While prefabrication lends itself to making the simplest of homes, some designers have been getting mighty fancy with their prefabs lately. We don’t mind the bells and whistles, but as the people behind PLACE houses suggest, you can’t wear couture every day. That’s why they’ve created a kit house that is ready-to-wear.

PLACE houses promise to be smart, affordable and green. Designed by Seattle firm, Place Architects, the residences offer an array of customizable features, which manage to be both mercifully limited and abundantly personalized. I can just imagine Goldilocks exploring her options in the PLACEhouse, discovering that it’s neither too much nor too little of what she wants; this PLACE is just right.

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Have you ever wondered why most bookshelves are flat and straight? I’m pondering that question right now as I look at the fabulous Storyline bookshelf by Frederik Roije. There is no good reason that bookshelves should be perfectly flat, requiring books to balance with the help of bookends, lest they fall over into tilted piles. (See Todd Laby’s slanted shelves for our idea of innovative bookshelf design) Roije’s Storylines bookcase design makes more sense functionally than having a standard flat shelf, and it is more aesthetically interesting to boot - resembling a mini-city skyline.

Another coup for those design-savvy Dutch!

Via the Coolhunter

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Greetings from Berlin! The first installment in my design tour of Germany and Scandinavia brought me to the Philology Library at the Free University of Berlin.

Completed just last fall as part of an ongoing rennovation of the campus, the unique hemispheric structure of glass and steel was designed by superstar architects Foster and Partners, headquartered in London. Affectionately nicknamed the Berlin Brain, the Library is an architectural jewel for both the University and the City of Berlin itself, as well as a beautiful manifestation of both active and passive energy-saving design.

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You have probably noticed by now how much we love bamboo here at Inhabitat. We’re constantly amazed at the qualities bamboo has to offer as a rapidly renewable resource: it’s strong, pliable, and pretty good looking, too. But Kengo Kuma’s Great (Bamboo) Wall house is the first project we’ve profiled for using bamboo as a symbolic element of design, not to mention its physical attributes.

Kengo Kuma’s Great Bamboo Wall was part of an initiative to develop a series of houses, all by Asian architects along the Great Wall of China. The significance of building alongside such a monumental structure was key to Kuma’s interpretation of the project. The solidity of China’s Great Wall was first and foremost a division, to insulate both their territory and culture from the outside. Kuma’s bamboo walls, however, while dividing space, were designed to contrast the monument in their fragility and transparency.

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For whatever reason, the more features a gadget has, the more people want it, even if all but one of those features are useless. Which isn’t to say we don’t all need a mirror that also has a graphic weather forecast, an atomic clock, and a vibrating alarm. It has a two-color display and shows indoor and outdoor temperatures through a remote sensor. You could just listen to the radio, use an alarm clock, and primp in an unobstructed looking glass, but that would be so 20th century…

Via Discovery

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Recycled aluminum specialists Girari have been producing sustainable home furnishings from post-consumer aluminum for over ten years. Girari’s gorgeous line can be seen in-person at their brand new design showroom on Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California. We’ve taken a special interest in their Bamboo Vase, baring an amazing cast aluminum resemblance of one of our favorite renewable materials.

Girari’s organic design incorporates cast aluminum bases and frames with tempered glass, natural woods, marble and granite tops. Each piece is individually hand crafted. In a successful attempt to avoid sharp lines, Girari’s pieces are softened through a slight curve, while the cast aluminum legs and rails are seamlessly connected.

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We just can’t get enough of Andrew Maynard, so we thought we’d say a few more words about him for our Prefab Friday roundup. In the diverse collection of projects in Maynard’s portfolio, we get a picture of an architect whose ideals run as deeply as his talent for good design. His protest treehouses emerged as a direct action in defense of the Tasmanian forest; his unfolding homes spoke even more strongly for sustainability, underscoring the importance of considering time in design. Rounding out the portrait of a visionary designer, Maynard’s prefabs embody not only sustainability, but affordability.

His thoughtful prefab designs garnered an accolade from the VicUrban affordable housing competition, and have since been spurred into production, with pre-orders now available online. Maynard believes that the only way the housing industry can achieve exciting, well-designed, and affordable homes for the masses will be to imitate the mass-production techniques of the car industry - an idea that makes a lot of sense…

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Abandon your preconceptions of the architect as a quiet, bespeckled intellectual who cares more about sharp Italian suits and clean concrete lines than about saving trees. Here comes a new breed of architectural environmental activism in rising star Andrew Maynard, who has designed these awesome treehouses in order to protest logging.

