michelle kaufmann designs

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Ok, this product is pretty darn cool. It is a window that transforms into a glass-floor balcony at a push of a button, automatically adding space, bring the outdoors in, and even bringing the indoors out.

www.bloomframe.com

This is a project we are working on that I absolutely love. It is a custom home in Northern California on a beautiful, but somewhat constrained lot. While the house is actually only about 1500sf, it lives much larger. Through the use of angled interior walls, the spaces are allowed to flow into one another.

The accordion glass doors allow the interior spaces to blend seamlessly with the outdoor garden spaces. The sloped butterfly roofs create high windows to help with natural ventilation (hot air going up and out) and also washing the interior ceiling with natural light.  The angle also is set to work with the solar orientation for the PV panels on the roof.

Through the use of smart insulation, high performance windows and mechanical systems, LED and CFL lights, energy star appliances, the house will require less energy. With the addition of the PV solar panels on the roof, the house is intended to be net zero energy home (i.e. the home will create as much energy as it needs).
The butterfly roof will slope down to a rain water catchment garden. There will be water smart fixtures and a grey water system to help the home conserve water but still allow long hot showers each day.  The shower encompasses the tub, creating a bathroom / spa that is spacious and relaxing for the beginning and the end of one’s day.

The home is currently planned to be built using modular construction out of two modules, although we are also looking into site built as well to make sure we explore and choose the best option for this project.

After hundreds of entries, thousands of online public votes, and much heated discussion among the jury, the winners of the Eco-Home competition by FreeGreen for the rebuilding of Greensburg have been announced. The first place winner is a design titled “Meadowlark House” by Steven Learner. This is one of the few designs that all the jurors agreed upon.  It has a smart, simple plan, a strategic use of windows, and could most likely be built for an affordable cost.

Stuttio Workshop recieved a second place ranking for their “Root /Breathe / Endure” design. This was one of my favorites, as it has a smart wall building assembly including solar water tubes and a thermal storage wall combined with a artwork,  a lovely connection to the edible garden from the kitchen, and I think all the interior spaces would have wonderful qualities of light.

The fourth place winner, Studio Sunna, had one of my favorite designs “Openhouse”.  The layout is incredibly strategic with the placement of openings that provide light, breezes and outdoor spaces but also incorporate low-tech elements such as the sliding wood sunshades on the outside to reduce heat gain and offer privacy. Learning from barns. They thought about passive house techniques and approaches and incorporated them into the small, yet powerful house.

I was disappointed, however, that some of my other favorite designs did not make it to the top 10, and therefore were not a part of our jury. This one below, “Passive House HIB”  designed by Paravant is elegant and beautiful, as well as efficient. It utilizes passive design components and techniques that allow the warmth from the sun during the winter but not the summer. I love the sliding screen over the winter garden and the courtyard.

Below is one of my favorite elevations in the “EcoLodge” entry. One could imagine this being lush green in the summe, and also a poetic snow house in the winter - always stealth-like and visually connecting to the landscape.

Ok, this “Tree House” entry below probably would cost more than the budget, but It has some interesting ideas in it with the window screening.

In the end, not only just the winners, but many of the entries prove t is longer enough to judge a design on how it looks. Homes should look great, of course. But they also need to perform. I evaluated entries based on how the spaces feel with plenty of non-direct natrual light, maximum views and breezes, materials and systems for having healthy air quality, spaces that feel larger than they are through smart design, but also how the home would perform over time in terms of energy and water efficiency. A great design can have it all. All homes should have it all.

www.freegreen.com
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www.greensburggreentown.org

I am at West Coast Green getting ready to give a few talks this afternoon. The weather is lovely and the company is inspiring. It is great to see friends and colleagues and find out what everyone is doing. The world is green building world is changing so fast, and coming to West Coast Green each year is a great way for me to measure the change. So much is happening, and I remain more hopeful than ever.

Currently, I am sitting in Josiah Cain’s Integrative garden that bridges the various buildings of the conference.

