Take a moment to notice what’s happening across the pond.  This is the Tetra Shed, a inventive building system that uses up to six modules to create extra space — home office,  play space, beach hut, pop-up retail — in most any location.  The exterior can be custom painted or finished with copper, zinc, corten steel, or marine plywood, while the interior can be finished with LED lights and birch-faced plywood or plasterboard.  Tetra Shed, designed by David Ajasa-Adekunle, arrives in the UK in January 2012.

Read more »

This is the Live Work Home, one of the winning proposals (with the R-House) in the From the Ground Up Competition in Syracuse, New York, designed by Cook+Fox Architects.  The home was awarded LEED Platinum certification earlier this month, a fitting one-year anniversary since the homeowners John and Kathy Miranda moved into the home in November 2010.  Here’s more about this beautiful, durable home with an inventive design.

Read more »

Over Thanksgiving break, I enjoyed reading about this small, energy-efficient home in North Carolina built using the Harbinger plan offered by the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.  Built to International Building Code requirements, the plan includes a loft, home office, kitchen, bathroom, living room, and deck — tightly placed in less than 500 square feet!  Details are hard to come by, but Tumbleweed sells this plan for $695 and estimates that it costs about $33,000 in materials to build.

Read more »

I recently read about an impressive, three-unit residential building in Portland, Maine through an article by Seth Koenig in the Bangor Daily News.  After a little digging, I learned the project is spearheaded by Paul Ledman and Colleen Myers, as owners and developers, Mike White of Island Carpentry, the general contractor, and Kaplan Thompson Architects, the architectural firm.  Ledman wanted a future-forward building and ended up with something that doesn’t use fossil fuels.

Read more »

Southtown Greenbound is a new, short documentary of an award-winning prototype development — the Biering Project — that’s both affordable and sustainable in San Antonio, Texas. Biering includes two, 1,500 square-foot homes wrapped in a diaphanous aluminum screen that reduces solar heat gain, fosters privacy during the day, and illuminates during the night. The screen truly distinguishes the homes.

Read more »