The vigilant protection of endangered forests represents an enduring legacy of environmental activism, from the Chipko movement in India in the early 70s to Julia Butterfly Hill’s long sit in the redwoods. Few things deter a logger from felling a tree more effectively than a protester clinging fiercely to its trunk. Except maybe a protest structure that clings to three trunks at once.

On top of being a wildly inventive architect, Andrew Maynard - whose prefabs have been widely lauded for their astounding multiplicity and brilliant design - turns out to be a cleverly scheming activist. Maynard’s Global Rescue Station fastens semi-permanently to the body of three trees, promising not only to shelter and protect protestors during their demonstrations, but to take out anything beneath or around it if a logger dares to cut down its supports.

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Best known as the founder and CEO of Vivavi, Josh Dorfman also wears the hat of a radio host with his show, The Lazy Environmentalist, where he regularly features some of our favorite cohorts and leaders in the burgeoning movement towards making sustainability sexy and cool.

On this week’s show, Green Goes Mainstream, you can hear our fearless founder, Jill Fehrenbacher, discussing Inhabitat’s inception and growth, and the coming trends in green media and sustainable design. You’ll also hear Mark Spellun of Plenty Magazine.

You can catch the show tonight at 9pm EST, and several more times this week on Sirius Satellite Radio 114 or at the new Lime.com. Tune in!

(For those of you who are new to internet radio - be prepared to download and install RealPlayer, if you don’t already have it.)

Good Design. Sustainability. Affordability?

Rarely could these ever describe the same project, much less a single attitude towards housing. In 2003, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, launched an open competition with these objectives in mind, and the results proved to be contrary. 440 entrants took house plans from Habitat for Humanity and turned them into environmentally friendly designs for low and moderate-income families.

Currently showing at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota are some of the results of the HOME House Project competition. Projects ranged from traditional vocabularies to the futuristic, all of them integrating building ideas such as prefabricated and recycled materials, passive heating and cooling, and rain water recycling.

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Across the country, cities constantly struggle with public safety and ongoing financial burdens caused by tree roots lifting cracked concrete sidewalks. Rubbersidewalks offer a convenient solution to this problem. The modular sidewalk system allows air and water to reach the soil below, and can be pulled apart for easy tree and root maintenance, decreasing the need for urban tree removal.

Rubbersidewalks are made of 100% recycled tire rubber. The waste rubber from one passenger tire creates one-square-foot of Rubbersidewalk, helping to recycle the more than 34 million passenger tires disposed in California alone. At the end of their lifecycle (at least 14 years), Rubbersidewalk pavers can be recollected and recycled back into the manufacturing process.

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When designing a treehouse, it’s almost always a good idea to add a little childhood nostalgia and rustic charm to the mix, even if the end result has modern leanings. We’ve talked about treehouses big, small, and uber-futuristic, and each has had its own special flavor; but no matter how you distinguish yours from the rest, once you put a house in a tree, you join the ranks of the make-believe revivalists.

German cooperative baumraum knows how to keep imagination alive in their homes. Combining architecture, landscape design and “arboriculture,” they create treetop dwellings which integrate beautifully into their forested surroundings, and preserve the integrity of the trees that support them. With the breezy playfulness of a hammock and the trusted stability of an old oak tree, baumraum won’t make you grow up to enjoy a sophisticated house.

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Winter is not, perhaps, the most temperate time of year to head off to Germany and Scandinavia, but the airfare sure is reasonable! I’m excited to report that from February 23 to March 13 I’ll be bundling up and traveling through Berlin, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg (Sweden) — and I’d love to get some travel advice from you!

In addition to visiting my brother and generally taking in the sights (such as the Reichstag Dome pictured above), I’m looking forward to exploring the local design scene and checking out exciting things to cover for Inhabitat. I’d like to invite any readers who are familiar with the region to send along their recommendations concerning things to do and see while I am there. Innovative sustainable design and architecture is at the top of my list, but would also be be delighted to hear about any hotspots for contemporary art, textile design, and fine crafts.

