The Green House Of the Future

Wall Street Journal:

What will the energy-efficient house of the future look like?

It could have gardens on its walls or a pond stocked with fish for dinner. It might mimic a tree, turning sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Or perhaps it will be more like a lizard, changing its color to suit the weather and healing itself when it gets damaged.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[VanillaSeven]

I really hope that all these proposed prototype habitat are also light on the cost, so can be implemented as mass production.

http://vanillaseven.com/

[WilliePilgrim]

Interesting article. Clearly the technology for making our living spaces more efficient is at hand, and in surprising ways. I appreciated the architect of One Bryant Park in NYC, Mr Cook's acknowledgement of E.O.Wilson's ideas of how humans instinctively crave the natural setting...I'd go so far as to say that our being seperated from it has at least something to do with our modern social neurosises.
Interesting to note that the Architect Mr Cook's emblematic white glass tower in NYC, which is mentioned, has little to say for itself on the outside except that it resembles a gigantic "tip of an iceberg", which suggests volumes regarding what we need to do in the future and what we actually do now.

[joelaf]

"shotgun houses on piers" are the house of the future, having been built 100 years ago. Those and "dog trots". Nothing new under the sun, except for this years crops. Hemp is considered ditch weed in some parts of the south. hemp and bamboo are 2 of the most promising plants on the planet, so we'll probably legislate them out of existance.

[ConnieInCleveland]

What was done back in the 30's did basically do that, they legislated hemp out of existence and changed it's name. Ordinary Americans do not realize the wonders of the cannabis hemp plant. It was removed from educational material and replaced with Reefer Madness and spin.

The many uses of hemp can't even make it through one news cycle. I think they fear educating ordinary Americans? Once people are aware of facts, it's harder to spin them into dizzyness. America needs help with our environment and industry. Hemp could do both. It is time to change and move away from Reefer Madness mentality. Reefer Madness wasn't reality, it was spin!

[ConnieInCleveland]

Hemp plan to build green houses!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england

"It only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp for a three bedroom house."

Hemp, a member of the cannabis family, could be used to build carbon-neutral houses, say researchers.

A team based at the University of Bath is looking at the cost and insulation efficiencies of using the plant in construction materials in the UK.

The hemp plant stores carbon, giving a "better than zero" carbon footprint.

A spokesman involved in the project said: "It only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp for a three bedroom house."

'Social benefit'

The building material uses hemp fibres that are bound together using a lime-based adhesive, which itself has a low carbon footprint.

Professor Pete Walker, who is working on the project, said: "Growing crops such as hemp can also provide economic and social benefits to rural economies through new agricultural markets for farmers and associated industries."

A carbon footprint measures the impact on the environment and is related to the amount of greenhouse gases produced. Scientists believe that large amounts of greenhouse gases are leading to climate change.

The three year project will cost £750,000.

[ConnieInCleveland]

How good is hemp and lime? Study pins down performance

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id..

The environmental potential of hemp as a building material has never really been in doubt - it absorbs carbon as it grows and can be grown almost anywhere, cutting down on the need for energy-intensive transportation.

But is it any good?

A study underway at the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials at the University of Bath is attempting to clear up any doubts.

"The idea of using hemp and lime has been around in the UK for ten or 12 years now and there have been a number of applications but there's still relatively little scientific information on the performance of the materials," Prof Pete Walker, director of the centre, told edie.

"We've identified this as a significant barrier to market uptake."

He said that mainstream engineers, architects and buyers were shying away from a potential tool in the fight against climate change due to the absence of reliable independent information on its characteristics.

The research project is providing concrete answers to the questions of the construction industry and also experimenting with different ratios of hemp to lime in an effort to maximise its carbon cutting potential.

new agricultural markets for farmers and associated industries."

Hemp-lime is a lightweight composite building material made of fibres from the fast growing plant, bound together using a lime-based adhesive making it better-than-carbon neutral.

[WilliePilgrim]

Where's the lime coming from?

[desarray]

Mostly ridiculous.

There are already off-grid, sustainable Earthships (which are built out of RECYCLED materials such as Earth-packed tires -- which, in some cases, you get PAID to take them -- old aluminum cans and bottles, etc., they use passive solar during the winter...) and other styles of building green housing such as building out of cob, straw, etc. These buildings, especially the Earthships, are very comfortable.