Josiah Cain, acclaimed Landscape Architect and visionary (who I have worked with on living roofs and rain harvesting projects)along with Natural Builders created this xeriscaping garden filled with native plants that require little or no water, and also treats the rainwater. It makes usable, treated water from rain water. This garden is a beautiful example that a garden can provide visual delights as well as beneficial for the environment and your home.

Josiah is Chief Design Officer at Design Ecology, and I worked with Josiah when he was with Rana Creek for the green roof that was on the mkLotus at West Coast Green 2 years ago.

West Coast Green is open through tomorrow, Saturday October 3. I highly recommend a visit.

For more info: www.westcoastgreen.com

photos by David Hedden

This is one of most exciting and note-worthy architecture competitions I have seen in a long time, and couldn’t be better timed.  We need ideas like these.  I was proud to be on the jury for this, and had a fabulous time reviewing the thousands of entries. The winners were announced this morning.

This is from Architecture for Humanity:

The need for safe, sustainable and smart classroom design has never been greater. Worldwide, 776 million people are illiterate. With less that six years left to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals the World Bank estimates ten million new classrooms are needed to reach its target on education. In addition, tens of millions of crumbling classrooms ¬ including many in the United States ¬ are in desperate need of upgrading. Meeting this demand for better learning environments will constitute the largest building project the world has ever undertaken.

In response, the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge was launched by Architecture for Humanity and principal partner Orient Global in collaboration with a consortium of other partners from around the world. This truly global initiative invited the architecture, design and engineering community to collaborate directly with students and teachers to rethink the classroom of the future. Designers entering the competition were given a simple mandate: collaborate with real students in real schools in their community to develop real solutions. Collectively more than 10,000 individuals participated in this global initiative.

More than 1,000 design teams from 65 countries registered for the competition. The winning design was selected from more than 400 qualified entries by a team of interdisciplinary online jurors. (See Jury Bios here) Each design was rated on feasibility, sustainability, and innovation in the learning environment.

“The response to the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge has been remarkable. It has clearly captured people’s imagination,” said Richard F. Chandler, Chairman of Orient Global. “We congratulate the winning teams and everyone who took part in this international effort. Education is the first step in building prosperity for tomorrow’s world. The challenge now is to implement the best of these designs in classrooms across the globe.”

Many schools around the world share the facilities constraints faced by the Teton Valley Community School. Operating out of makeshift classrooms converted from residential use, a lack of space and an environment ill-suited for learning impedes students’ opportunities. The winning classroom design developed by Section Eight [design] provides cost-effective and sustainable teaching spaces and extends the learning environment beyond the four walls of the classroom. Movable panels allow students to reconfigure their space as needed. The building itself is designed to be a learning tool. The mechanical room, a building component normally closed from view, can be seen from the science lab allowing students to learn how heating and cooling systems function first hand.

Teton Valley Community School will be awarded USD $50,000 to undertake the planning and construction of the winning design, and Section Eight [design] will receive a design grant of USD $5,000 to support the school. The school has begun a capital campaign to raise additional funds needed to build their new campus.

In addition to the overall winner, the competition recognized entries in each of three competition categories: best urban classroom upgrade design, best rural classroom design and best re-locatable classroom design. Three building partners, Rumi Schools of Excellence in India, Building Tomorrow in Uganda and Blazer Industries (I HEART BLAZER!) with The Modular Building Institute in the United States have committed to build classrooms based on these designs.

The Founders Award is awarded to the entry that best exemplifies the aims of Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Network. It was awarded to the entry for The Corporación Educativa y Social Waldorf in Bogota, Colombia
designed by Arquitectura Justa for their integrated approach to providing safe spaces for students to learn and play.

Competition finalists will also receive awards, including software from industry leader Autodesk; SMART Board interactive whiteboard from SMART Technologies; Google SketchUp Pro 7; copies of the book the Third Teacher by OWP/P, VS America and Bruce Mau Design and an honorarium from partner Curriki for the best use of the competition design curriculum.

All the design solutions are now available on the Open Architecture Network for designers and school administrators to learn from and adapt to their own context. An international traveling exhibition of the winning designs and notable entries is set to launch in the fall.

