In an attempt to build a case for yet another green rating system, the National Association of Home Builders under their relatively new “Green Building Program” has laid down a goal of increasing US house energy efficiency by at least 15 percent when compared to non-rated houses.

The recent International Builders Show in Las Vegas which houses the annual building products convention sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders featured their version of the “green” home of the future, a massive 8,721 square foot building they call The New American Home.

From Taalman Koch Architecture comes itHouse, a simple systems-built pre-fabricated component house that can power itself off-grid.
The basic itHouse priced at $125 per square-foot consists of two bedrooms, one bath, plus a double courtyard to meld the indoor-outdoor experience. If you want to “make it your own,” there are optional packages and upgrades for kitchen, [...]

The long running Southwest Air advertising campaign asks the now famous question, “Wanna Get away?” A new venture called Form & Forest is hoping the answer to that question more often than not is “yes.”
That’s because Form & Forest in partnership with architect D’Arcy Jones has developed flat pack cabins you can build just about [...]

On the Arizona campus of Taliesin West which houses the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture sits Mod.Fab, a student project led by faculty adviser Michael P. Johnson. The completed house is a testament to modern technology, the advancement of architectural schools, and the skill level of young architects today.
There was a time when [...]

Proof that you can build a “green” house with only modest cost increases is one lesson from a recently completed house by Carl and Jeanine Santilo. Their 6000 square foot traditional Virginia house is mainly an exercise in installing energy efficient heating and cooling components like geo-thermal, triple-paned windows, structural insulated panels, and solar panels [...]

In Living In Steel MHM reported on a competition sponsored by the The World Steel Association where architects designed a sustainable community in extreme conditions using steel construction.
The recent Florida Cottage Design Competition sponsored by the Florida Foundation for Architecture, the philanthropic arm of AIA Florida, told emerging professionals who participated to create hurricane resistant [...]

The future housing industry is shaping up to be all about designers and engineers using ever more creative ideas to make houses smarter and more energy efficient than the typical suburban stick-built tract-houses now festooned over Anytown, USA.
The housing industry is also starting to look at how other mass produced products are built, and finally [...]

The David Gottfried house is said to be the most green house in America today. Built by a United States Green Building Council co-founder whose LEED building standard is now a popular blueprint for sustainable building, the house scored 106 out of a possible 136 points detailed by LEED.
The finished house is a good example [...]

In The LEED House MHM chronicled the history of the United States Green Building Council’s green building program called LEED. Though slow to catch-on in the beginning LEED is now considered the industry de facto standard for building green housing that is both measurable and verifiable.
Recently the National Association of Home Builders launched their [...]

In an upcoming story MHM will profile another wonderful example of how college students through investigation and experimentation are creating houses that don’t look or act like the house you live in today.
Theses houses are sophisticated, modern, use the latest technologies, and employ sustainable practices that allow you to completely unplug from the country’s [...]

In a recent article published in Architectural Record, Peter Schubert argues that government sponsorship of great architecture has a long-standing tradition starting with Thomas Jefferson, and we should protect that tradition by spending stimulus money on “creative sustainable buildings that will stand the test of time and will still be used by our children and [...]

It’s true, in Modern House Magazine and the larger movement for a greener living environment new modern houses get most of the attention. This makes sense for people who perhaps are looking for their first house or have the mobility to move to a new house, but if you are stuck in your current house [...]

The housing crisis is affecting everyone in a different way. For some it means cutting back on non-essential spending, for others it can mean the loss of basic shelter.
And even though in this publication we typically use the term “modern house” to describe a particular architectural influence, the term can also take on a more [...]

In our story Turn On A Celebrity we talked about a fun way to promote a fun product by the interior design store Deeply Madly Living. The online store features unique bold pieces that will help an otherwise ordinary room stand-out and come to life.
Now a partner in Deeply Madly Living has started her own [...]

In our current feature story A Home Worth Living we told you about LivingHomes, the California company offering modular houses designed by world class architects that can be assembled in one day.
To showcase their wares, LivingHomes partnered with Builder magazine to construct the KireanTimberlake KT 1.5 as a ShowHome on the floor of the [...]

In previous stories Ch ch ch Changes and A Flat World MHM reported on two participants in last year’s MoMA exhibit called Home Delivery: Fabricating The Modern Dwelling.
Another exhibit participant is Instant House from Larry Sass, a professor at MIT. His project is intriguingly different in both design and construction from the two we’ve highlighted [...]

Jean Nouvel is a multi-faceted architect and designer last featured on Modern House Magazine for his Los Angeles high-rise condo tower. In Jean Nouvel’s LA Street Cred Modern House Magazine noted that the world renowned architect “is known for taking inspiration from the particular location surroundings.” That’s all well and good, but if you’re designing [...]

Modern house design is sometimes a competition for simplicity. Along those lines is Summertime by GLAMA KIM, an architect firm in Iceland.
Summertime is designed to be a simplistic getaway house where respite and connection with nature takes precedence over posh structural materialism.
The house plan is comprised of two volumes, the main house just 4 by [...]

In Come Fly With Me we posted about a modular house in the Virginia Blue Ridge mountains available as a vacation get away.
Today, I was tipped off that Res4 architects also have a beautiful new modern prefab cabin available for guests. It’s located in the Lost River, West Virginia, just two hours west of [...]

