Architectural Record

” The zeroHouse by Specht Harpman, a New York City-based firm, is deliberately placeless. It could be erected in Vermont or in Texas, where its unbuilt design won the 2007 Studio Award from the Texas Society for Architects. A slew of high-efficiency techniques afford the house its full energy independence: solar panels store and produce power, allowing a fully charged zeroHouse to operate continuously for up to one week with no sunlight; a rainwater collection plane gathers and diverts water into an elevated 2200-gallon cistern; gravity-fed plumbing fixtures eliminate the need for power-consuming pumps; a compost unit beneath the house processes organic waste and converts it into clean, dry fertilizer that needs to be removed only twice a year; and a high-efficiency heating and air-conditioning system is separately zoned for sleeping and living areas.

The structure of the house contributes to its low environmental impact. Made from prefabricated components, the walls, roof, and floor are all insulated with closed-cell structural foam and achieve a thermal resistance rating of R-58. The full-wall windows in each room are triple-insulated and fabricated from low-e heat-mirror glass. Exterior doors feature vacuum-sealed aero-gel panels to maintain maximum thermal performance. Last but not least, zeroHouse employs a helical-anchor foundation system that touches the ground at only four points and requires no excavation, meaning minimal disturbance to the earth.

While it’s Specht Harpman’s smart design that keeps the house running on nothing, all functions of the house are monitored by an array of sensors and regulated by a “house brain” that can be controlled through any laptop computer. Fully customizable for personal usage patterns, zeroHouse can be used as a weekend getaway or for an extended stay.”

Images are courtesy of Specht Harpman

Formal name of project: zeroHouse

Location: The zeroHouse is being marketed worldwide. It has been designed to work within an operational range of 36 N to 36 S latitude for year-round occupancy, and 47 N to 47 S for partial-year occupancy.

Gross square footage: 650 sq. ft.
Completion Date (Month and Year): Unbuilt
Total construction cost: $350,000

Architect: Specht Harpman - http://www.spechtharpman.com/
338 West 39th Street, New York,
New York 10018

Popularity: 15% [?]

- Via building

” US green architect to unveil new speculative 40-storey skyscraper at World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi later this month Green architect and writer, William McDonough, has come good on his promise to Fortune Magazine to design a speculative tower for the future. The skyscraper will have a “100% positive impact on people and places”.

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Shaped like a cross between the Gherkin and a cone shell, the 40-plus story tower by William McDonough + Partners, encompasses trees and other greenery and, so the architect claims, will behave like a tree. “It’s a building that receives its energy from the sun, that grows food, that builds soil, that provides a habitat for hundreds of species, that changes colours with the seasons, that creates micro-climates, that would purify water,” He said. “A building that would do just about everything a tree can do except self-replicate.”

The building encloses a series of “atrium gardens” on the western side with plants intended to clean the air inside the building. The northern side is covered with clear glass in front of mosses which should absorb particulates in the air. The building recycles waste water for use in the building’s gardens which, when cleansed by the plants, will be fed back into the grey water system once more.

The south side of the building is made up of 34,000 sq m of solar panels, meeting 40% of the building’s energy needs. A combined natural gas-fuelled heat-and-power plant, operating at 90% efficiency supplies the missing 60%.To cut down further on energy, workstations are fitted with presence sensors shutting down when people aren’t there and adjusting heat, light and sound when they are. “We don’t heat or cool ghosts,” says McDonough, mysteriously.He and Cradle to Cradle co-author, Michael Braungart, will talk about the tower among other ideas at the World Future Energy Summit which takes place in Abu Dhabi on the 21-23 of January. Lord Foster is due to give the closing speech at the event. McDonough is credited with creating the first solar powered house in Ireland and received the first and only Presidential Award for Sustainable Development for an individual in 1996.

A spokesperson for the practice confirmed there had been no concrete commissions for the building so far.
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Popularity: 21% [?]

