Bits 'n' Pieces

Just a couple of quick things:

The wonderful blog DO Research has closed shop - it is already missed. The upside is they've bought land and are building a Flatpak. I am wildly jealous!

Read the story behind the sea container Holyoke Cabin on the Hive Modular blog. So cool.

Skinny Japanese Houses on eye candy (via Things Magazine). Only in Japan [sigh].

The amazingly hip Alan Family Happy New House is complete. Check it out in The New York Times. It turned out just like the renderings - very, very cool. It shows you just how much you can do with a remodel.

I just picked up a good book, Small Eco-houses. Loaded with interesting, green, modern homes from all over the world. Two thumbs up!

image credit - Amazon.com listing

Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day, a single day for all bloggers to post about one important issue, the environment. Most people think that Future House Now is a green site. It isn't. My primary focus is interesting modern homes, particularly those that are in the realm of realistic affordability for real families. But having said that, I frequently post about "green homes," and today is a good day to clarify my views on the subject.

First of all, why do I often post about green homes, even when my site is not purely focused on green issues? Well, for starters, green makes a lot of practical sense. It's laughable how much emphasis we put on greening our cars when we spend way more energy in our houses. It should be obvious every week when we take out the trash that our homes are the epicenter of our consumption habits. And I care about my family's health. I want them to live in a safe household environment, not one that is riddled with toxins and allergens.

Second, green isn't that hard to do anymore. You don't have to live in an Earthship made of tires pounded full of dirt, and old aluminum cans to be green (though that's pretty cool if you ask me). You also don't have to be an eco-warrior living off the grid in Northern California, growing all your own food and living off $10,000 worth of yearly organic produce sales. I guess what I mean is that being "green" isn't really an extreme lifestyle choice, it's part of everyday life for everyday people all over the USA. We have to stop treating green as extreme. Frankly, I think that alienates more people than it attracts. That's why I try not to overplay my green views, just as I don't downplay them either. To me, the important thing is that we're all constantly raising our awareness and incorporating green practices in our lives one little step at a time.

There are so many good ways to green any home, any style, old or new, anywhere. How about more efficient appliances, compact fluorescent light bulbs, better insulation, and low-VOC paints? These are pretty easy things that can make a big difference. How about not using those toxic cleaners in your kitchen and bathroom? Use good ol' white vinegar - it works great and is non-toxic. Inexpensive too. And great technology is here, with real strides in renewable energy being made every day. The reasons for not taking advantage of better technology for greener homes are becoming fewer and fewer. We're pretty much at the point where going green isn't about making tough choices, it's about making smart choices. The difference now isn't as much about toughness as it is about awareness.

I like to show interesting modern homes, and some of them are not particularly green. But lots of them are, in lots of different ways. Some are green just because they are compact. Some are green because they have a broad sheltering roof and good insulation. Some are green becaues they make good use of recycled materials, or new materials like steel framing that will last a long, long time without a lot of costly maintenance, and that can be recycled someday if need be. Maybe they aren't all perfect, but we can learn something from them. My site is about ideas. Some of the good ideas I like to show are about environmentally friendly homes, and some of the ideas are about other things. They're not mutually exclusive. And we have to stop thinking in those terms. Green fits with modern because they are both about good design. Good design has logic, economy and beauty all rolled into one. I see green as a part of that, not a whole unto itself.

Don't get me wrong, I don't take green for granted. I accept green as a matter of fact. That's how it should be - a natural part of life, not a radical philosophy. I view the recent mainstreaming of green as a sign that we've finally turned the corner. It won't be long now before we build the momentum to make lasting positive change. The challenges are real, but humanity, in spite of itself, is a problem solving species. We can do it.

Felix Jerusalem's Stroh Haus

I complained the other day about not having seen anything really interesting in a while, and then my buddy Justin at Materialicio.us answers the call with this amazing find - the Stroh Haus by Swiss architect Felix Jerusalem. This home has several things going for it that really appeal to me. First, it has a simple, clean plan. Second, that green exterior is my favorite color. Third, I am fascinated with translucent panels, and the Stroh Haus uses them as exterior sheathing to groovy effect. Lastly, the house utilizes a really interesting type of construction material - straw pre-formed into structural elements. That's a slick approach that ought to have some legs.








Thanks Juzz!

Image credits - Stroh Haus site

Rammed Earth is for Everyone!

