Living off-the-grid in the foothills of the colorful Colorado Rocky Mountains, Andrew Michler LEED AP BD+C and his wife Jennie are learning firsthand what low entropy living really means. He is building a Passive House rest/work space and is currently writing the book [ours] Hyper-Localization of Sustainable Architecture to be published in 2014.
Follow Andrew on twitter @andrewmichler
When architect Ed Mazria announced that buildings account for nearly 50% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, the building industry was taken aback. After a long career in passive solar
The term 'building science' is used quite often now in sustainable building circles, but much of what we understand of it can be traced back to the work of Dr. Joe Lstiburek, founder of
The term “upcycle” - used to describe the process of turning something old and used into a new and useful item - has rapidly grown in popularity over recent years. The term was popularized
Bob Vila’s name has been synonymous with home improvement since he helped launch This Old House in 1979. After nearly thirty years of producing and hosting television shows about the world of
EVolo Magazine has made a name for itself with its annual skyscraper competition, which started in 2006. Since then there have been over 4,000 submissions arriving from across the planet,
We had an opportunity to sit down with green building consultant Carl Seville, also known as the Green Building Curmudgeon for his no-nonsense look at green building and remodeling. Carl
The Nano House follows up on Richardson's XS book series about small home design - the author clearly feels comfortable with the exploration of the very small. The volume slips into 42
A project 30 years in the making, this tiny off-grid retreat on a coastal island in Maine is almost entirely self-sufficient. Designed and built by Alex Porter for her father, the project
INHABITAT: What inspired you to write 'Cradle to Cradle' (the book) and launch the Cradle to Cradle system? William McDonough: From an early age, I was fascinated by differing attitudes towards
A new film project is underway that will explore the power of thinking locally and how design can impact the world. Aptly named LOCAL: Make the Switch, the project will consist of 25 short
A surprisingly political lineup of speakers (including Jerry Brown, Cory Booker, George Pataki, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski) bookended the 2012 Greenbuild conference in San Francisco.
HINT.FM's real-time map of wind speeds in the US is a useful tool to help us better understand the wind's power and potential. The kinetic map was developed by Fernanda Viégas and Martin
This year's record breaking summer high temperatures and general worrisome warming trend don’t necessarily mean that the coming winter will be a walk in the park. Before the cold weather
Zola European Windows Perhaps the most engineered product in Passive House is the window with plenty of manufacturers keen to strut their triple and quadruple panes. Big news was the end of
The conversion of an old villa into a modern light-filled space is a bit of an achievement. The ground floor features a modern kitchen and dining area that open directly to the small courtyard
When you combine Passivhaus with prefab you get one of the greenest buildings possible. Designers Vanda Holescakova of Architectonica and Katarina Husarova Volekova of DSU have conceived the
IKEA, the massive Swedish furniture retailer that brought scandinavian design to the masses, is now going to bring LED lighting to the world in a big way. The company just announced that it will
A simple square of glass may hold the key to the vexing problem of storing data indefinitely. Developed by Hitachi, the technology prints a binary series of dots upon a sliver of quartz glass
At first glance the home looks like a single, level mass playing off the gently sloping landscape with the backdrop of Papago Peak. The home is actually a series of smaller offset buildings
Oxygen Villa is very much about light and air, and the name more than implies the homes breathing new life into a classic Arabic form of architecture -- the mashrabiya. Developed centuries ago,
The entire Arctic ice shelf will be gone in four years, as predicted professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University. The new blunt assessment, which
Honest Buildings, the new real estate site that is looking to be the new social media hub for buildings, has just received a sizable cash injection topping $1 million. The site features over
Steven Vidovic and Kristina Taranto's design was selected as the winner of a competition looking for a ‘green theme’ - and they succeeded with a design that is largely made from cast-off
Global warming has wreaked havoc over the central US this summer, with crops withering, record high temps becoming the norm, and huge fires in Colorado. But the massive fires that have erupted
According to a new study, beauty and sustainable building make for the most potent combination of high performance. The Pattern Mapping Institute had a hunch that buildings which were
How many times have we seen the pattern where a freeway - once the emblem of the futuristic city - has turned neighborhoods into bleak, inhuman environments? San Francisco, like many American
Image MAD Architecture The National Art Museum of China's location and highly-publicized competition show that China sees the former Olympic grounds as prime site to display their vision of
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ plans to build a state-of-the-art net zero energy house in San Francisco has the neighbors up in arms. Why? His green dream home involves tearing down a 1911
If you often find yourself searching for a pencil, then this clever little device called the P&P Office Waste Processor will keep well stocked by quickly producing them from simple office
MIT-based nonprofit STG International is looking to make isolated African clinics and schools much more self-sufficient with a new hybrid power and heat solar system. The unique system combines
