(PS: That home was assembled in eight hours.)
Shiny ...
Pretty houses 19
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Posted 2:02 PM on 22 Jan 2007
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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GreenEngineer Posted 7:49 am
22 Jan 2007
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David Roberts Posted 7:59 am
22 Jan 2007
www.grist.org
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designgrizzly Posted 9:40 am
22 Jan 2007
Can I get something in a 1200 sqft, maybe with some vertical storage options?
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GreenEngineer Posted 10:20 am
22 Jan 2007
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Roz Cummins Posted 11:23 pm
22 Jan 2007
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 1:03 am
23 Jan 2007
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sunflower Posted 1:40 am
23 Jan 2007
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caniscandida Posted 2:32 am
23 Jan 2007
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GreenEngineer Posted 2:43 am
23 Jan 2007
For what it's worth, standard Polygal is only R-2.4. Which is not bad for a window, but not great either. They do seem to have a more-insulated system (Thermogal), but the links to those specs are broken.
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willa Posted 6:53 am
23 Jan 2007
The pueblo indians had this shit figured out centuries ago, with apartment-house complexes that stepped back on the south and east sides to soak up the winter sun, were sheltered from winter winds and exposed to summer ones, etc. They acheived a level of efficiency we can't seem to come close to today...with dirt and sticks!
Architects make me so mad! (I say, intending to spend the rest of my life married to one...)
I will say this is probably an ok design for SoCal, assuming the glazing faces the right way and the overhangs are right. If there's a non-glass wall to the north, and maybe to the west as well, and it's in a climate where heat is less of an issue than A/C, and the people actually use it right (open up all the windows on summer nights, close them and cover then with blinds on hot summer days, etc), it could be non-awful. It still uses a lot of high-embodied-energy materials, I suspect.
Oh, and personally? I think it's ugly. My fiance thinks it's beautiful, though, so clearly YMMV. The only part I really like is the bathrooms, which he doesn't like, for further proof of variance. :)
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wiscidea Posted 7:21 am
23 Jan 2007
Reduced energy consumption.
Reduced ecological footprint.
But how many people will be able to build even a modest home that starts at $250 per square foot? My home of about 1100 square feet would have cost $300,000 without a lot to put it on!
I find it obscene. It is far larger than necessary, especially considering that families are now smaller. Does it really have five bathrooms? Why does someone need five bathrooms? Will there be several couples living there? Is it designed to shelter a commune? And I'm skeptical that a home containing so much glass, which takes an enormous amount of energy to produce and ship, could be good for the environment.
One more comment on the glass... I find it difficult enough to ensure birds don't fly into my windows. This house looks like a super-sized bird killer. They will think they can fly right through it. The folks living in it will end up covering the windows much of the time... or constantly disposing of dead birds.
I believe this glass box shows that it is very expensive to reduce the ecological footprint of a house. There can very well be a reduction in energy consumption over the life of the home, but VERY FEW people can afford to pay the entire cost up front. Sadly, it is easier to pay extra for energy year after year than install ALL the appropriate technology to reduce energy consumption.
Just my two and a half cents.
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wiscidea Posted 7:24 am
23 Jan 2007
"design fees, transport or install or foundation costs" ... !!!
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David Roberts Posted 7:44 am
23 Jan 2007
I hope they don't read this thread. I'll be embarrassed.
www.grist.org
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sunflower Posted 7:53 am
23 Jan 2007
No need to be passive expensive.Congrats Willa, there is much energy exchange between opposite forces. It works for me.
I built my home for $11/ft2 (1995 USD) using mostly Boeing surplus materials and just me. This house used energy engineering demonstrated by AB Lovins; thermal mass, thick exterior insulation, air to air heat exchangers, a passive solar aperture, and I added shutters and a wood stove for Seattle area climate. The super-quake reinforced concrete building should last a dozen centuries.
The energy of home manufacture must also include building lifetime and annual fossil energy inputs. Those plastic domes do not have much lifetime. Skyscrapers are sheathed in glass because glass is the cheapest building material, (on a per square foot basis) not very energy intensive to manufacture. In terms of content energy, wood is best. Managing the interior environment is very energy intensive in glass buildings.
