A very nature-based use of passive cooling is achieved by breezes driven across different surfaces that naturally create different temperatures in the same way that nature does…

…just like the way that land and sea breezes are generated by different temperatures over cool water and then moving over air heated by the warmth given off by rocks and land, or in this case, by concrete and then wood. Because of their different latent heat retention, all these materials have heat gain or loss, making the air temperature different above them.

In nature, that’s what creates windy areas. The many courtyards also help generate breezes the way that nature does.

Throughout – all of the hardwood louvers  can be adjusted by hand to decrease or increase the breezes and sunlight being filtered through.

To create the maximum of privacy and spaciousness, the architect used the traditional courtyard approach. The house itself skirts the perimeter of the property, with a central wing skirted by a strip of lawn on one side, and a strip of water on the other.

It seems larger than it is because the space in the central wing is see-through, with an uninterrupted 120 foot view across the entire compound.

Images: Wallflower Architecture
Via Cubeme

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Architecture That Mimics Nature to Create a Breezy Micro-Climate

Kitchen appliances may look really jaw-dropping, just like these amazing Pando Evolution Line’s creations. The modern kitchen hood series not only provide powerful aspiration, but also serves as a decorative piece that instantly turns your regular kitchen into a designer kitchen. To suit your needs best, Pando offer customized exhaused hood designs with different sizes, finishes, motors and optional remote controls. You wouldn’t mind such a play of light, shade and shine in your kitchen, would you?

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Designer Kitchen Hoods by Pando Evolution Line

The entire front is open to the sea. Sea breezes forming cross breezes throughout the design mean the need for air conditioning is reduced. The use of wood throughout is more sustainable than carpet.

There is a tiny central Zen garden featuring grasses that soften the harsh lines of the courtyard, elegantly, with understated simplicity.

Huge timbers form stair treads inside. Generous chunks of natural materials give a sense of lavishness, which ensures that the tiny footprint doesn’t feel cramped.

The small deck is designed to maximize the sea breezes.

A very unique “stone” floor reminds us that stone is – just that: stones. Chopped-up rocks. More energy efficient than chopping up rocks to make a stone floor, so why not just use stones? It must feel good to walk on these gently rounded stones in bare feet, making that connection to the beach outside.

Only a small, simple house is needed to indulge in the simple pleasure of the huge and infinite-seeming sea.

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(Relatively) Small is Beautiful

Have you ever noticed that those fabulously chic and modern interiors in shelter magazines never seem to include the framed family photos that most of us collect as treasured personal mementos?  How come?

Here’s one guess: while photos of family and friends may mean an awful lot to us, they’re also not exactly “design-friendly.”  That is, dozens of colored snapshots have a tendency to make a space feel cluttered and busy. And as we all know by now, clutter is anathema to modern design. So how can you resolve this problem if you love modern design but don’t want your home to feel impersonally stripped of all personal meaning?

1) Create a wall installation of your photos by grouping them together.
Deliberately plan an arrangement of your photos rather than allowing them to collect haphazardly. In the photo below, simple polaroid snapshots are deliberately arranged together over a mantle to function something like an installation piece. The same concept applies to the second photo, where one wall has been given over to framed photographs.

2) When framing photos, seek to keep the frames of the same type. Above, the wall appears unified because each photo uses a black frame. Below, the same concept applies, but this time, red frames add graphic punch.

3) Consider going black and white. There’s something very classy about black and white. And black and white photos never fight with each other, contributing to that busy feeling that colored photographs can give. So go the artsy route and try converting your color photos into black and white for an instant modern feeling.  In the photo above, black and white photos look chic with a punchy red frame.

4) Blow them up. Got a cool snapshot that is just a gorgeous photograph? Try blowing it up and pairing it with a couple of others to create a unique art installation. Below, although the black and white photos shown are actually of news events, there’s no reason why the same concept couldn’t work for personal photos.

5) Don’t be afraid to edit your photo collection. You can’t display every photo that enters your life. So pick and choose. Move stuff around. Replace stuff. Keep your photo collection feeling vibrant and alive — just like your home!

