this:  if you don’t pay reasonable market value for it, you won’t be motivated to read it.  It’s like a gym membership.  With this in mind, I’ve put together an online shop of sustainable books, The Jetson Green Sustainability Bookstore, in case anyone is searching for good material on environmentalism.  There’s a lot out there.  Let me know if I left something out that you think merits inclusion.  Here are the categories:

This isn’t a money maker for JG, I’ve never made more than $10 /quarter from Amazon…this is more intended to be a resource library for those of us at all levels in the journey towards living and working in a greener way.  Again, let me know if I left a good book out.  Also, I’ve gotten into Eco-Libris thanks to Victoria-E.  Eco-Libris plants a tree for every book that you purchase an offset for.  I’m not going to get into the offset controversy, but suffice it to say, I like the idea and will do it from now on.

Do you read GreenSource? There’s a free read of the April 2007 edition of GreenSource online.  I highly recommend it, if you have a little free time and a fast connection.  It’s a quarterly production, supported by the editors of McGraw-Hill Construction, BuildingGreen, Inc., and the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).  GreenSource has a circulation of about 42,000 readers.  In March 2007, it was given the prestigious Neal Award for Best Start-Up Publication.  I spent way too much time online reading the articles…it just sucked me right in. 

Good Links:
+GreenSource, April 2007
+GreenSource Online Page
+GreenSource Magazine Wins a Neal Award [PRNewswire]