PREFAB FRIDAY: Mfinity Releases microSYSTEM

About a year after Hurricane Katrina, we featured architect Carib Daniel Martin’s H.E.L.P. emergency shelter, a modular concept he developed to solve the challenges of widespread and sudden

PREFAB FRIDAY: Perrinepod

If you need a cute prefab home that can be built in 3 days and withstand everything from earthquakes to cyclones, than the sleek and chic Perrinepod is your answer. This disaster-proof prefab is not only

ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY: OWN THE DAY!

The organization behind awesome humanitarian design projects like the Biloxi Model Homes has now launched an easy and empowering way for any regular Joe Donor to make his donation really count.

SUN MICROSYSTEMS PROJECT BLACKBOX

We’ve seen shipping containers used for prefab housing before, and now here’s another function to add to the list for the reclaimed industrial wonder units: deployable digital datacenters. SUN

SHIGERU BAN PAPER CHURCH

It’s easy to get googly-eyed by the onslaught of amazing green design out there these days. But it’s also important to look back a bit at some of the architectural precedent and acknowledge a

LEONARDO DI CAPRIO to Build “Eco-Town” in Kansas

Discovery’s new eco-lifestyle channel Planet Green is partnering with actor and avid environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio to help launch the channel early next year with a touching

INTERACTIVE “LIVING GLASS” Regulates Air Quality

What if architecture was designed to work for you to keep you healthy? Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin, architects at The Living have come up with a new material called “Living Glass” that will

PREFAB FRIDAY: Modular Transitional Growth

Philippe Barriere Design Collective’s Modular Transitional Growth Housing (MTGH) system proves once again that prefab is not only earth-friendly, but a highly-adaptable, scalable, and efficient form

ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY BILOXI: Report from the Gulf Coast

My trip to the Gulf Coast this past week proved to be both sobering and inspiring, educational and thought-provoking. Nearly a year and half after Hurricane Katrina, I was surprised by the contrasting

ROBO-BUILDER LAUNCHING IN CALIFORNIA

We wrote about Behrokh Khoshnevis’ awe-inspiring, rapid-prototyping “robo builder” in 2005 when it was still a work in progress. But now, the University of Southern California

KNITTA PLEASE: Graffiti You Can Cuddle Up To

Hugging trees is all good, but our arboreal buddies get a lot more snuggly after a visit from one of Houston’s most notorious graffiti crews. Knitta Please, a team of 11 women and men who bomb urban

KATRINA RECOVERY SPURS MODULAR BUILDING

photo by Lee Celano Its unfortunate that it takes a disaster like Hurricane Katrina to convince people of the efficiency of modular building. Nevertheless, that’s what’s happening in the Gulf

PREFAB FRIDAY: Door House by Cubo Arquitectos

Not all prefab is created equal. Some, like Rocio Romero’s LV Home, are made for middle-income, modernist loving homebuyers. Others, like Ray Kappe’s Living Home, are a super high-end version

KATRINA COTTAGE wins People’s Choice Award

The Katrina Cottage is in the news again: it was recently announced as the winner of the People’s Choice at the annual Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. The awards ceremony took place this past

SUSTAINABLE HOUSING FOR NEW NEW ORLEANS

We’ve just gone off on a tangent about the politics of celebritecture and Brad Pitt’s involvement in designing housing for New Orleans, but now we’d like to get back to the most

CAN BRAD PITT SAVE THE WORLD? New Orleans will tell…

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt has jumped into the New Orleans rebuilding efforts, unveiling a green housing design for New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. The design was selected from an architectural

ANNIVERSARY OF KATRINA: Designing for disaster

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and to make sure that people don’t forget it about the massive devastation that affected so many people on the Gulf Coast, we are devoting