Images: 1,3, Verne via owi.bz, 5, De Baerdemaeker Kat, 2,4 via Design-Crisis.com

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Design Dilemma: Managing Family Photographs

The radiant heating system, using circulating hot water, normally used only in flooring, is also even incorporated into some of these exterior walls.

The builder installed an air system that completely changes the air in the property once every two hours – replacing the stale damp air with fresh, warmed, dry, filtered air. A heat exchange system uses the hot air going out to help pre-warm the fresh air that is brought in.

Heat recovery ventilators change and filter the air every two hours. On some of the the roofs, solar tiles provide the electricity, and a rainwater harvesting system reduces water use.

Twenty solar hot water panels feed hot water into an in-ground heat storage system for year-round energy supply and help the sun warm the pool through these huge South-facing windows.

Water itself behaves like a thermal sink. By putting the indoor pool inside huge windows that soak up the sun, the pool itself becomes a part of the warming system for the entire 21st century eco-castle. Mmmmm… I love it!

Source: Barnsley Hill Farm
More HomeDesignFind from Susan Kraemer: Journalists on Twitter

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Swimming Pool Acts as Thermal Storage in 17th Century Eco-Retrofit

When the weather gets cold, there is nothing better to warm you up than a fireplace. We  used to think about fireplaces as something big and not suitable for the needs of a small home. The Tulip fireplace by Biofireplace proves us wrong – it is as big as a regular heater. You may have noticed – there is no chimney; because it doesn’t need one – the contemporary fireplace uses bioethanol that burns clean, smoke and ash-free. Its sleek design, made by Matteo Ragni, makes it a centerpiece of any room and a great addition to any modern home.

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Tulip fireplace by Biofireplace: stylish and spacesaving

Method Homes has a down-to-earth, contemporary design sensibility that informs their straightforward prefab homes.

Each uses locally grown and produced building materials such as certified Douglas fir framing material and reclaimed fir trim and cedar siding on the outside. Because the sample home here is built in a flood plain, it is set on an unusually tall foundation, with a through way for flood water between the two sections of the house…

…and abundant solar-friendly space on the generous cantilevered roof area provides the option for solar electricity to power the home’s lighting and electricity needs.

The Glacier home features bamboo and cork floors, energy-efficient lighting and plumbing fixtures, hydronic radiant heating, whole-house ventilation systems, solar options and enhanced insulation applications.

Principal Architect Tom Lenchek says: “We design for sustainability and energy efficiency, balancing the desire for an architecturally sophisticated home.”

And by building indoors, in a factory, in the rain-drenched Pacific Northwest, they not only guarantee regular work weeks for construction crews – because it never rains indoors…

…but they also cut down on trips made to the site by delivery vehicles and subcontractors, thus minimizing the damage to roads from months of heavy vehicles going back and forth.

They hope to prefab their homes starting at $148,000 for about 900 sq ft. This first sample is for sale at just over $500,000 – on this site.

Source: Method Blog

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“Glacier” Prefab House by Method Homes

…but these are the first straw bale building blocks I’ve seen. What a simple, but great idea. Straw bale construction is eco friendly. Straw is a waste product on farms. And sourcing your building materials from what would otherwise go to waste makes for very sustainable buildings.

Here’s how it works. Oryzatech has found a way to compress rice straw into interlocking blocks of super fire-resistant straw. The holes act both as stabilizer connectors, just like lego blocks, but also provide the conduit through which threaded rods run to bolt the walls to the foundations, and to allow vertical runs for electrical, plumbing and cable conduits.

Through a scalable, low energy-production process, the company can make and sell an almost unlimited supply of highly insulating, carbon-sequestering construction blocks.

The insulating value of straw is unparalleled. The resulting structure creates (Passive-haus level) R-50 insulating walls, that provide better shear strength than a traditional sheathed 2×4 wall.  Each block weighs about 30 pounds, and is easily clean cut with a saw. California Polytechnic University has tested the blocks and found that they are:

• Highly insulated: More than three times the value of an insulated 2X6 stud wall
• Seismically strong: better than wood framing and less brittle than concrete walls
• Fast to assemble: Block dimensions are 12”x12”x24”, easily dovetailing with other common construction modules. Each block weighs only 30 lbs and interlocks.
• Carbon Offsetting Technology- University testing shows potentially 50 lbs of carbon offsetting

With all these positives, there is just one negative. No horizontal conduit runs are possible so far. The vertical hole is available in every block, so the fact that these are not available with conduit holes that also enable horizontally run conduit matters somewhat less; however, this is one thing the duo are working on finding the resolution for, because obviously it is still an issue. Though you could design around this, with a horizontal wooden beam to contain the horizontal runs at some point up the wall.