If you're into rammed earth building, don't miss this blog: Rammed Earth is for Everyone. You can't beat the enthusiasm of that name! The site highlights rammed earth projects all around the world, offers nice Youtube and Flickr finds, and has a great selection of links in its sidebar. It's proprietor is a rammed earth consultant who shares both interesting technical information as well as an intriguing and thought provoking world view. Definitely worth a look if you're an earth building enthusiast and/or you find yourself pondering the nature of man's impact on the Earth on a regular basis.

Via Earth Architecture (of course!).

My Thoughts on Greg La Vardera's "Our Re-Modern Movement - The Tipping Point?"

I got really fired up this morning after I read a great post in architect Greg La Vardera's blog. In "Our Remodern Movement - the tipping point?" Greg suggests that now might finally be the time for modernist homes to find a place in the mainstream. I really hope so. I see the momentum. And I believe in "tipping points." I know exactly what the tipping point was for me personally, the one thing that got me really excited about modern homes. I picked up a copy of Dwell at the newsstand for the first time, the April/May 2005 issue with Charlie Lazor's Flatpak house on the cover.

I had always been interested in homes. I always dreamed of something better and more exciting than the standard fare of suburban cul-de-sacs, though I wasn't totally hooked on modern yet. But when I saw this cover, with a real family in a cool-ass house, it was like a lightning bolt. I can't tell you how badly I'd like to live in a Flatpak. It's one of the top three contenders for me. It just fits me and my family so perfectly. When the time finally comes to really build a new home I will be giving them a call to talk.

It's funny though, how "weird" most people think modernist homes are. My mother said "you want to live in a white box?" with a look on her face that was pure disbelief. Talking houses with some neighbors I could detect their nervous smiles when I mentioned concrete and steel, as in "uh, okay, sure, as long as it's not next door to my house." And look at the real estate markets. That's all you need to know. You don't see a lot of developers building modernist spec homes. Just pick up a real estate magazine and thumb through it for a minute. How many cool modernist homes will you find in the listings. Maybe one or two in a hundred page book. And they're mostly really big, expensive houses, probably built in the eighties after watching too many episodes of Miami Vice. Good, simple, modern homes for real families are hard to come by. Your best bet is a fifties ranch. Even those are a minority in the market compared to the grand total of everything else.

But I think Greg is right. This is the right time. Dwell has been so successful that some other similar publications have started to appear. Blogs like mine are popping up like daisies. Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big House" movement has a lot of followers (because it makes a lot of sense). Or consider John Brown's Slow Home Movement. And green is suddenly king. People finally realize that their choices have a real impact. Now is definitely the time of Less is More, and modernism fits that bill perfectly.

Probably the biggest helper in all of this, in my opinion, is going to be the bursting of the real estate bubble. I say that for one simple reason: it will make people change their view as to what their home really is - a home to live in and not an investment to make a fortune off of. I really believe that people won't/can't build what they really want because they are too hung up on resale value and growing massive equity. I don't know if this attitude caused the housing bubble or vice versa, but either way they combine to create an effect where the resultant high cost of housing distorts our views, closes our minds to new ideas, prices lots of people out of the market for a good home, and places too much power in the hands of developers, not in the hands of consumers where it should be. And so, here we are. With the bubble busting and home prices correcting I think we may also see home buyers making very different decisions about what they want to live in. I know this is the case for my wife and I, and I hope, at least, that this is the case for others.

It's definitely time for America to focus its attention on things like better homes, greener communities, reliable energy, even better communications technology, education and health care. These are the things that make up the infrastructure of this country. We won't have to worry about foreign threats for long if we allow ourselves to fall apart from the inside.

This whole country is at a tipping point, or near one. Modern homes are just a tiny, tiny part of that. We can choose a better way to live without giving up all the really great things we already enjoy.

Better living through design. Work smarter, not harder. Find the holistic solutions.

We can do it.

Interesting Homes Around the Blogs Yesterday

Several of my favorite blogs posted interesting homes yesterday.

On the ever-cool BLDGBLOG Geoff Manaugh points out the compact Single Hauz from front architects. They remind him of the billboards outside his LA home. You can put them practically anywhere, even in the middle of a lake, which is what Manaugh says he'd go for. Personally, I've always wanted to live in a meadow.






Jetson Green brings us a sleek Cape Cod beach house by Independence Energy Homes. At 7,000 square feet it's probably not quite in my price range. I also usually frown on very large homes, but this one uses geothermal heating and photovoltaics to meet all its energy needs. It also has an air exchange system and low or no VOC materials for good indoor air quality, a permeable driveway, water conserving fixtures, and is built from "rapidly renewable materials." Very nice. Still, give me a 2,000 square foot, $200,000 home with all these features. Now that would be an accomplishment.