For more information: www.openarchitecturenetwork.org

On my trip this past weekend to Denver for the CNU (Congress for New Urbanism) conference, it seemed appropriate to be reading John Wasik’s new book, “The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustinable American Dream” while I was on the plane.

Wasik is one of my favorite writers at Bloomberg and the Huffington Post.In the book, Wasik looks at many of the causes of our housing crisis as well as offers thought-provoking ideas on possible solutions through a series of interviews with thought leaders and the latest studies and statistics.

John Wasik and I have become friends and have met on a number of occasions during the past years. During some of our discussions when he was supposedly interviewing me for this book, he would ask questions and offer ideas, that in fact, I was the one who left our meetings feeling curious and inspired. In the chapter titled “Building Smarter”, Wasik focuses on the mkSolaire as the exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry titled “The Smart Home: Green + Wired”. Wasik analyzes not only the sustainable materials, systems and process, but raises many good thoughts and questions about cost and how cost and financing is so integral to planning and the result of what and how homes are built.

While I was in the plane reading the book, and nearing descent, I gazed down at the landscape below, filled with various patterns of homes and communities. Instead of seeing the roofs as asphalt or shingles, I imagined green roofs, solar, and wind generation. Rather than the kidney shape pools, I imagined swimming ponds and rain catchment gardens. I imagined different patterns of density and mass transit.

It is all possible. And it is such an interesting time to work to make it happen.

www.culdesacsyndrome.com

Here are some things that others are saying about John’s book:

“John Wasik’s The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome offers enough to chew on for three sets of teeth, enough to digest for three stomachs, and the alerts the mind faster than an approaching siren.”
–Ralph Nader, Consumer advocate

“Get ready for a totally original look at the American dream. Wasik delivers the first truly multidisciplinary examination—using planning, law, architecture, and history to focus on working solutions that can keep the dream alive. This is a winner!”
— Paul B. Farrell, JD, PhD. Columnist, MarketWatch.com and author of The Millionaire Code

“This excellent book takes a ground-level look at the causes of our housing crisis and offers a myriad of ideas on reinventing the concepts of home and community.”
—Ilyce R. Glink, syndicated real estate columnist, author of 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask

“A genuine kick to the head, showing how our individual quests for the biggest house on the hill is destroying our environment, the economy, and our health. But The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome is no dead end. It offers a new, green, urbanized promised land with real community, more free time, and a higher living standard. It’s a masterful blueprint to unpave paradise and restore the world we cherish.”
— Laurence Kotlikoff, Co-author of Spend ‘Til the End: The Revolutionary Guide to Raising Your Living Standard—Today and When You Retire, and Professor of Economics at Boston University

One of my favorite talks from this year’s TED conference, Seth Godin’s talk on creating and leading tribes in order to change the world, just went up on TED’s website this week.  Seth’s talk is definitely worth a listen (even for those of us who already heard it live the first time around).  In it, he describes his concept of the modern tribe: a group of people with a common interest, a common yearning over which they connect and unite to start growing a movement.  A more bottom-up, grassroots model for spreading ideas, Seth believes that tribes will replace the top-down marketing/advertising model that has dominated for so long, spreading average ideas in order to appeal to the masses.  Tribes have the power to change the world for the better.  His talk is very provocative and inspiring, so spend the 17 minutes it takes to watch the whole thing - I promise you won’t be sorry!

Mother’s Day is this Sunday and as we all know (and as our moms will remind us) it’s the perfect opportunity to show how grateful we are to the mothers in our lives, whether she’s your birth mother, the woman or women who raised you, or your wife and the mother of your own children.  But this Mother’s Day, why stop there?  Why not help celebrate mother’s everywhere, including the ever lovely, all important Mother Earth.  For example, instead of buying those run-of-the-mill, conventionally grown flowers (i.e. grown with tons of artificial fertilizer and pesticides), get Mom a gorgeous bouquet of organic flowers.  Or if she’s a chocolate lover, sign her up for Endangered Species Chocolate’s Chocolate of the Month Club and 10% of the profits from your gift giving will go to help support “species, habitat and humanity.”

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