In Hong Kong, because of the space, apartments are small and expensive. Gary Chang, an architect, decided to design a 344 sq. ft. apartment to be able to change into 24 different designs, all by just sliding panels and walls. He calls this the “Domestic Transformer.”

Open Source Ecology is developing and testing the Global Village Construction Set, a set of tools to build replicable, open source, modern, off-grid resilient communities. By weaving open source permacultural and technological cycles together, we intend to provide basic human needs while being good stewards of the land, using resources sustainably, and pursuing right livelihood.

With the gift of openly shared information, we can produce industrial products locally using open source design and digital fabrication. This frees us from the need to participate in the wasteful resource flows of the larger economy by letting us produce our own materials and components for the technologies we use. We see small, independent, land-based economies as means to transform societies, address pressing world issues, and evolve to freedom.

via Open Source Ecology – Open Source Ecology.

Homemade acoustic panels. Why pay more?

I really like this idea for managing the acoustics in the the combined music-project room KJ and I are scheming on.

Acoustic treatments are often used to help improve the acoustics of a room by taming “flutter echoes,” “room modes,” and other problems which arise from a room’s dimensions and construction.

Although a variety of treatments are available for commercial use, they tend to be quite expensive. After some research both online and in print, we came across several sources for DIY acoustic treatments using rigid fiberglass panels and simple frames. These are often referred to as “bass traps,” although the ones that we’re focusing on have a fairly wide rage of absorption. While commercial versions are available for almost $100, we were able to make these panels for about $24 each.

For more information, check out the good folks in the acoustics forum at recording.org

via Make acoustic panels for your recording studio or home theater.

The solar collectors lie along a biking and hiking path. At night, the energy collected during the day is used to illuminate blue LEDs, while extra energy collected is fed back into the grid.

All exterior and interior materials have been specified to earn LEED credits, and with proper site selection and following the LEED checklist included with your home plans, you can easily be LEED gold or platinum certified.  We want to show that environmental consciousness can be beautiful.  All of our home plans have been independently reviewed and carry the Designed to Earn the Energy Star seal. This means that when built according to specifications you can count on an annual energy savings of 20-30% over similar homes built to code.

The plans come with very specific lists and instructions for contractors and landscapers, so you get what you expect to get in the finished building.

Willow House, designed by Johnna Barrett

The impersonal hellishness of freeway systems is being mitigated, a bit, in Istanbul. A garden has been planted inside a cloverleaf interchange.

Photos via Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden (inset) and the Istanbul Governor's Office.

The complete story is over on Treehugger, but here’s the jist:

In connection with the Urban Age conference hosted this week in Istanbul, the German bank for the third time issued an open call for entries of projects that “benefit communities and local residents by improving their urban environments.” Out of 87 entries received, a jury shortlisted five — including the Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden.

“Located improbably in the ‘urban voids’ created by a vast motorway spaghetti-junction on the Asian side of Istanbul, the Ali Nihat Gökyiğit Foundation has created a series of landscaped spaces that provide sanctuary for plants and people in the middle of a dystopian urban setting,” the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award jury announced.

Established in 1995, the 125-acre botanical garden contains more than 17,000 species of plants and is the city’s largest replanted green area. The facility includes a special children’s garden where schoolkids learn how to grow and care for flowers and vegetables; an area devoted to drought-tolerant plants and those useful in combating soil erosion and desertification; and a section for medicinal plants.

The final results just rolled in from this year’s Solar Decathlon, and team Germany’s sleek surPLUShome finished first in an incredible upset victory! The German team took top honors in the Net Metering and Engineering categories this morning, steamrolling the competition to secure their second Decathlon win. This year’s home features a sleek, dark facade that is almost completely covered in photovoltaic panels and can provide more than twice the amount of energy it needs.

We wrote about the Solar Decathalon here, too.

With its eco-cachet and forward-looking functionality, the zeroHouse aspires to become the Prius of prefab. Like a hybrid car, it is a tool for lifestyle change that anticipates challenges and arms owners with solutions before the problems have fully taken hold. Owners get to feel both responsible and stylistically bold—a perfect formula for setting a trend.

By my calculations, the building is 864 square feet, while the Dwell article says the building costs $350,000: that’s over $400 per square foot! From the Dwell article:

We are gearing the house toward first-adopter clients who are interested in the potential of a fully self-sufficient, environmentally clean, yet extremely comfortable, residence, says Specht.

I have a couple questions, though, ones not answered by the architects’, Specht Harpman, site, nor the article in Dwell. To be clear, my questions are inspired by a posting on Beautiful Life, which seems to read into the house more than either the architects or the Dwell article claim for the building. (For instance, Beautiful Life says this 864 sq. ft. building is home to four adults, a claim I don’t see on Dwell or Specht Harpman.)

The residence is composed of two 36×12-foot modules – “the maximum width legally permitted for interstate truck transport,” according to Dwell – arranged in a cross, and topped by a solar-panel module. The house, according to the architects’ site, is “easily shipped and quickly erected” and “operates completely off the grid.” One of the illustrations of the as-yet drawing-board-only dwelling is situated in a desert locale – from my experience, an environment of very high winds. It’s hard to imagine this thing not taking wing, like Icarus, because, in order to be easily shipped, it’s probably not terribly massive. Then again, for $350K, maybe it’s made of concrete…

The building’s mass raises another question. The architects’ site provides no materials specifications but, again, do to shipping costs, the building is probably none too massive. So even with state-of-the-art computational capacity, it looks like it’s going to be very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, do to a lack of insulative capacity. I could be wrong, though, as perhaps the building ships with some sort of SIPs (structural insulated panels). It’s hard to say, as none of the PR goes into much detail. And, indeed, the house has been the subject of much hype; Specht told Dwell that DuPont

“ran a series of ads in the Wall Street Journal featuring large pictures of the house. There was a lot of discussion about building a full-scale version. Ultimately, DuPont’s campaign strategy changed, and they decided against pursuing the approach. Our belief in the project didn’t end there, however, and we decided to take it further on our own.”

In any case, friends with solar panels in windy climes have recounted an issue that comes to mind with the zeroHouse: noise. Large-surface-area panels, not surprisingly, resonate in the wind. Even a mild wind, like the five-10 MPH zephyrs of the Palouse, cause significant resonance and considerable racket.

Then there’s the “off the grid” claim. It’s hard to see how ZeroHouse is going to be totally self-sufficient on solar alone. In the Spokane area of the Pacific Northwest and with current technology, solar can supply only about 25 percent of residential energy needs (this is a rough-and-ready number that comes from WSU Extension’s Energy Program). Again, it’s possible I may be missing something, as the architects’ site and the Dwell article are high on PR and low on facts.

I guess the nail in the coffin, at least for me, is this drawing:

I do credit the architects, as stated in the Dwell article, with having spent “years” conceptualizing the design of this home. But it’s hard for me to imagine a serious “off the grid” pioneer (one willing to shell out U.S.$350K, no less) eating Corn Flakes. But, then, I hate Corn Flakes and maybe the architects wake up to them everyday. More power (no pun intended) to them.