Finally, on the LamiDesign blog, Greg La Vardera shows off a final pic of the completed Vermont Plat House. You can follow the entire process of building this house, from start to finish, on Greg's blog. I think it turned out really well.





Image credits - architects sites

Building Studio Site Updated - Great Modern/Green Projects

I was checking back in on some of my favorite architects' sites and noticed that Building Studio has done a major update since my last visit. There are several projects on the new site that I don't remember seeing before. Here's a sampler of four different projects:







The works cover the full spectrum of residential building, from private homes to vacation cabins to urban infill. All of them have a serious sustainable bent. Click over to the Building Studio site for lots more images and full details on all their projects.

Image credits - Building Studio site

The World House Project - "We Can 'Grow' Buildings"

Here's something I saw on Inhabitat today that looks extremely interesting - the World House Project:

"The Evolution of Home

The WHP is a multi-year, collaborative initiative led by the Institute without Boundaries (IwB) that will explore the evolution of shelter and plan for the next generation of holistic housing design. The project will build on the research concepts of IwB’s inaugural project, Massive Change, using the same method of interdisciplinary design innovation.

The home is the intersection between the individual and society. On one end of the spectrum, urban sprawl and monster houses consume huge amounts of energy and pollute the atmosphere. On the other, over a billion people live in urban slums or in the streets without shelter.

The ambition of the World House Project (WHP) is to generate a system that achieves a balance between these extremes, and operates on the principles of sustainability, universality, technological responsiveness and balance, so that we may create dwellings that promote the long-term health of nature and human cultures."

They're benchmarking homes from around the world, old and new, studying them to gain an understanding of important implications of "climate, culture and terrain." The team, international and interdisciplinary in nature, will examine housing in the framework of twelve core elements of housing design and work to "create dwellings that are grounded in the principles of ecological design and that promote the long-term health of natural and human economies." The twelve core elements are: identity, social, communication, spatial, constructional, air handling, energy, water, waste, food, mobility, and finance. That's a very compelling list, indeed.

Here are a few images from the World House Project scrapbook on Flickr that I really like:






I've always imagined that homes could (and should) be built in this way!

It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this project. I'll be looking forward to watching it.

Image credits - World House Project Flickr photo album

Quick Links to Some Cool Houses

Just taking a moment to turn your attention to a couple of cool houses featured elsewhere ...

I like this NY Times Magazine slide show of Thomas Phifer and Partners' intriguing Salt Point House. The Times piece just gives you a taste. Look at the slides on the architect's site. The exterior treatment is very unusual but the effect is great. Bravo. I love the interior too. Here's a couple of pics to tease you on over to both sites to look at the rest.

Image credits - NY Times Magazine

I dig this eco-infill house from Living Space 21 in the UK, highlighted by treehugger. The Brits are racing ahead with sustainable home design and alternative energy for real people and the country as a whole (while the U.S. lumbers out of its sleep). It's a good read - illustrates how to do it right to get more green projects actually built - so check their post.

Image Credit - Living Space 21

Kudos to the blog House for pointing out the Phinney Ridge House and Blip Design a little while back. It's a major remodel of an existing house that features Built Green certification. Love it.

Image credit - BLIP Design

Finally, the good folks at rolu dsgn have a great flickr page with lots more pics of the sea container vacation cabin being built by some of their friends at Hive Modular. If you couldn't get enough from rolu's post check there for more.

Soren Korsgaard's Woven House

I was looking at Soren Korsgaard's MySpace page. His mood is "happy," he thinks TV is "all crap!" (except for The Office), and his Zodiac sign is Aquarius. He's single. He's six feet tall. His architecture is brilliant.

Soren's MySpace page showcases his work, and has some things I hadn't seen on his website. In particular, I was immediately taken with his Woven House concept.





I asked him about it. He said:

Concept

A house designed as a showcase to promote bamboo as sustainable building material, must be unusual and eye-catching.

Bamboo has been used for making everything from kitchenware to buildings for thousands of years in most Asian countries. Among the many beautiful methods of treating bamboo, highly sophisticated weaving techniques have been developed. Woven house is an attempt to take this tradition and use it in modern architecture and in a much larger scale than anyone have ever seen before. Birds are using weaving for making their nest from materials in their habitats.