This is a sketch of the idea, at this point, there’s no release date announced, and the two are looking for investors…

Images: Ecocustomhomes
Source: Jetson Green

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Straw Building Blocks Make Warm Sustainable Homes

Feeling kind of bloated?

We are. It seems our waistlines aren’t the only thing to expand during the cold months. After a long cold winter,  we can’t help but survey everything that has collected around us as we cocooned on those snowy or bitter cold days, and feel the urge to purge. The goal:  a bright, airy home for spring. In short, our house needs to go on a diet.

Here’s our diet regime:

1) Toss the clutter. Start with the obvious by sending old papers and magazines to recycling bins.
2) Give away books. Books are a wonderful addition to every home, but you don’t need to keep every book you’ve ever read. Make it a habit to go through your bookcases every few months and get rid of the books you know you will never look at again. (We generally give away novels, but keep reference books that we know we will return to). Send your books to the local library or a charity in need of books, or set up an exchange with a friend. (And while you’re at it, go through your linen closet to eliminate unneeded towels and sheets. Old towels can be donated to your local animal shelter.)
3) Find at least one object to eliminate from every room. The rule of thumb: if it serves no purpose and is not beautiful, give it away.
4) Rotate art. Even collectors know that everything can’t be displayed at once. So take a look at what’s on your walls and reconsider. Instead of the installation of many small photos, maybe you want to simplify with one larger painting.
5) Rearrange your furniture to allow your corners to breathe. Stuff in every corner of a room has a way of suffocating a space, like so much junk in the trunk.  Lighten up by allowing some space to remain unfilled.
6) Let one thing take center stage. Pull out the stops on one component of your room — fabulous art, a wonderful hanging lamp, or even a particularly vibrant color on the wall. Then let everything else remain relatively quiet, to give your one special focal point extra impact.
7) Finish your purge with a good cleaning. Nothing will make you feel better than sweeping away the dust bunnies from under the bed!

And for diet inspiration, we offer these spaces. In the photo above, an utterly simply living room remains cozy and dramatic. Drapes just weren’t necessary. Below, a serene bedroom, devoid of clutter or even color, remains welcoming and dramatic, thanks to a statement-making chandelier. Below that, a dining room allows a unique chandelier and one dramatic black wall to take center stage. Forget about chairs in favor of a simple bench! In the last two photos, a kitchen allows space and light to take center stage. Again, no drapes, a simple bench, and uncluttered countertops underscore airiness.

Photos 1 and 2 by Andreas von Einseidel, via Rose Uniacke; 3 Nils Holger Moormann via remodelista.com; 4 and 5 Nilus de Matran via remodelista.com

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Design Dilemma: Putting Your House on a Diet

On the foredeck is an inviting plunge pool that is refilled daily with  water from the river. That’s not blue.

‘We tell guests we can make the water blue if they want, but that would involve adding chemicals that would then have to be pumped into the river,’ The owner comments. ‘So far, they’ve always declined.’

On deck -no  nasty smell of diesel – the boat uses jet propulsion instead of conventional propellers for better fuel economy.

The suites have private balconies, modern colonial-style décor and the mosquito netting is at the windows, so the mosquito netting doesn’t bunch up around you as you sleep.

Despite the simplicity of the completely open sides creating the cross ventilation, the appointments are in keeping with the understated luxury that the cruising class demands and expects.

An eco sensibility can be quite delightful, they’ll find. Since the rich are responsible for most of the climate emissions in the world, it is good to see a development like this, as an education. Maybe when they commission their next mansion; they’ll remember those delightful solar showers and cool natural breezes.

Images: Zambesi Queen

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The Rich Learn Sustainable Living on Luxury Cruise