So the economy is driving you mad. Your house value is plummeting, you lost half your net worth in your 401k, and your plans for earlier retirement have taken a sharp detour.
Maybe it’s time to put all that behind and bring on the new. A new president, a new economy, and a new year sounds [...]

The Oregon Wind Corporation thinks they have an answer to generating electricity in an urban setting that is cost-efficient and also boasts enough design savvy to be a visual complement to any modern house.
Previously those large propeller wind farms that dot the US western states’ hills could only operate in a rural location because of [...]

In 2008 we’ve seen a number of small affordable modern house designs that all attempt to appeal to a more simple way of life.
There’s the Port-a-Bach from Atelier Workshop in New Zealand designed from a shipping container, and true to the original use of the box it is made to be compatible with those who [...]

FlatPak is a menu-driven configurable prefabricated house that is modern, sustainable, and is a step in the direction toward an affordable custom house for the masses. A participant in the recent MoMA Home Delivery exhibit which sought to demonstrate how modern systems-built houses have benefited from the digital age, FlatPak is one design that seems [...]

Modern House Magazine recently brought you information about the NY interior designer Elena Bertinetto-Jensen and her company Deeply Madly Design that combines eclectic tastes into a cohesive room palette.
In the same article we mentioned her interior design online store, Deeply Madly Living specializing in unique and bold furniture you can’t find at the chain retailers.
Now [...]

A couple of architects with major firm experience have struck out on their own to form Nottoscale, a Prefab design firm based in San Francisco.
Nottoscale’s entrant into the world of modern sustainable modular homes is “Modulome” a design originally developed for a competition back in 2003 for which they were awarded one of [...]

One of the things that has to happen for modern sustainable houses to become ubiquitous in the US is more links between the manufacture and the buying public.
For those looking to buy a sustainable modular house, an aptly named company called Modern Modular provides that link. Modern Modular is positioned as a sustainable modular house [...]

Studio 804 is a sustainable build program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning. In a final semester students get practical hands on experience building a sustainable and affordable building.
Recently the latest Studio 804 project was a response to the horrible tornado that flattened the entire Kansas town called Greensburg (the [...]

Peter Petersen is a new young self-taught Danish designer primarily known for commercial product such as info and brochure stands. Apart from that though he is getting recognition for his Tank furniture collection marked by mixing robustness with feminine lines.
Examples of this design are his shelves (see photos) which sport an overly exaggerated weightiness with [...]

Some of the new sustainable house design movement embraces the importance of maximizing the environment to sustain buildings rather than the other way around.
One approach that seems to take this to an extreme is the Living Steel House by architect Peter Stutchbury of Australia. His plan borrows from many ancient civilizations such as the [...]

In Cellophane House we saw a real life example on display at MOMA New York of how modular construction methods and eco design can meet to create houses for the future.
To quickly jog your memory the house by Philadelphia architects KieranTimberlake was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit titled “Home Delivery: Fabricating the [...]

In 2007 De Maria Design won the AIA Honor Award for Design Excellence/Special Innovation for Redondo Beach House. That house was a cool mixture of cargo containers, prefab, and conventional on site stick frame construction.
The firm is now working on Venice, a mixed-use project constructed of a series of inline recycled shipping containers. The advantage [...]

Don’t look now but Generation Y (that’s people in their 20’s) is already beginning to influence new condo amenities, and any condo lifestyle accounting for Gen Y foretells a future filled with high tech goodness.
While we still mostly think of urban condos as an oasis for middle-age urban professionals and empty nesters who have moved [...]

HyBrid Seattle is a firm involved in a wide spectrum of housing solutions from site built homes to cargo containers. It’s made up of a multi-disciplinary team of professionals with combined backgrounds in architecture, art, landscape architecture, and urban ecology.
And while quite a few developers are now involved in using shipping containers as livable spaces [...]

There is no doubt the momentum for various versions of off-site built housing is challenging the long-overwhelming tradition of site-built stick houses.
Now, not only do off-site house methods have momentum but some prestigious awards to boot. A big one announced for 2008 by the National Association of Home Builders was a modular cottage called Tucker [...]

An eco house design is anything but boring. And to prove it (and other valuable lessons) architects KieranTimberlake offer Cellophane House.
Cellophane House is a five-story, 1800 square foot, two bedroom, two bathroom concept dwelling commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Designed to be fabricated off site and assembled literally almost [...]

If you’ve ever wondered just where to put all that furniture you purchased from IKEA, BOKLOK an IKEA inspired company has an idea – how about in your new IKEA/BOKLOK house.
In selected European cities BOKLOK (an IKEA company) is building apartment homes that are both affordable and environmentally friendly. The company has built houses [...]

With “green living” making its way into new demographics that historically shunned the movement as leftover hippy recalcitrance, trends for new condo buildings are now beginning to include some elements of the green movement in an attempt to suit a new class of buyers who are rapidly becoming more environmentally aware.
One of the features of [...]

The internationally famous architect Jean Nouvel has recently proposed a new 177 unit condo tower for LA’s Century City, and it comes with a prime address, 10000 Santa Monica Blvd.
Nouvel is known for taking inspiration from the particular location surroundings and it appears from the renderings this creation will be no different.
In his words, “Twenty-first [...]