If comments are disabled, you can submit your tip here, or email me directly at gh.inhabitat@gmail.com

Thanks! I look forward to hearing from you!

Design company Freedom Of Creation (FOC), straddles the cusp between cutting edge engineering and haute-design. The future-forward company is pushing the boundaries of manufacturing production with their research and experimentation in new methods of rapid prototyping. The fruits of their research manifest in stunningly beautiful geometric designs - shaped into lamps, furniture and even textiles. The Venus lamp (above), made from laser-sintered PA would make Bucky proud with its pure geodesic structure, whereas the On the Rocks tables and chairs (below) look like scientific diagrams of molecular crystalline structure come to life. FOC is also exploring textiles (see below), and while their creations don’t necessarily look very comfortable to wear, they are quite fetching on plastic mannequins.

+ Freedom Of Creation

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Imagine a high-tech glass that you could change from transparent to frosted with the flick of a switch… You could use it for home windows (eliminating the need for blinds), for store fronts (at night), and even for bathrooms (requiring users to stretch for a new level of trust in technology). Although Privacy Glass is not in common use yet - the technology has actually been around for quite a few years, and there are many stunning examples of this smart material in use all over the world. French company Saint-Gobain produces an “intelligent” glass called Privalite, which can be switched from an ordinary-looking clear glass to a foggy-looking frosted glass by running an electrical current over a polymer liquid-crystal film sandwiched between two plates of glass.

Apparently the Koolhaus-designed Prada flagship store in SoHo, New York, utilizes privacy glass in the dressing rooms. I’ve been to the store on several occasions, but I’ve never quite made it as far as the dressing rooms (bloggers can’t afford Prada), so I have yet to see this in the flesh. Fortunately New Yorkers don’t need to be well-heeled to see Privacy Glass in action. Inhabitat reader John tells us that there is a more accessible (and fun) implementation of privacy glass, right around the corner from the Prada store, at Bar 89 (89 Mercer Street in NYC) “The bathroom doors do the trick and are tripped by an infrared censor. The bar is ok, but the bathrooms on the mezzanine are worth a stop.” {Thanks John!}

+ SwitchLite
+ Privalite
+ Landmark Glass

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We’ve talked a few times about urban bioremediation projects, in which trees and plants are used as tools to clean contaminated land. This kind of renewal not only spares the use of invasive reconstruction, it makes the process of cleaning as beautiful and enjoyable as the final outcome.

Danish firm Studio Force4 has a development plan that brings bioremediation, compact living and prefab construction together to create a forested urban oasis. The Boase Concept will establish a forest in the city, choosing trees specifically for their ability to clean polluted soil. With residential units positioned above the trees, residents will have the benefit of dense green space situated in the middle of the city.

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Dear readers-
A bunch of you have written in to ask about why our comments aren’t working. We have had to shut them down because some spawn of satan has set up an automated spam-bot to send us comment spam about online blackjack every 5 minutes. Naturally we delete all comments like this immediately, but the spam was coming in such a deluge that we have found it impossible to sit at the computer constantly deleting it. So we have had to shut comments down until we can get a spam blocking system in place. We are trying to switch to Wordpress in the next couple weeks, so please be patient with us! We will bring comments back as soon as we can.

Designed by well-known Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, the Nomadic Museum is the permanent home for the art exhibition “Ashes and Snow,” by Gregory Colbert. Built from 152 stacked shipping containers, the building forms a central walkway for viewing the artwork, suspended on either side.

Through May 14th, the exhibit will be located on the Santa Monica Pier, having previously opened in Venice, and then in the first Nomadic Museum at Pier 54 on the Hudson River. Truly “nomadic,” the museum was designed to be disassembled and reconfigured to house the traveling exhibit. The shipping containers not only make up the building module, but evoke the voyage of “Ashes and Snow” as it moves from location to location (the exhibit has no final destination.)

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Uniquely modern, wonderfully colorful and one hundred percent natural (including the dyes), Mango Leaf’s line of handspun bamboo products put an elegant eco spin on standard wooden dishware. Whether you like dark, rich colors, or bright, energetic shades, Mango Leaf can suit your style. Scrupulous attention to detail and a commitment to using only natural materials are the trademarks of Mango Leaf’s design. Not only is each product put through vigorous durability and ergonomic testing to ensure it lasts for years, but the pieces are surprisingly affordable, starting at $38.00.