Using the unique flexibility and strength of bamboo for weaving a vacation house, that appears futuristic and dynamic and gives a unique architectural experience, where walls, floors and ceiling is one continuously surface, that also can be shaped into sitting areas and shelves.

The woven bamboo surface can be a closed surface or open to let in light.

Location:

Can be anywhere in south – and Southeast Asia. Vietnam, China, India, Indonesia. Most importantly in an area where there is a tradition of weaving bamboo, and on a site where Bamboo is growing, so less transport is needed, meaning less impact on nature.

Construction:

Heat shaped construction bamboo is used for making the framework of the building.

Roof is covered with bamboo shingles. Internal walls, floor and ceiling is woven bamboo. And in between there is lots of space for insulation.

It's a nest. For people. Soren, dude, you're blowing me away. That's totally cool.

I only hope a Panda Bear won't eat it. The big, bad wolf has nothing on a hungry Panda.

Great Green Home in British Columbia - The Andrew Powter House

Today I got a huge boost - something to get me posting again! I was so excited to receive a nice e-mail from a reader of this blog, Andrew Powter, who has been kind enough to share with me images of his own house. It's being built in British Columbia, Canada, and Andrew is hoping to break ground later this month!

Take a look at how cool this place is:









But the house isn't just a flashy modern pad, it's loaded with environmentally conscious design features, such as:

• Reclaimed cedar siding
• Concrete floors with hydronic radiant heat
• Recessed compact fluorescent lighting
• Ecosmart fireplace
• Double glazed windows
• Construction with insulated concrete forms
  
• Low-flow toilets, faucets and showers
• On-demand hot water heating
• Good passive solar heat gain
  

Nice, huh! This is a very inspiring home. That's such a good list of green features, and all things that can be incorporated into any style home, anywhere. This home is a great model for the way we should be building all homes.

Andrew is the homeowner. He's working with Mark Simone of Dynamedia. Take a look at the portfolio on their site. Some nice stuff. Some real talent there.

Well, I just feel great. Andrew, thanks so much for sharing these pics and letting me post them up! I can't wait to see how your house progresses. It looks great and you've done a fantastic job including green elements in your home.

Image credits - Andrew Powter

Highlights From Last Week - LamiDesign IBU News, DO RESEARCH's Big Move, MKD mkLotus

So hard to get back into the swing of things. I'm one of those people heavily governed by inertia. When I have momentum I keep it until something slows me down or changes my direction. When I have to build up speed again it goes sooo sloooowly.

To make things easy on myself I'll recap some interesting developments that happened while I was away:

Michelle Kaufmann and her firm MKD introduced a new model of her very green, prefab homes - the mkLotus. As usual, top marks for modern style, sustainable design and materials, and viable prefab. Love the green roof on this one. Via Prefab Wednesday on The Good Human.

Image credit - MKD site

The wonderful blog DO RESEARCH sprang back into high gear and fired off a flurry of nice posts in the last week or so. It has such a wonderful feel to it. If you haven't visited in a while check back with 'em. The big news is that they're soon relocating back to the USA from Reading, and now the time has come to put research into reality for a new home ... what will they DO?

Finally, the biggest news of all. Greg La Vardera posted a sneak peek of the LamiDesign IBU Building System on his blog. This is his take on a viable, modular, sea container based housing system that can be convincingly pitched to building authorities. I think that Greg's experience with stock plans and the EcoSteel houses puts him in a good position to succeed. Should be really interesting to see what happens with this. These concept layouts show just how versatile the IBU system could be.

Image credit - LamiDesign Blog

I saw some other neat things around the web, and as always put them in my shared Google Reader in the sidebar (does anyone ever look at that????) so you can browse that if you want. But these three were the real biggies of the week. I'd say I missed a pretty big week :( but the good news is it looks like there'll be more to come!

Great List of Ten Things from Good Human

Here's a nice list of ten things you can do to make your home more eco-friendly, from the Good Human.

1. Use only low-VOC interior paints and wood sealants.
2. Go with spray foam insulation
3. Radiant heat
4. Make sure your windows and doors are sealed.
5. Use compact fluorescent lightbulbs
6. Buy Energy Star Appliances
7. Use reclaimed wood as much as possible
8. Open up those windows to improve indoor air quality
9. Build with finished concrete
10. Install Low flow plumbing fixtures and water filters

Great list! Do just a couple of these and you're on your way to a healthier and more efficient home. Do them all and you're my hero!