Efficient buildings with thermal mass and passive solar have the economics that amortize quickly, and then become a free ride for centuries.
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wiscidea Posted 8:08 am
23 Jan 2007
I apologize, once again, for overreacting. It is what I do best. Consider it my own outrageous concept, which needs to be toned down for the average consumer. :)
I have a bit of a problem understanding the need for enormous houses. I can't keep even my small house clean and organized.
I think my hostility really started rolling when I was paging through a book about "the not so big house". It was full of design ideas for living in less space. How much space? The author's ideas were supposed to help the readers REDUCE their homes to AS LITTLE as 4000 square feet! Jesus! If 4000 square feet is small, I must be living in a hut already! Who can afford a house over 4000 square feet?! What are they doing with all that space that they need help squeezing into a house a MERE 4000 square feet?
I cannot take a designer seriously -- if they really want to help people live with a smaller ecological footprint -- who creates spectacular, but unrealistic, concept homes.
I hope the designers of the home in question do read this thread. And I hope the author of the "not so big" house books reads this thread. The architects, engineers, and authors trying to help all of us live gently upon the Earth have to realize the majority of people are already a bit short on cash and need realistic inspiration, role models, designs, et cetera.
And, seriously, I am a bit worried about the birds ever since I saw a red-breasted grosbeak lying belly up outside my front window. I think he eventually flew away. Why make life even harder for birds just because we enjoy the site of shiny glass and metal monuments to human ingenuity.
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wiscidea Posted 8:27 am
23 Jan 2007
Ha. Just kidding. But I wonder how many people to react in this way.
Just food for thought.
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willa Posted 9:49 am
23 Jan 2007
David, I'm sorry, but I spend most of my life wondering how the architectural profession lost its marbles so totally. I mean no offense to these particular individuals, but a system where an aesthetically frigid, oversized house like this can be LEED platinum while, for example, a beautiful, cozy, friendly 1200 s.f. passive solar adobe house that requires zero A/C and little heat gets absolutely nothing?
I favor the KISS principle; since we know what works in certain climates, it's inexcusable to keep building glass boxes just because someone thinks they're pretty. We've known for thousands of years what works, so the fact that we still build anything else says to me that we care about image and status and some jerk's artistic jerking off more than we care about anything else. I'm not obligated to celebrate the pissing contest that is contemporary award-winning architecture just because they worked really hard on it.
Also, to celebrate this while we denigrate the achievements of, for instance, my 1937 cape with its spot-on orientation to prevailing seasonal winds and its south-facing sun room that heats the whole house on sunny days? That's not just dumb, David, that's classist. I'll take the totally-paid-off (energy-wise, that is) old house that works in its location over something showy and modern any day, and you know why? Because it's a reality for people like me and WiscIdea, and it's a reality that helps rather than hurting the environment. If I were to bulldoze this house and install one of your precious glass boxes (which cost more, without "design fees, transport or install or foundation costs" than my existing house with two acres), how exactly would that help the environment? Saving old houses is a big part of the picture, and building glass boxes is a major obstacle to saving old houses.
So, my apologies if we embarrass you, but I for one am not stupid enough to kowtow to a glass box.
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spaceshaper Posted 11:09 am
23 Jan 2007
Sorry Dave, you got this one wrong. If this is 4,000 s.f. at $320/sf including site costs it adds up to about five times the median price of a new home in my modestly prosperous area. No, silly me, make that six or seven times - forgot to include the land cost. Can't see this doing much to popularize eco-friendly design any time soon.
And personally, I'll not be outsourcing my construction needs to some remote industrial facility any more than I have to. I'll be working with local carpenters, just like I buy from local farmers, whenever I can.
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bookerly Posted 12:35 pm
23 Jan 2007
David, you have been living in the suburbs too long!!
This kind of giant house (I have 320 sq feet) encourages waste and sprawl. If we think that the American life style of sprawl is bad for the environment, we should discourage it.
There are no green mansions.
patrick
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