It's typical that people go for the fancy and hip to be "green" when they could easily afford a house that is off-grid, recycled, and even at the beginning is more likely to be cheaper than these things.

[woundedduck]

You can throw this housing idea onto to the heap --right next to "affordable" pre-fabs--of completely unrealistic housing solutions.

[intopolitics]

It would be smart to have the house configurable by the owner. So if tech improves it can be altered.

[Joethepauper]

It's great that they are thinking, but nobody will actually build these houses. As long as construction companies are going to build structurally identical, cheaply made homes and charge too much for them, nobody is going to get out of the "box", much less think outside it. If rich people are the only ones able to afford anything like this and if the rich comprise a very small percentage of the population, what is there for the rest of us? Inefficient, expensive boxes with not enough yard to plant a garden, that's what. My apartment complex won't allow me to put a solar panel on my balcony because it disturbs the look of the uniformity or something. I could get all the energy I use from one afternoon of good sun, but they won't let me.

[Tyler-Durden]

hey! their plan is for US to be in tent villages! their forming now! get with the program. duhhh!

[i5kfun]

So its designed by architects, that means it will be structurally deficient, and all those neat little features won't actually work.

Architects: let the engineerings design the buildings and stick to creating pretty pictures and landscapes.

[doxpin]

"Architects: let the engineerings design the buildings and stick to creating pretty pictures and landscapes."

name me 5 great buildings from the 20th century design solely by engineers.

[curiousasheck]

Yeah back in the 50's they were saying we would be living in cities under Plexiglas bubbles right now.

[Joethepauper]

With flying cars!

[WilliePilgrim]

It''s a sad fact that we're not living under some kind of bubble...or more preferrably a geodesic dome of enormous proportions.. Why we haven't achieved this is not the problem of the engineers and architects so much as cultural reluctance and financial structures that favor the buildings slow, glacially slow, evolution.
Check out Sir Norman Foster's "dome" in Astana Kazahkstan...or inverted cone to be more exact. 500 feet tall and 1500 feet diameter at its base, under which the residents and visitors to Astana, whether in minus 40 degree winter or 100 plus degree days of summer, will find a comfortable environment for living, cultural events, commerce and sports. Definitely a step in the right direction.
Think how much money NYC or Chicago if they were to be capped with a dome would save in snow removal alone, plus its exhaust fumes would be much easier to capture and address...it's the way to go for big cities...sooner better than later.

[libwingoflibwing]

The actual design of these houses, not the technology, is not futuristic. It is the same ugly ideas from 60 years ago when Bahaus conquered our house.

[slithers]

I'm not a farmer nor a physicist, but I'm going to go ahead and say that gravity and a 75 degree farming plane isn't going mix well.

[amdezurik]

huh, trays are not an option?

[northstar11]

Cook + Fox's house has a "biomorphic" skin that reacts to the weather, turning dark in the bright sun to insulate the house from heat and turning clear on dark days to absorb as much light and heat as possible.

clear on dark days. dark on clear.

isnt that backwards?. ---

[Joethepauper]

How about windows that turn reflective when the sun hits them (like mirrors). Like those sunglasses that darken in the sunlight, but when light hits the glass, it mirrors the sun back out. Come on, it's almost 2010! Can we get some of the stuff that futurists thought of in 1900 to be widespread yet? Maybe all of our cars will be electric by 3009, but I doubt it.

[openhand]

Wundafool, another group of architects who think they can design us out of having to work together, share, recycle and consume less.

It's the SYSTEM that is at fault, not a lack of technology.
Ever increasing consumption in a world of finite resources and friction is not sustainable.
IT'S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS PEOPLE, NOT PRODUCTS.

[Joethepauper]

Yup. It's about making things as cheap as possible while charging as much as possible for them. As long as the human population keeps growing out of control, it will always be about quantity, not quality. Life itself becomes cheaper and more expendable as the population grows. If there were a cap on breeding, the quality would improve and then we wouldn't have as many Republicans.

[DrVeruju]

The biggest effect of the sun on our houses is to heat them and to cool them - but mostly at the wrong times. As you cool your house in the summer, store the excess heat you remove and then use that heat to keep warm in winter.

http://www.dlsc.ca/

[friedfish2718]

Freeman Dyson has been way ahead on this issue.

About 20 years ago he proposed to build underwater lakes where snow can be shoveled in the winter and can be used for a/c during the summer for a given town.