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We’ve talked about mobile homes and we’ve talked about floating homes, and now a conceptual convergence brings us a floating mobile home. Designer Hallstein Guthu calls his concept a “mobile eco-home for the contemporary techno-nomad.” Might be something you’d find at Burning Man if it weren’t waterborne. And Norwegian.

In fact, this is the result of a highly elaborate and imaginitive architectural Masters thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Guthu emphasizes the use of technologically advanced design as a means of achieving a greener, more sustainable structure. With an outer membrane comprised of solar cells, a wind turbine, and a recycled aluminum structure, the highly efficient home is designed with awareness of its eventual disposal (you can recycle it!).

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We’re not sure why the folks behind Tonfisk named themselves after the so-called “chicken of the sea” (the word means “tuna” in Finnish) but nonetheless we think they’re a great catch. Among their many novel designs, we especially love the Warm tea set.

These sturdy ceramic cups and teapot feature removable bracelets made of bent laminated wood that both insulate the beverage inside and protect your hands from the hot surface. Without protruding handles the cups stack easily and the wooden bands also raise the cup above the table surface eliminating the need for coasters.

$50 from Composition

Additional retailers are also listed on the Tonfisk website.

Via Housefish

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When it comes to the essentials at home, sanity trumps vanity. In old apartments and houses, big clunky radiators seem like a necessary annoyance, but do they really have to be?

Dutch designer Joris Laarman specializes in “reinventing functionality.” With his gorgeous new Heat Wave radiator, he has managed to transform what was once a bulky necessary evil into a stunning piece of sculpture that functions just as well as wall art, as it does in heat radiation. Luckily for all of us, Droog Design has recognized the genius of this design and has put the Heat Wave Radiator into mass production, so now we can all bask in its warmth.

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We’re feeling extremely fortunate this week to have Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG and Archinect providing another illuminating guest post. Thanks Geoff!

There have been some extraordinary claims in the newpapers lately. James Lovelock, of Gaia hypothesis fame, has said we’re too late, the show’s over: Earth’s climate is already in a runaway feedback loop, “and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” This is a planetary “fever” that could last 100,000 years.

Even the Pentagon has not missed out on the speculative action, arguing in an apparently J.G. Ballard-inspired internal report from 2004 that mass rioting and nuclear war will be the inevitable outcome of climate change. With barely concealed relish, the Pentagon predicts that disruption, conflict, and warfare “would define human life.”

As if that were not bad enough, we then learn that the oceans may soon become “marine deserts” due to the extinction of phytoplankton and other “microscopic plants” at the base of the aquatic food chain. Creeping death, if I may be allowed to quote Metallica, seems to be all around us. But all is not gloom and apocalypse.

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I’ve been hearing rumors about a geothermally heated townhouse in lower Manhattan for awhile now, and have been meaning to go check it out for almost a year. Now it appears the moment has finally arrived - the geothermal house has just gone on sale. Asking price? A whopping 7.8 million. But just think of all the money you’d save in utilities!

From the Wall Street Journal:
“The five-story town house stands in TriBeCa, a few blocks north of the World Trade Center site, and uses an unusual geothermal energy system to provide heating, cooling and hot water. Pipes extend about 1,400 feet into the earth, where the temperature is always about 52 degrees. The pipes transfer energy to the house, where two-layer-thick concrete exterior walls, filled with thermal materials, trap the energy and distribute it. (All floors also have radiant heating systems.) The late New York architect and developer John Petrarca designed the property and lived there with his wife, business-journalism professor Sarah Bartlett, until his death from lung cancer in 2003. The project was completed in 2002.”

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Bamboo continues to be an Inhabitat favorite, and we especially love bamboo furniture that unfolds to provide variety in tight spaces. The Bamboo Slide Table was specially designed for those with space-challenged kitchens, but those with ample space will love it too. The Bamboo Slide Table expands - providing multiple cutting surfaces (including a hidden cutting board), a variety of hidden storage options, and even a wine rack. Made of toasted vertical grain bamboo finished in an organic food-grade herbal oil and polished aluminum legs with non-skid feet, the Bamboo Slide Table makes a wonderful addition to any kitchen, large or small.

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