Interesting Concepts From Danish Architect Soren Korsgaard

Everyone, everywhere, is working on prefab. New ideas are popping up like dandelions on the first pretty spring day. I was just browsing YouTube (inspired by this post on Equity Green) and hit on this concept:





Interesting. It's from Danish architect Soren Korsgaard. I checked his website, and the house is actually a vacation cabin. It has an interesting sliding doors strategy that allows the occupants to reconfigure the house for different views, privacy, shelter from changing winds, etc. Kinda neat.





I also saw this other cool house concept on his site, the "Standard House." It's anything but, though it would be great if it were, and everyone really lived in something like it. Check it out:







The house is designed to be built fast, to take advantage of passive heating and cooling principles, and will incorporate "root zone water purification." It's decidedly modern, and I like the simple solar shell concept.

It actually reminds me very much of a solar house some family friends lived in back in the 1980's when I was growing up. The design was very similar to this. On a cold but sunny winter day they'd have to open the windows to let out extra heat, yet in the summer all the thermal mass kept the house nice and cool.

Korsgaard's other works are interesting as well. I like this industrial-inspired multifamily concept, curiously called "commune housing" (made me think communist bloc, not communal living).





Cool stuff, I think Korsgaard is one to watch.

Image credits - Soren Korsgaard site

Green Roof Links, Eye Candy from Dwell

Following my enthusiasm for green roofs yesterday, here are some links for more info:

• greenroofs.com - extensive info, articles, examples, etc.
• What is a Green Roof or "Living Roof" - via BuildingGreenTV.com
• Sweet Sedum - nice article on Metropolis.com
• greenroofs.org - "Healthy Roofs for Healthy Cities"
• Wikipeida Entry - actually some good info and links
• Seattlepi.com - good news article
• materialicio.us - good post

Of course, I wouldn't do this post without some eye candy - I'm looking forward to seeing the completed Dwell Home II and it's living roof (I really love this house)! Apparently, they're finally clearing all the pre-construction hurdles and will start building soon!





I also really liked this house in Dwell, and its green roof:





Image credits - dwell.com

Cool Modern from Denmark - Christensen & Co Arkitekter

Today I came across a hip blog called Design Spotter, and they had a post on a small rural cabin by the Danish architecture firm Christensen & Co Arkitekter. I clicked on over and was thrilled with what I saw: fresh, modernist designs with a green streak. The houses the firm shows on its site include lots of modest homes for real people. They're really cool looking too, really sharp.

One thing that struck me was how original the floorplans are. When you're talking about modernist homes you see a lot of the same thing, and a lot of it isn't really that good. Christensen has some super layouts. They do small bedrooms too, which you probably know by now is something I'm in favor of as a way of saving space for larger rooms where you do most of the real living.

Here's what they say about their approach to environmentally friendly design:

"Sustainability is no longer a field for pioneers; it has become a legal requirement and consensus in the building process. However, visionary solutions are rarely derived from the mainstream. At CCO our ambitions far exceed the revised building regulations of 1 January 2006. Several of projects are at the absolute forefront in this field."

What a great attitude! Embrace it and better it! Be the leader!

Here's a few pics of the residential projects I really liked:











That's some impressive stuff. Lots of green roofs in their work! And some interesting geometry, not just the typical plain modernist box. Nice integration of outdoor living spaces too. I'd move my family of four right in to any of these homes. I can't say that about a lot of stuff I see, but with these plans I really could.

Via Design Spotter.

Image credits - Christensen&Co site

Green Roofs in a Great Book - Sustainable Environments by Yenna Chan

I picked up another cool book today, Contemporary Design in Detail - Sustainable Environments, by Yenna Chan. It was just published in April, and it's really good.




Sustainable Environments is absolutely loaded with some of the coolest houses going, many of which I've talked about here in this blog, like: Steven Holl's Little Tesseract House, the ever-exciting C2C Home winner, and Shigeru Ban's Bamboo Furniture House. Other featured works are from noted firms like Arkin-Tilt, Pugh+Scarpa, ZEDFactory, and the good folks at Rural Studio.

One of the neatest things about the book is that roughly half the projects shown in it have green roofs. I love green roofs, I've already decided the home I build someday will have one, and I can't understand why on earth every new home shouldn't have one.

I like the green roof in the book done by Balmori Associates for the Solaire Building, a green residential tower in NYC which was chosen as an AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects. They have great pics of it on their site, as well as a short video that talks about all the benefits of green roofs, like helping to reduce the urban heat island effect, mitigating air pollution, absorbing stormwater and reducing runoff, and providing a green space for residents. There's another great video on the Solaire's green features here.