- Via Vincent Callebault Architecte

” Anti-Smog is a parasite project set up on the post-industrial urban structure of the Petite Ceinture and the canal de l’Ourcq in the 19th Parisian district. It is a public equipment dedicated to promote the last innovations on the theme of sustainable development in urban area in terms of housing or transport. Its role is to apply all the avant-garde renewable energies so as to fight against the Parisian smog. This smog (smoke + fog) is a bluish to reddish haze. It is the result of the water condensing (the fog) on the suspended dust and the presence of ozone in the troposphere. The smoke is produced in major part by the burning of fossil fuel and is composed of sulphurous gas (such as sulphur dioxide) in addition to the dust on which the water steam contained in the fog condensates itself. This photochemical cloud is associated to many detrimental effects for the health (asthma, infarct, AVC) and for the environment (acid rains, attrition of the building). This project aims therefore at inventing a new architecture able to disasphyxiate the area in which it is set up!
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Popularity: 5% [?]

- Via Dezeen

” Building Design shows a power-generating “wind dam” designed by architects Chetwoods that uses a giant spinnaker sail slung between mountains to funnel wind into a turbine.
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Popularity: 5% [?]

- Via Jetson Green

” We’re no longer in rendering stage, this is the real deal. Project7ten is built and ready for viewing. Actually, it’s ready for sale if: (1) it hasn’t already been sold, and (2) you’re in the market for one of the greenest, most modern homes in California. Interestingly, this house is the first conventionally- constructed LEED Platinum home in the state.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Jetson Green

” In China, there’s a massive exodus from the rural to urban areas, but it’s controlled because the country doesn’t have enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a city. At the same time, urbanization accentuates the air and soil pollution problems. So, Knafo Klimor Architects proposed an agro-housing project that blends agriculture and high-rise housing in one structure. This agro-housing project brings the food-supply directly to the building, and to the extent that residents can realize the benefits of urban farming, there is a decreased reliance on transportation for agricultural products (shopping and delivery to stores). Plus, with the building’s integrated water capture systems, the project has the potential to reduce water consumption and runoff. Residents could make money off the crops, too. ….
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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Jetson Green

” …..  Late yesterday, it was announced that the Technische Universität Darmstadt team from Germany took first prize.  Congratulations!  Word on the street is that this house was consistently swarmed with visitors the entire week.  Rightfully so, too. The trademark feature of their home is the oak louvered frames, almost like plantation shutters, that surround the home.  They’re built with integrated photovoltaics to provide that extra amount of solar power.  Visitors also seemed to love the floor-integrated bed and storage system.  With everything “Made in Germany,” the subtle touches and green materials are so compelling, so German-engineered.  And as you can see from the images below, this team expects various applications for the home, from vertical loft to outdoor retreat, and everything in between.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Inhabitat

” …. Good public transportation can mean a number of things, but it is generally defined as being easy to use, efficient, clean, and get you where you want to go with as little fuss as possible. A tall order indeed. Here are our top five cities…
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Popularity: 3% [?]

- Via Inhabitat

” Static is not a word that describes the Sino-Italian Ecological and Energy-Efficient Building (SIEEB) at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Designed to maximize passive solar capabilities and fitted with state-of-the-art active solar elements, the SIEEB is a dynamic energy-efficient oasis that optimizes its urban location with ecological considerations. Architect Mario Cucinella and the Milan Polytechnic conceptualized the structure to educate and showcase possibilities for energy-efficient building, particularly in regard to CO2 emissions.
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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Jetson Green

” There’s an excellent interview by CNN with Ken Yeang, principle of the UK firm Llweleyn Davis Yeang.  Almost a year ago, I wrote about Yeang’s fascinating Menara Mesiniaga building, and that article has been a popular one in terms of visitors.  Yeang is an ecological, architectural visionary designing in a way that blurs the boundary between the natural and human-built environments.  With eco-logical design, the goal is to build a structure with no pollution or waste.  And we’re getting there, too.  To quote Yeang, “we’ll see green buildings long before 2020 — I think the movement is intensifying. Within the next 5-10 years we’ll see a lot more green buildings being built. Not just buildings but green cities, green environment, green master plans, green products, green lifestyles, green transportation. I’m very optimistic.“  The green buildings pictured in this post are only a fraction of those designed by Ken Yeang.  If you’re looking for more information, feel free to pick up his latest book: ECODESIGN: A Manual for Ecological Design. ”

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Popularity: 2% [?]