16 Green Home Products and Projects

Popular Mechanics has put together their 2008 list of 16 sustainable home products and projects. They give very reliable reviews of some of the newest green products on the market which are helpful for people looking to make quick and easy changes for a more sustainable home environment.

The Best of Green Design: 2008

A Modern Exterior for Modern Interiors

Tadao Ando’s design for hhstyle.com’s furniture store expresses just as much modernity as the furniture within it. hhstyle.com is one of Japan’s most successful furniture stores. Their new building, hhstyle.com/casa, sits next to their original shop which is more or less just a large glass box. The drastic constrast between the two buildings also carries through within as well. hhstyle.com/casa only provides furniture produced by two designers, whereas the original store contains work from over 150 designers. The irregular geometric form is best explained by Ando himself.

It is not based on any axis or geometry. From the start, this project was imagined as a steel building – a building wrapped in steel plates folded like origami… The volume was roughly determined from various conditions such as the shadow that would be cast by the building. After repeated alterations and corrections, in balance with structural studies, the final form was reached.

- Tadao Ando

Whether the forms were intentional or not, this building creates a strong modern backdrop for any modern furniture to be placed in.

hhstyle.com/casa via MoCo Tokyo

The "Anti-FEMA" Trailer

After the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005, victims of the storms relied on FEMA to provide shelter and food. Depending on where you were and who you were, help didn’t come right away. Julie Martin, who lost her 18th century home, did not want to wait around to see when FEMA would respond. She contacted Tumbleweed Tiny House Company and worked together to draw up plans for a version of their homes that would work in the Gulf Coast area and provide temporary shelter for her after the storms. The final price of this home turned out to be under $30,000, and as you can see, the temporary home is definitely worth the money and effort and proved that you didn’t have to fully rely on FEMA to begin rebuilding what was lost.

Full Article via Dwell

Book of the Week: Materials, Structures, Standards

Designing buildings is a tough thing to do when you start actually thinking about dimensions and what must go into and hold up the walls and ceilings. Once you get that figured out, then you have to think about how the inside is going to interact with people in the building. It’s hard to find books that have alot of useful information like this and that’s on a student’s level. Materials, Structures, Standards by Julia McMorrough is one such book. This book has a large amount of useful information that can be easily incorporated into a building design. Proportions, standard sizes, material characteristics, dimensions and building diagrams are just a few of the many things this book has to offer. This book is a MUST for any architecture design student and is worth way more than the $20 you’ll shell out for it!

Materials, Sturctures, Standards

Sketchup to Maya

Many students and professionals are beginning to work with Autodesk’s modeler called Maya. It provides alot of flexibility when doing animations and creating objects. Many of the same people also like to use Google’s newly aquired modeler, Sketchup. Getting these two modeling programs to work together can be somewhat stressful at times but giantMONSTER has written and illustrated a step-by-step procedure of exporting a model out of Sketchup and importing it into Maya. It’s a very involved process but the end product is definately worth it.

Sketchup to Maya Tutorial

The Not So Ugly Duckling

Got a million power cables running under your desk like us? Check out the “Swan” desk by Louis Beliveau of the design team Les Chics Types which is based in Montreal. The desk offers you enough holes plus, a power strip to plug into, so you will no longer have to run your messy cables all over your floor. Just weave your cords through the holes to make a cool logo or spell out words to describe how your really feel about your boss.

Les Chics Types via MoCo Loco

CAD Block Exchange Network

If you’re looking for AutoCAD blocks, look no further than CAD Block Exchange Network. They have a vast amount of objects and people drawn in plan, elevation, and in 3D. They have just about anything you can think of and I mean ANYTHING! Yeah, you know what I’m talking about… Any who, this site is totally worth the look, especially when that final project deadline is nearing and you realize you need some details in your drawings to really win over the critics.

CAD Block Exchange Network

A Higher Learning

The U.K. design firm, Levitate, had the cool idea of turning a bookshelf into a staircase for a small apartment that was limited in space. As you can see, the final product was definitely a great investment and also helped try to make this bookworm look a little cooler…

Levitate via Dwell