The green design ideas for this house is a modern structure that was suitable for displaying art-glass collection. These were all accommodated while maintaining modern sensibilities and detailing on the exterior, then transitioning to a more minimalist aesthetic on the interior. The one-story building comfortably spreads out on its large lot, embracing a front and back courtyard and allowing views through and from within the transparent center section to other parts of the home. A high volume screened porch, the floating fireplace, and an axial swimming pool provide dramatic moments to the otherwise casual layout of the home.

The house is mostly low-maintenance, but because the program called for space to display the vast collection of blown glass, there has to be a few bottles of glass cleaner around. The client’s love of glass was paramount to the house’s design, so the house was created to achieve a connection between her collection, lighting, and the changing patterns of incoming sunlight. Display cases with reconstituted wenge wood cabinets beneath add to the geometry rather than detract or clutter it and bring warmth and contrast to the polished, concrete floors.

Sustainable initiatives includes ; pool source heat pump with supplementary cooling tower, natural ventilation, daylighting, LED and fluoroscent lighting, spray foam insulation, sealed attic, tankless water heating, concrete floors and native plants.

It has a very vertical design with living and private zones situated on multiple separate floors. It’s a consequence of a steep hillside site where the house was built. It provides for numerous outdoor and covered terraces and balconies capitalize on stunning views of the bay and the San Francisco skyline beyond.

It was built by McDonald Construction & Development, the firm behind several other LEED Platinum projects. The rich and contemporary residence spans four levels on a hill and incorporates a number of green elements and ideas from various companies.

It uses passive solar and geothermal green sources in order to produce additional power as well as the solar thermal cells to heat the water. The heated water is also used to provide hydronic heating underneath the engineered Veneer hardwood flooring. In order to lessen the consumption of water, the house has low-flow toilets, faucets, and shower fixtures.

During the construction, majority of the materials were locally sourced and recycled content materials. They used high fly ash in all the concrete and they used reclaimed exposed timber framing. Recycled concrete counter tops, sinks, tubs and surfaces as well as recycled standing metal seam roofing were used.

The house is insulated with spray foam insulation made from beet resins and efficient aluminum-framed windows which are thermally broken, double paned and with low E. Efficient LED lighting as well as the whole house automation and lighting system are used in order to save the power. In order to keep the indoors healthy, they used zero VOC paints and finishes as well as an innovative air recirculation system.

source: http://www.robaid.com/tech/green-architecture-hillside-house-marin-county-california.htm

Prototype is built in a flood and seismic zone in Stimson Beach, California. The flood-proof home has been Platinum certified by the Marin County green building program and meets FEMA standards of the area, according to Matthew Peek principal at Studio Peek Ancona. It’s green and undeniably contemporary, but it’s also small and showcases indoor/outdoor living without a hitch.

Green House #1. An Earthship in Brighton, UK

Green House #2. Reused wine casks
The Hotel de Vrouwe van Stavoren in the Netherlands has put wooden Swiss wine drums to good use: they’ve built four rooms out of them.

Green House #3. Recycled sewer pipes
Not far away, in Austria, the Park Hotel offers lodging in converted sewer pipes. I’m guessing those thick concrete walls keep out the weather well… and if you want to try this out, the hotel even offers a “pay as you wish” system: “everyone leaves in the Paybox his suite per night € an amount he can afford and with which he is willing to support our project.”

Green House #4. The mud house
Mud’s not exactly correct… the house above, built by DR resident and sustainablog contributor ziggy, is made of cob, a mixture of earth and straw. ziggy created a blog dedicated to building the cob house, and you can see the process step by step.

Interested in learning more about this very old building material? The Natural Building Network will be holding a cob building workshop this summer, and Dancing Rabbit has opportunities for natural building professionals that involve cob and other materials.

source: http://blog.sustainablog.org/green-building-materials-recycled-reused/

Looking for a more energy-efficient home? You can take your chance on 9 Shutter Latch — along with possibly 17 million other people nationwide.

For the third year, HGTV has built a custom-designed, fully furnished ” green home ” to give away to one lucky winner, and this year’s model is in a ” cottage ” neighborhood in ” The Pinehills ” development in Plymouth. This is the cable channel’s first green home in the Northeast, and is part of a ” you don’t have to be extreme to be green ” prize package valued at almost $800,000.

Potential homeowners can enter from April 16 to June 4 to win the home, and can visit the home starting April 21. ( Thousands visited last year’s HGTV Green Home in Port St. Lucie, Fla., and nearly 17 million vied to win it. ) HGTV will air the ” HGTV Green Home 2010 ” special at 8 p.m. April 18, with repeats through the sweepstakes period. The winner will be ” ambushed ” on June 28.

What’s special about the house? The two-bedroom shingle-style cottage with about 2,100 square feet of living space — a design inspired by classic cottages on Cape Cod and the Islands — was built with green and sustainable materials and ideas throughout. Those include fieldstone from New England farmland; low-water landscaping; permeable pavers; low-flow shower heads and dual-flush toilets; rainwater collection; soy-based spray foam insulation; Energy Star roofing; solar panels; and new Smart Sun efficient windows.