Green roofs rule! We need a green roof revolution in America!

Sustainable Environments is one boss book. Find it and read it.

Image credit - Rockport Publishers, AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects,

Eureka $mart House Energy Efficiency Challenge

I love science fiction, and naturally enjoy the Sci-Fi Channel from time to time. Of course, the new Battlestar Galactica is one of my very favorite shows. Now I have another reason to enjoy the Sci-Fi Channel - their $mart House Energy Efficiency Challenge. It's part of Sci-Fi's Visions for Tomorrow program, which promotes a positive vision of the future enabled by empowered individuals. The challenge highlights energy saving tips and technology by giving one lucky winner a $25,000 home energy makeover, including:

• Overall energy audit to identify energy problems and document what might be undertaken to make the home more energy-efficient by CMC Energy Services


• Whirlpool ENERGY STAR-labeled kitchen and laundry appliances


• Computer and energy-efficient electronics and wiring of the home by Consumer Electronics Association and their member companies


• Energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting by OSRAM Sylvania


• Sealing of all air leaks by The Dow Chemical Company


• Appropriate insulation for the winner's particular climate


• Programmable thermostat


• Low-flow shower head


• Faucet aerators


• Ventilating fan, and much more

Sounds good. Enter here.

Via Climate Progress

Another Example of the technOrganic Future - C2C Home Winner

Speaking of the technOrganic future in my post yesterday, I'm reminded of another brilliant example - the C2C Home Winner, which I blogged about before. That was six months ago (have I been doing this that long???) so I don't think there's any harm in showing it again. Anyway, it's that awesome. Anyone who hasn't seen it should. For those of you who have, tell me is this not the coolest of cool. Personally, I can never get enough of it.

The most exciting element of the house is the organic skin used to generate electricity:

"Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is collected and returned. This design utilizes timeless passive solar strategies by shielding unwanted summer sun and absorbing heat from low winter sun through its thermal mass. Active solar collection provides the main source of necessary electrical energy. The core extends vertically, clad with a super-conductive photosynthetic plasma cell skin that is able to generate 200% more electrical voltage per area than contemporary photovoltaics. Building on current research involving extracted spinach protein, this living skin is photosynthetic and phototropic it grows and follows the path of the sun, generating electricity in excess of single family needs. excess power is distributed to neighboring homes and street lighting infrastructure."

Incredible. But why? Plants generate energy from sunlight. Surely we can understand and apply photosynthesis in human structures. Check out the house's other systems, and how they harmonize with nature, here.

Some pics:







Without question, this is one of my favorite homes, ever, period. Amazing.

Image credits C2C Home Winner site

ARCHiNODE Studio, and the Fab Tree Hab - the technOrganic Future

I've seen this concept so many times before, in so many places, that I just didn't want to show it. But it's soooo cool, and today when I saw Shedworking post a YouTube video on it I just couldn't help myself. So here it is, the amazing Fab Tree Hab.




I must say, I blog about modernist houses, and yeah, I'm one of those people who love the "white box." But I really do believe that the future, the distant future that is, will be highly organic and deeply integrated with technology. We're already learning how living systems are vastly superior, how nature has solved problems that we can't yet touch, how adaptable and elegant it all is. To achieve sustainability, in the end, we'll inevitably arrive here.






Fab Tree Hab is the work of Mitchell Joachim and MIT colleagues Lara Greden and Javier Arbona. Joachim's practice, ARCHiNOD STUDIO, is firmly rooted in a brilliant vision of "architectural + urban + ecological design." I want to live in the future his work is pointing to:








Incredible. Want more? Check out the ARCHiNODE blog. Or check out Terreform, the nonprofit Joachim started with fellow architect Michael Sorkin (equally brilliant vision of an organic future) to "ascertain the consequences of fitting a project within our natural world setting."

These guys are doing radical stuff. They present a very exciting vision of the future. I wonder what it will take for us to get there, how long, how much pain before (will the world get worse before it gets better?), what will we lose, what will we give, what will we discover? I don't know, and even though I'm only in my mid-thirties I can't imagine I'll see it in my lifetime. But I know what I'm teaching my children.

From now on, I'll be on the lookout for more examples of this highly organic, technologically intertwined, vision, which I'll file in the category technOrganic Future.

Via Shedworking

Image credits - ARCHiNODE and Terreform sites