michelle kaufmann designs

Photo by John Swain

Again this week, there was more bad news concerning the housing market: as housing prices continue to drop, the rate of inflation in the US is quickening, which puts more homeowners in an increasingly uncomfortable position. The New York Times described the problem very succinctly on Wednesday, explaining that, “houses are getting cheaper by the month. Everything else is becoming more expensive.” Now, with no end to the housing slump in sight and with our country still sliding toward recession, the Fed risks fueling inflation with every interest rate cut it announces in an effort to stimulate our anemic economy. However, one sector of the housing market that appears nearly immune from the current blight afflicting it is green homes.

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I love fire. I am mesmerized by it. I just can’t seem to help but be attracted to it. Maybe it’s instinctual - a remnant of our species’ evolutionary past in which fire kept us alive. ­Whatever the reason, there’s almost nothing I love more than sitting around a fire pit with friends and family as night descends and the flames become the only thing to illuminate our faces in the dark. As much as I love a roaring fire, however, wood burning does have its downsides. The majority of smoky, wood-burning devices that we use emit particulates at the very eco-unfriendly rate of 20 to 60 grams per hour of operation. This smoke is bad for both the environment and our lungs. It can contribute to problems like smog and even respiratory disease. Luckily, there’s still hope for my beloved fire.

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Keeping my house clear of clutter is a constant challenge for me. But one thing that really helps is smart storage, which is why I am a huge fan of furniture that doubles as storage (double function is a super important aspect of the smart design EcoPrinciple). Now, I’m not talking about having a laz-y-boy with built-in cup holders. The solution is to find lovely pieces of well designed furniture that incorporate storage solutions. The sustainable part of this is that you end up using less material since you’re making one thing serve the purpose of two and so eliminate the need for the second.

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Photo by J Jeffery Johnson

The mkSolaire™ Smart Home is getting ready to say good-bye to the factory in Indiana. Soon it will hit the road for Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry where it will be set onto its foundation 90% complete. The folks at All American are currently applying all of the Smart Home’s interior and exterior finishes with the exception of the wood flooring, which must be installed after the home is set and the heating system operational. Everything else, however, from interior paint to exterior siding to bathroom tiles, is going up right now!

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I just found a fun family of stools that I really love, all made out of cork. In fact, they are called the Cork Family Stools, designed by Jasper Morrison, pictured below. All three of the designs are really comfortable with a softness you don’t expect at first glance. They are also very sturdy and stable little guys that work perfectly as side tables, too. Jasper has also designed the above pictured cork stool and table with a slightly simpler, sleeker look. You could easily use both of these as either stools or tables.

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, you are aware that there is a sub-prime mortgage lending crisis unfolding disastrously in this country. A recent article from Atlantic Monthly reported that the areas most devastated by the sub-prime catastrophe are subdivisions, which Tom Schueneman described in a related article as “built on the edges of urban areas where once arable land is bulldozed to make way for over-sized, energy-intensive houses, with landscaping consisting grassy yards adorned with non-native species of trees and shrubs, the whole lot of it out of character with the natural surroundings and located so that most residents are forced to drive miles and miles to get to work, for too often there is no public transportation available.” Sing it, Tom. The problems we’re experiencing in the housing industry extend beyond just shoddy lending practices in the mortgage world.

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Photo by Jim Thompson

We just got a bunch of beautiful new photos of some of our homes! I’m just so pleased and excited about them that I had to share some with all of you. I will also be including slides of them in a talk I’m giving this weekend at the Portland Home & Garden Show on both Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be talking about how it’s no longer a question of “if” people want sustainable, healthy living environments, but rather, “how” or “what” are the best ways to create one. I will also talk about green living solutions based on our 5 EcoPrinciples and how the houses we design offer examples of ways to incorporate these principles into a home and make it sustainable. So if you happen to be in the Portland area this weekend, please come by and listen in or just say hello!

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My cell phone has been dying a slow, painful-for-us-both death since day one (I dropped it in a toilet less than 10 hours after bringing it home and things have just been going downhill ever since). Out of my love for sustainability I am committed to holding onto it until it’s totally nonfunctional, but as it seems to be rounding the corner on its last days, tolling its own death knoll with every incoming call I get, I have begun to consider its replacement (sniff). Happily, Nokia just unveiled their new “Remade” model, a phone that may be the green solution to my cellular woes.
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