">HomeOwnerNut

You don’t have to be broke to live in a shipping container. In fact, you may find that many people are considering container designs for new reuse architecture. I first wrote about container homes a year and a half ago, and some of those structures are now passé. Today’s builders are greening up America and the rest of the world with even more usual designs

Green fly zone

I love the flying extensions on this unusually green home in Java. You’d think corrugated walls would look clunky, but these containers extend the living area with splashes of color. Have a look at the exterior shots at Home Luxury Ideas.

Be the first one on your blocks

The SG Blocks Container House recycles rainwater and runs on solar power. The glassy façade lends a spacious feel. Made of five recycled containers, this pre-fab home can be assembled in as little as five hours. Check it out at FresHome. Shucks, it’s taken me longer to put up a camping tent.

When only a Port-a-Bach will do

Photo by MSN

New Zealand architecture specialists have come up with fresh designs for their Port-a-Bach home, employing bunk beds, composting toilet, stainless-steel kitchen, and interior fabric screen that allows you to customize the interior space to make new room configurations on the fly. It sleeps two adults and two children with ease and costs around $55,000. When you go away, it folds completely into a safe, secure shell.

Off the grid and green

Photo by MSN

Want to really get away? Consider The Ecopod, a re-use container that features a floor made entirely of recycled car tires, a wall of double-paned insulating glass, and an electric winch that raises or lowers the deck door. Oh, and the walls include closed-cell soya foam insulation covered with stylish birch wood paneling. Lovely!

British author George Herbert is credited with the first utterance of what has become a proverb around the globe. In 1651 he said, anyone “whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another.” Later, that old reliable fountain of utterances, Ben Franklin, supposedly Americanized the expression to “glass houses”.  However you say it, there will be no stone throwing for the French designer who created The Heliodome, a bioclimatic* solar house that draws crowds of onlookers in the eastern French countryside.

Photo by Yahoo

Eric Wasser is the French cabinet maker who created this home that’s modeled after the sundial. With a furniture design shop in Cosswiller (near Strasbourg), Wasser turned toward completing a macro project, using many of the design principles he employs in fine cabinets and tables. The result is a stunning example of green architecture.

Passively green, but nothing passive about its looks

Photo by Yahoo

It’s all about angles in this home the 50-year-old Wasser designed. The sundial aims its face toward the sun, presenting a surface that reflects hot summer rays. As the Earth moves through the seasons, the sun lowers on the horizon and streams through the windows, rendering the interiors warm and cozy. But it’s the craftsmanship of the interiors that really moves me. (View a slideshow of the home at Yahoo.)

Furniture as a path through life

Photo by Eric Wasser

The French text on Wasser’s site translates to a light-hearted–but conscious–declaration that the designer is but a link in the long path that the tree takes on the way to become furniture.  His use of joinery and crossing struts, gleaned from making decades of great furniture, served Wasser well when he moved on to building his home.

Green, simple and elegant

Photo by Eric Wasser

You can see Wasser’s design preferences employed in this handsome table. He’s brilliant, playful, and spot-on when it comes to taste. I’d love to spend a summer in the Heliodome!

*By the way, Isover defines bioclimatic architecture as “a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site, taking advantage of free available renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, and reducing the impact on energy demand for heating and cooling by appropriate orientation, lay out and compact shape of the building.”