architecture

Gravity Defying Homes

- Adam Clare

People like living in shelter and in this modern world we can create some really bizzare shelters. Some website has collected 15 truly crazy house designs. I want to live in all of these 😉

The photo above is from this house:

Mushroom House (Cincinnati, Ohio)
So disparate in materials and shapes this hodgepodge house looks like its been welded and glued together. But this is no hobo-construction, it was designed by the professor of architecture and interior design at the University of Cincinnati, Terry Brown, and was recently on the market for an estimated $400K.

Buildings of the Future Will Have Living Walls

- Adam Clare


In Sao Paulo the future is looking green for new buildings. There’s a really cool building that has every external wall covered in growth. Deco Journal has pictures of the building known as Harmoania 57 and an english description of what exactly is going on. For those that speak Spanish, here’s a Spanish article with even more pictures.

The eco system which allows the vegetation to grow on the walls of the building is heavily sustained by a watering structure running through the concrete walls. The plants grow in little cavities specially designed for this purpose. In time, all the concrete should be covered in vegetation.

Last time we looked at Sao Paolo, they banned billboards.

Natural Architecture

- Adam Clare

Natural Architecture

Using trees to create shelter is nothing new, but it’s something neat when the trees are grown in a way that provides shelter while the trees can continue to live. Indeed, regular readers may remember that furniture has been made out of growing trees in particular ways. Arborsculpture can also be taken further into actually making large buildings, and this is called natural architecture.

the ‘natural architecture’ movement aims to expand on ‘land art’
by acting as a form of activism rather than protest. this new
form of art aims to capture the harmonious connection we
seek with nature by merging humanity and nature through
architecture. the core concept of the movement is that
mankind can live harmoniously with nature, using it for our
needs while respecting its importance.

Bricks a la Sewage

- Adam Clare

Yesterday some work was being done on the piping where I live and I couldn’t work from home like I normally do because of the stench. Good news may come from this because that stink, combined with a few other materials, may end up in future buildings.

Imagine if you could turn old rubbish into new houses. That’s exactly what civil engineer Dr John Forth from University of Leeds wants to achieve with the invention of a building block made almost entirely of recycled glass, metal slag, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, and pulverised fuel ash from power stations.

Safer Homes

- Agasel

A house in West Point, PEI, is the first Canadian home built under the “Designed for safer living” program.  This program is a joint collaboration between the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, the Canadian insurance industry, and home builders.

This slide show details how the house was rebuilt after being badly damaged by fire last spring.  The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction says it’s unclear how much the improvements added to the cost of the home, because the program is new.

Five more are expected to be built by December 2007, including one in the Prairies that will withstand wildfires, one in Vancouver that will handle earthquakes, and another in Sudbury to deal with wind and storms.

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