Architecture that looks great and acts green

Photo by EcoHome Magazine

Samsel Architects of Asheville, N.C., came up with the designs for the Celo Residence, a 1,538-square-foot home that captured an EcoHome Grand Award for its sustainable 3,750-gallon rainwater catchment cistern, low-flow toilet systems, and low-VOC interior paints. Read the details at EcoHome.

There was an old home in Nantucket

Photo by Inman News

Take one 264-year-old home on Nantucket Island, restore it to the charm of its original architecture, add a kitchen and bath – and do it all while meeting LEED insulation and air sealing requirements. Kudos (and a Grand Award) to Rosenberg Kolb Architects of New York City. Read more about the winners at Yahoo.

Aloha by Design

Photo by EcoHome Magazine

The trick was to build the 45 subsidized homes of the Kumuhau Subdivision on Oahu using solar power and rainwater drip irrigation, earning  LEED-Gold certification. Praise for architects Armstrong Development of Honolulu. Inman News offers a comprehensive write up on these homes that reflect traditional plantation architecture, honoring nature.

Going, going, green

Photo by EcoHome Magazine

The award-winning GO Home in Belfast, Maine, is only the 12^th home in the nation to earn the “Passive House” designation, and EcoHome predicts its solar, south-facing orientation will recover $170,000 in energy costs over three decades of use. The house, designed by architects at GO Logic Homes of Belfast, has a pending LEED-Platinum certification.

Bravo!

I was awestruck by the “Shelf-pod” house in Japan, built by architect Kazuya Morita. The 557-square-foot home in the Osaka area has bookshelves on every wall, from floor to ceiling, and it can hold ten tons of books. Take that, Kindle fans!

Architecture for book lovers

Photo by Inman News

The Shelf pod house exteriors are modest, lending no real clue to the amazing spaciousness inside for any bibliophile. The shelving, Yahoo reports, is strong enough to hang the entire house on it. Morita claims the pod is designed to resist earthquake damage.

Books, boots and beyond

Morita Architecture Studio

Morita says he loves the challenge of combining traditional Japanese architecture with sustainable features. His Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio is dedicated to making comfortable domiciles in small spaces.

Paying homage to architectural influences

Photo by Yahoo

The Shelf-pod is a harmonious combination of designs from a traditional Japanese storehouse and Kumiko woodcraft schools while using deft touches of Islamic calligraphy and Turkish patterns.

Bathtub reading permitted

Photo by Huh Magazine

Even the bath is supported by a wall of shelves. In an Inman News interview, Morita says his creations are perfect options for large cities in China, New York and England.

As resources continue to dwindle–along with usable space–it’s comforting to think that humans and their books will abide.

Imagine my delight this week in stumbling across an article on BSB Design, a Midwest American firm that is pioneering pre-fab homes that can be assembled by four persons in a single day using a screwdriver. According to Trendmaster, the 10’x12’ home is built on model of the Catenary Arch. It sells for around $1,500 and has made a difference in South Africa in elevating living conditions among the poor.

The architecture of hope

Photo by Architecture Week

It’s named the Abod (pronounced “abode”), and this BSB dwelling is shipped in a single box. The arch shape allows for a second-floor sleeping loft and is built from non-combustible materials. Abod Shelters created the designs is response to United Nations’ predictions that 2 billion more people worldwide will be pushed into slums in the next 30 years.

Abod’s unique, winning design

Photo by Abod

In 2008, The American Institute of Architects awarded the Abod its Small Project Award for small dwellings. Read the details at Architecture Week.

Starting with basics

Photo by Trend Hunter

Doug Sharp is Chairman of the Board of Iowa’s BSB Design and brainchild and founder of Abod. The initial installation project was completed in Johannesburg, South Africa.  Additional projects on the drawing board are planned in Venezuela and for the creation of the first AIDS orphanage in South Africa.

What this country needs is more big-hearted people who can think small.

Neo-skinny architecture

Photo by Yahoo

First, the home reported by Yahoo. Jakub Szczęsny of Warsaw has designed and constructed a home that is four-feet wide at the thickest end, narrowing to 28 inches. Originally among designs for an art installation, Szczęsny’s Keret House is likely the skinniest house in Poland, and perhaps the world.

