It seems some architects aren’t content to just build sustainable houses within reach of the average home buyer. On the heels of our stories, Studio 804, Green City USA, and Losing To Seoul that tell about whole sustainable cities springing up around the world comes LAVA and their Masdar City.
The twist of Masdar City [...]

In Studio 804 we reported about the Greenberg Kansas town that was wiped off the map by a tornado and is now redeveloping itself as a new sustainable city. We saw a similar idea for a new development city in Florida.
Not to be outdone the Incheon mixed-use development in South Korea is said to be [...]

We’ve recently featured modern sustainable vacation houses in stories Lost River Canyon, and Taking Form In The Forrest, but the architects at Formodesign want you to know about HotW, their house by Navagio beach, off the Greek Islands.
Reachable only by water HotW is anchored into the sea by concrete, and boasts a floating deck [...]

A pox on the billion dollar slow to gain traction Pickens Energy Plan, an Edinburgh-based company unveiled plans for a wave power system off the Orkney Islands.
The “Oyster” which operates in shallow waters and connects to an on-shore base is said to be capable of producing 200-600kw of electricity – the amount needed to [...]

The eco-village is a dream come true for those who practiced green before green was cool. The Lobster Boat Residence by Seattle architects Chadborne + Doss goes along way in fulfilling that dream.
If living on the bay in harmony with your neighbors while sharing basic utilities is your cup of tea, this re-modeled 2,378 square [...]

A new competition sponsored by Dwell and Inhabitat hopes to uncover ingenious ways to redesign America’s “burbs.” In Reburbia, A Suburban Design Competition, the sponsors call on all “future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers,” to “show us how you would re-invent the suburbs.”
The leading question then seems to be – can we [...]

The UK’s Hanham Hall Development will be the largest eco-village yet if everything goes as planned. Rumored to be close to 200 zero carbon homes, the development will include its own onsite biomass CHP (combined heat/power) plant, shops for local farmers to sell goods, utilities that encourage bike usage, and a drainage system boasting reusable [...]

Not every modern design that pushes the limits has to be viable in order to have value.
Take for example this futuristic vertical farm dreamed up by Romses Architects for the Form Shift competition in Vancouver, BC, the first city to adopt the the 2030 Challenge for green house gas reduction.

The idea of playing with the line that separates inside and outside could be attributed first to Shigeru Ban in the modern era. Ban constantly seeks new ways to mesh the two otherwise disparate spaces, most recently in Metal Shutter Houses, in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.
A more recent attempt by architect Guilherme Vaz in Portugal [...]

Can design alone be a ticket to a sustainable life? That is essentially the question posed by John Hockenberry in a recent essay posted by mentropolismag.com.
Put another way, are we entering the era of the “no-product.”

A modern house, or at least an owner trying to live in a modern house doesn’t have to be an architectural wonder constructed with totally renewable materials and plugged into the most advanced systems that moderate active heating and cooling to reduce the drag on the bigger shared system.
At least according to Dwell in “At [...]

The largest single site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright’s creations are housed on the campus of Florida Southern College.
Known collectively as “child of the sun,” the Guggenheim is getting ready to remember his work in an exhibit titled FLW: From Within Outward, said to open May 15th.

The Wall Street Journal asked four architects to design a sustainable house without regard to cost, technology, aesthetics or “the way we are used to living.”
In return architects like Rick Cook of Cook + Fox did what is expected and asked us to “re-examine values, re-examine what we need.”

In a timely article published in Core 77 Industrial Designer Robert Blinn discusses what went wrong in the economy at-large, and how design(ers) contributed to much of the consumer frenzy to purchase, well, stuff.
Blinn does a good job of tying together things many people wouldn’t otherwise think are interrelated – design, banking, wall street, economics, [...]

A new book by Nathan Shedroff called Design Is The Problem is beginning to get attention in the design world (more specifically with younger designers). But while the title was obviously chosen to sell the book, the subtitle “The Future of Design Must be Sustainable,” tells you more about Shedroff’s message.

With architects and designers becoming increasingly aware of and concerned about the environment, it’s timely for an exhibition to examine the close relationship between architecture and its setting. The Museum of Modern Art focuses on this subject matter in “In Situ: Architecture and Landscape” starting today. Rather than look at straightforward attempts to preserve the [...]

KLAMATH FALLS, OR – This year’s housing trends will be unlike any other in recent memory, according to leading window and door manufacturer JELD-WEN. Given today’s unusual economic climate, style and design considerations are taking a backseat to more practical concerns, such as increasing home value, reducing record-high stress levels, and protecting the environment by [...]