The furnishings, too, are green, with fabrics and flooring from reusable materials, and a dining room table made from repurposed wood by West Barnstable Tables, one of many Cape-area companies involved. Yarosh Associates Architects of Mashpee and MacKenzie Brothers Builders from Marstons Mills have led the project.

The cottage style “was a plan that would show the idea that green could still have character,” says Tony Green, managing partner at Pinehills, who says he was “thrilled” that HGTV picked this development. “There’s all this great technological stuff to make the footprint lighter, but it still looks and feels like a traditional home.”

The award-winning Pinehills has been designed with the natural environment in mind, including preserving 70 percent of land as open space. It offers walking and nature trails among upscale amenities of a swimming pool, golf courses, shops and a fitness center.

Green Home construction photos are on HGTV.com/greenhome and hgtvpro.com, and a 90-second virtual tour debuted on the HGTV Web site this week. Look in next Sunday’s At Home section for more details on the HGTV Green Home, built six miles from Plymouth center.

The $90 million building called ” Cleantech One ” will offer about 404,000 sq ft of office space that could house up to 50 green businesses when it is completed by December 2011.

The building will incorporate green features such as solar systems, rainwater harvesting, sky gardens and green architecture, said JTC at a briefing on Monday.

‘If the solutions we implement are successful, we will replicate this throughout the rest of the Cleantech Park and share it with the rest of Singapore and the region,’ said JTC director [Aerospace, Marine and Cleantech cluster] Tang Wai Yee.

JTC launched a design competition for the building last December and local architecture firm Surbana International Consultants emerged the winner from 31 entries.

JTC said Surbana’s entry won for its highly compact design and ecological features, it said.

source: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_507968.html

Designed by EDAW AECOM, The CLEM7 Tunnel is the first major green infrastructure project road tunnel in Brisbane, Australia. A series of 3 distinctive canopy structure that conceived by AECOM’s Design + Planning team Brisbane City Council, became the center of media attention during the official opening last week.

AECOM Associate Director James Dorrat said the canopies for the CLEM7 tunnel were designed to be iconic while also functional for tunnel users. “ The canopies ” distinctive sculptural design and flowing forms mimic the protection of Brisbane’s expansive subtropical shade trees. Metal louvres set within the structures filter sunlight, transitioning motorists’ eyes as they enter the tunnel.” said Mr Dorrat. Each canopy is supported by complex rolling steel trusses covered in metallic copper–coloured architectural panels which have been individually cut and fitted to match the complex curves. At night the canopies are washed with coloured light which enhances the copper tones of the metal panels.

The largest of the canopies, located at Bowen Hills on Brisbane’s north side, is made up of 2,000 unique pieces and weighs 230 tonnes. AECOM Principal Mark Fuller hopes the canopies become a long-lasting legacy of Brisbane’s design expertise and the city’s forward-thinking approach. Mr Fuller says “ The CLEM7 canopies exemplify Brisbane’s maturing urban landscape and AECOM is proud to have contributed so strongly to such a significant project. ”

“ The Alley Flat Initiative ” exhibition from 6-8 pm. on March 26 at Austin’s City Hall.

The Alley Flat Initiative, conceived in 2005 as a challenge for architecture students to design sustainable, affordable housing in East Austin, grew into an award-winning collaboration between the ” Center for Sustainable Development “, the ” Austin Community Design and Development Center ” and the ” Guadalupe Development Corporation “.

The initiative simultaneously addresses issues of sustainability, high cost of living and urban sprawl in Central Austin neighborhoods through the provision of green affordable infill homes that connect with the smart grid model of distributed infrastructure, while retaining the neighborhood character.

Alley flats are small, detached secondary residential units, often accessed from Austin’s extensive network of underutilized alleys. they are carefully designed to use 40 % less energy and 20 % less water, minimizing the ecological footprint of the building.

The 2 flats completed under the program to date both received the highest rating from the Austin Energy Green Building Program are already being rented to low – and moderate – income households in East Austin. Ten more of these green, affordable units are in some stage of design or development.
The initiative includes not only efficient housing designs constructed with sustainable technologies, but also innovative methods of financing and home ownership that can benefit neighborhoods in any city in the United States.

source: http://www.gogreentoolshed.com/collaboration-between-school-of-architecture-and-city-of-austin-addresses-sustainability-affordable-housing-and-urban

More Hollywood celebrities are embracing green homes. Their ranks are expanding from filmmaker James Cameron and actress Cate Blanchett to Emmy award-winning actor Bryan Cranston. He’s building a beach house in Ventura County, Calif.

“It’s going to receive a platinum level green certification,” Cranston, who played the dad in the TV comedy Malcolm in the Middle and now stars in AMC’s drama series Breaking Bad, tells Mother Nature Network. “The cooling is from Mother Nature and the heat is from radiant heating on the floor.”

It seems you can build just about anything out of cardboard. Fabrizio of the Italian design magazine Abitare shows us a 10 meter (33 foot) high tower, built by the Institut fuer Konstruktion und Gestaltung at Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck , for an exhibition in Paris.