Here’s what it looks like installed:

Photo by Arch Daily

Small enough for you? The astronauts may have more room in the space station privy. Read more about the Keret House at Arch Daily.

A narrow escape

Photo by Winkworth

The British property services firm Winkworth has sold this skinny house in Shepard’s Bush, a suburb west of London. A converted hat shop, the house is but five-and-a-half feet wide. There are soak tubs wider than that. But the home rises to five levels, providing 1,000 square-feet of living space. Read more about it at Winkworth.

The mother-lode of skinny

Photo by Two Feathers

Here in Brazil’s Madre de Deus, Helenita has fashioned a 3 x 9 foot, three-story home and wedged her way in. Actually, it’s pretty spacious. See interior photos as part of the skinny-home roundup at Web Urbanist.

(Bye for now: that’s all I could squeeze into the blog this week.)

So can the people who have modified rolling railroad architecture into unique, stationary homes. We’ve all seen roadside cafes converted into diners. But these people loved railroad coach designs enough to convert them or add them to existing dwellings.

Off the beaten tracks

This converted train car in Portland is for sale and comes with a full-electric kitchen, DSL and what the owners describe as an “incinerator toilet.” (Sure hope it never activates while in use!) The rent on the siding where the car is parked is a scant $125 a month. Hard to pass by, isn’t it? Get more details at Web Urbanist.

Unique home delivery

This German couple bought two postal cars retired from a Swiss railroad and shipped them home for $37,600 – a price that topped the $29,000 asking price for the pair at the online store where they purchased them. An architect planned the portion of the house that connects the cars. The cars open into the home via the original sliding doors. Read more at Fun Portion.

Old #41

In 1889, this car went into service on the San Francisco and Northern Pacific Railway and was retired in the 1930s. It languished as a converted duplex until 1979, when it was further converted into a houseboat moored at Richardson Bay’s upscale town of Sausalito. Hope floats!

The house of spirits

In Russia, it seems, converting railroad cars into orthodox churches is totally in vogue. English Russia has a startling array of photos of many cars transformed into functional, well-designed churches.  Have a look at this cool interior:

For a long time, Boston and New York set trends in firehouse conversions, especially for their Gothic and Victorian designs. But don’t shortchange San Francisco!

Top of the hill

Located in the chic Pacific Heights neighborhood with panoramic views of the Bay, this firehouse conversion was once home to Governor Jerry Brown and novelist Danielle Steele. It has an elevator for people with acrophobia. In 2009, it was listed for $4.4 million. (Read more on Examiner.)

Bargain on 22^nd Street

With California home prices in tragic decline, this firehouse conversion was still on the market after a year and a half after dropping the asking price from $6.3 down to a scant $5.1 million. Make an offer.

Too late for Oak Street

Built in 1913, this Oak Street firehouse went for $1,412,500 in the now-trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood where Erich von Stroheim filmed Greed in 1924. Back then, it was part of the red light district. CNBC’s Colleen Kane has a great article on firehouse conversions, including the inside dirt on the four-story, 8,240 square-foot firehouse in New York’s Greenwich Village that Anderson Cooper bought for $4.3 million in 2009.

Who ya gonna call?

Soon you can own the Tribeca firehouse used for exteriors in Ghostbusters. Plan your pilgrimage from Bunny Ears. The firehouse is among 19 stations that are planned for abandonment due to NYC budget shortfalls. Wonder how much Hook and Ladder Company #8 will fetch!

(I’m priced out of the market, but at least I can buy a T-shirt.)

Embraceable ewe

I think not.  No need to lambast this chair but, sheepishly, this furniture pulls the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting consumers. Comfy? Perhaps, but the silence of these lambs gives me the willies.

Rubber chairs for scribblers

I’m glad this bench employs the friendly end of the pencil in its seat. Else, it is more suitable for the homes of retired dentists. According to the English Design Museum the last century of chair designs hail from the highly functional forms of the industrial age to today’s experimental art and re-used materials.

Furniture for the young and restless

Or for the arcane and iconic among us.  Or for adults who still eat Fruit Loops. I’d like to see how I look seated in one of these chairs. I discovered the image at Sparkly Vampires, a site tailored to a discreet, goth audience by hosts that claim, “We are just normal people like all of you.”

