This is a new “origami”-like home assembled earlier this year in Healdsburg, California, home to the H2 Hotel. The green prefab was designed, built, and assembled by Blu Homes and is the first re-designed Breezehouse on the West Coast (a home first made famous by Michelle Kaufmann). This video includes an interview with the owners, Steve and Jo Cooper, who share their reasons for purchasing the prefab.
I’m fascinated by the work of Netherlands-based Dave Hakkens in a recent project called “Rubble Floor.” Interested in reusing old building materials as new building materials — and inspired by terrazzo floors — Hakkens conducted several tests on materials such as roof tiles, bricks, nails and screws, and glass. He used concrete as the binder and crushed old materials into pigments and fillers. In the end, Hakkens found it’s entirely possible to make new materials with the old.
For your Friday viewing, check out what California architects Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger used to make a backyard office. They split a 40-foot, refrigerated shipping container and placed the two parts in a T shape with a crane. Then they cut windows into the ends and covered the floor with soy-based, formaldehyde-free Purebond. And the container only set them back $1800.
This video showcases the pH Living Sanctuary, a factory-built home in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The healthy home has been certified by Building Biologists to the IBE Healthy Home Standard, according to California-based pH Living, and has been checked for VOCs, energy efficiency, formaldehyde, mold, electromagnetic fields (EMF’s), communications frequency pollution reductions, and radiation.
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.
Project Profiles
