The wildly successful Swedish company, Ikea, is seeking to move ecologically optimized tiny houses to the mainstream. These tiny houses, or trailers around 200 square feet, bear the company’s trademark airy and minimalist style and retail for around $50,000.With Ikea’s emphasis on recycled and reusable materials, the company seems likely to accelerate some important shifts … Read more
A crew of students from the Yale School of Architecture has assembled the wooden frame of a one-story building on Horse Island, a 17-acre property off the coast of Branford, Connecticut. They are building a teaching and coastal research center for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, which owns the island. The crew used … Read more
The Eagleyew house is a beautifully sculpted custom green home built with nearly 100% natural materials. The light clay walls are made with a mixture of clay and straw, and the timber frame structure is built using wood from the property. There is a wraparound living roof, and the interior has earthen floors and natural … Read more
The City of Cape Town, South Africa is using recycled materials to construct a new multipurpose center at the Helderberg Nature Reserve. The center, due to be completed by June 2021, has a horse-shoe shape and faces the Helderberg mountain. The Helderberg Nature Reserve will provide benefits include education, recreation, tourism, job creation and skills … Read more
Greensburg, a farming community in southwestern Kansas with a population of 900 rebuilt “green” after a tornado barreled through at more than 200 miles per hour and nearly wiped it off the map in 2007. Now Greensburg gets all of its electricity from a wind farm, has an energy-efficient school, medical center, city hall, library, … Read more
It was in 1967 that the first Trombe wall was implemented in France. The system, named after engineer Felix Trombe, combines glass and a dark, heat-absorbing material to conduct heat slowly into the house. The standard Trombe wall places glass approximately 1 to 2 inches from a 4 to 16 inch thick dark masonry wall, … Read more