Unreserved seating

This couch is made entirely of recycled bicycle seats, one of several furniture designs by famous Japanese bicycle-maker Scarabike. While touring Japan, I have sat on a meditation mat, a tatami floor and a train that had a hole in the floor for a commode (yes, you could see the tracks below), but I regretfully will pass on this couch. In the case of bicycle seats, more is not necessarily better.

Your experience may vary.

Suez who?

Now available, complete with delightful river access and views of Nile boats, the former home of Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak.  Mubarak was the fourth President of Egypt from 1981 to 2011 and recently chose to live elsewhere.

The high price of D.C. office space

The building to the far left in this photo is known as home to the United States Congress for part of the year when members are not off on special-interest junkets. Republican Christopher Lee of New York’s 26^th District was forced to leave his plush office space recently after a woman with whom he’d been flirting online complained about his picture (also above), saying, “”Will someone prove to me not all Craigslist men look like toads?” Read more at MSNBC.

Design failure caused vacancy

Also recently, while I was away, the AT&T Center in Texas was left without a summer tenant when The San Antonio Spurs were eliminated in the first round of the NBA playoffs by The Memphis Grizzlies. The shocking early exit was attributed to old and failing architecture in the center of the Spurs line-up. Tim Duncan, originally constructed in 1976, no longer has the necessary vertical clearance.

Elegant house exteriors fab, interiors a Royal pain for many

Thousands of British women wept in unrelenting grief while I was away, bemoaning their ultimate failure to secure a bedroom at coveted Windsor Castle. The oldest residential castle in the world, Windor’s noted interiors will seat the posteriors of newlyweds Prince William and Catherine Elizabeth Middleton. Learn more about it at the website for The British Monarchy.

Abbottabad a Bing-Bong

Finally in this architectural wanderlust is the palatial estate in northern Pakistan owned by keep-to-themselves neighbors Bertie and Lou bin Landon. So fully appointed, you may never want to leave. Vacated by a sudden death in the family, the home comes with a state-of-the-art architectural stealth system that renders it invisible to thousands of armed troops camping just across the street.  Read more about it.

Miss me?

Another homeowner, on his own, installed upstairs French doors that opened out into the great outdoors instead of into his bedroom. The arms of a storm whipped them open and rain poured in, soaking the rug and damaging the wood flooring. The moral (Robert says) is you won’t necessarily save money by doing the job yourself.

Doors of perception

Ever feel so intoxicated or tired that you wished you could just open your door and flop into bed? The renovations contractor (himself obviously intoxicated or tired)  made this dream a reality.

There are no mistakes in life, only lessons

Or so says motivational speaker Denis Waitley. I beg to differ, offering up this newly completed men’s room at a shopping center in the Chinese city of Hankou. Apparently no one seems to mind, according to Woc View. I don’t need a window on the world when doing my business, Hankou very much!

False sense of security

The installers of this state-of-the-art camera found a great way to eliminate all hope for building security as well as in fostering a great sense of possibility among would-be thieves and vandals.

Holding a garage

CAD Operators posted this astonishing proof that home builders often have no idea which comes first, chicken or egg? Good thing there are no driveways!

CNN Money reports that HomeVestors often picks up homes that truly have virtues on the inside, but buyers can’t get past their ugly exteriors. The company has 200 franchisees, each on the look for “diamonds in the rough.”

Here are some roughs, sans any apparent diamonds:

Things might get ugly

I’d rather live in a refrigerator box beneath the overpass than move in here. Ugliness abides. There’s an entire website dedicated to the ugly called, uncannily enough, Ugly House Photos.

Gateway to the worst

Ah, the grandeur of St. Louis–the majestic Mississippi, the splendid arch rising from the shoreline and this turquoise shack along the highway. Almost gives you chills.

Borderline ugly

This freshly painted home in Mexicali (south of the California line) proves that ugliness knows no bounds. It looks like the stencil print children make from tempera ink using cut-out ends of a large potato. Tan feo, hombre!

Beast of burden

I wrote about his house before on the blog, but it deserves a reprieve. I cherish the tall crop of grass edges and the delightful use of contrasting oil stains on the drive.

Camden yards

This house in New Jersey was among 13 entrants in the Cramer Hill Ugly Home Contest run in 2009 by local churches bent on reforming the neighborhood ambiance. See the details at the Cramer Hill/CCOP website.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like ugly. I have plenty of other photos, but this is all I can take, friends.