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Prefab is taking center stage this summer at The Museum of Modern Art in NYC with the Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibit opening in July. As part of the exhibit, five renowned architects will bring a mix of existing and prototype prefabricated designs to full form on a exterior lot adjacent to the museum!

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The challenge set forth by the AIA was to create ‘A House for an Ecologist’, a home base from which a US Fish and Wildlife Service Ecologist in Residence could live and conduct field research. Raphaelle and Alfredo Maul, of Maul Dwellings in San Sebastian, Spain, answered the call with The Landscape House - a site-sensitive, passive solar dwelling designed to fuse environmental performance with aesthetic integrity, building science with architectural excellence.

Meant to be oriented along an east-west axis on the highest elevation of the rural West Virginia site, The Landscape House takes advantage of prevailing winds with a double roof system that improves air circulation around the structure and generous, adjustable openings on the north and south façades. Passive solar heating and natural daylighting are controlled by a system of operable louvered shutters which incline on the north and revolve on the south. On the roof, a highly efficient Sphelar (3D cell) photovoltaic system collects sunlight for on-site energy.

The Landscape House is an exercise in water conservation. Water usage is clustered within the dwelling to minimize material consumption. The kitchen and bathroom are equipped with low-flow fixtures, dry-compost toilet, recycling area and compost unit. Rainwater is harvested and stored under the solar roof providing grey water to fixtures, thermal mass and a source of heat in winter through circulation in a radiant floor system. A solar dehumidifier draws moisture from inside and outside the building to produce potable water for drinking.

Although meant to pass through many seasons, The Landscape House’s locally-sourced, recycled and renewable materials are easily disassembled for reuse at a different site. The AIA competition jury from the Architecture of Sustainability conference took note saying, “We like the pre-fab-ness of it—from prefabricated elements. We also had a lot of discussion about ‘touching lightly’—what a small footprint means. It could be totally non-physical, the footprint.”

The Landscape House won the 2006 AIA Committee on Design Ideas Competition. Although it exists only in concept we’d certainly like to see it built.

+ Maul Dwellings
+ AIA ‘House for an Ecologist’

+ Seesaw to power African schools
+ Daniel’s design at Coventry University
Via Core77

$22.95 at Husque

Wind power holds much promise but often meets obstacles in small-scale application. Enter Engineers Without Borders. Volunteers from this humanitarian group, including Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming pictured above, have developed a small wind turbine design that has the capacity to bring much needed electrical power to remote villages in Guatemala and provide an alternative to hazardous kerosene lighting.

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The world’s most prestigious furniture fair, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, in Milan, Italy, starts in two days! And we’ve got three Inhabitat correspondents on their way to Milan to scope out the green design on this year’s international scene. Cate Trotter, Ariana Mouyiaris and new Inhabitat writer/photographer Antonia Halse are headed to Salone to bring back the best photos and coverage of the most interesting new furniture, lighting, products and presentations from Milan - all through a sustainable lens of course. We are hitting the ground running and, starting Wednesday this week, Inhabitat will be your source for green design at Milan Salone 2008!

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Eye-catching aesthetics and implementation of a bevy of green building practices have brought a new oxymoron into consideration in the form of the Santa Monica Civic Center parking structure. This building is on its way to becoming the first LEED certified parking garage in the United States, shifting the sustainability merits of LEED debate into impassioned overdrive with plenty of fuel fodder for both sides of the argument.

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Architect Dustin Ehrlich has created a custom prefab home near Chapel Hill, NC. Commissioned by his parents and constructed by WIELER, the structure mixes stone, wood, stainless steel and rusted corrugated metal to create an extraordinary first, and lasting, impression. While undeniably modern, the structure’s aesthetic also draws on the local architectural styles of nearby tobacco barns from previous centuries.

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What better way to kick off our Milan Furniture Fair countdown than with our favorite ‘free-range’ furniture designer Ryan Frank. Frank’s modular bamboo creation, dubbed ‘Zig’, is just one of many designs we’ve got our eye on for this year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile starting next week. We’ve got three Inhabitants heading to Italy to bring comprehensive coverage of the 2008 furniture fair and get a glimpse of what green looks like on the international scene this Spring. If the Zig storage/display system is any indication of what eco-friendly design treats are in store for us, things are looking very promising.

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It’s not always our style to point out celebrity lives but when they involve a super green, LEED Gold rated building with stellar views across the Hudson River it gets our attention. The New York scoop is that the three-time Academy Award-nominated actor/environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio has found shelter in Riverhouse, one of NYC’s greenest condominiums.

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The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 12 new Solar America Cities, bringing the number from 13 to 25 in total, and moving along the $2.4 million initiative to provide up to $200,000 per city to build solid solar infrastructures. The announcement came at the New Frontiers in Energy Summit 2008 in Denver, Colorado, which is among the 2008 Solar America Initiative (SAI) cities. The overall program goals are to facilitate adoption of solar technology by individuals and businesses and to make solar electricity from photovoltaics a cost-competitive energy choice by 2015.

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Just off the Brazilian coast in São Paulo, architect Andrade Morettin has created Residencia RR - a stunning summer abode nestled amidst the dense vegetation and semi-tropical, hot, humid climate of Itamambuca in the state’s north coast. Responding to the local environment, House RR is selectively protected from and open to the elements. Under a primary “shell” the home shelters from intense sun and rains but allows much desired natural cross-ventilation to permeate through living spaces. With prefabricated components and an elevated foundation, the construction sits lightly on its site with a low ecological impact.

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With Spring finally starting to spring, we are excited to announce that Domino Magazine has just published a feature story on our Inhabitat founder Jill Fehrenbacher. The April issue of Domino - the guide to living with style - is tinged with green as Earth Day approaches and that’s where Inhabitat founder Jill Fehrenbacher makes an appearance in the monthly My Green Life feature. Decked out in sustainable style favorites like Ekovaruhuset and Veja, she talks about living green in NYC and her vision of the perfect way to spend April 22, 2008.

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Groundreaking architect Jean Nouvel has inspired and influenced international architecture (and many of us here at Inhabitat) for over three decades with creative interpretations of culture, location, program and client that have resulted in some of the world’s most unforgettable structures. In recognition of his abundant career and persistent imagination, he has been chosen as the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Laureate, the world’s highest architecture honor.

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Last year, more than 2.2 million Earth Hour participants shut off their lights throughout Sydney in a powerful stand in support of protecting the environment. Tonight, the lights off action is going global! Around the world, cities on every continent - including Atlanta, Bangkok, Bogota, Chicago, Dublin, Montreal, Manilla, San Francisco, Sydney, Tel Aviv and more - 20,000+ businesses and almost 300,000 individuals have signed up to turn off the lights and turn up environmental awareness.

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Up until fairly recently, Rocio Romero fans could only visit a fully realized public version of her enormously successful LV prefab in Missouri. Then, last month, a privately-owned and newly completed Rocio Romero LV home was open to the public in the Hudson Valley, NY. When we ran the news of the New York LV open house tour, many of you asked us to keep you posted when Romero’s homes were accessible elsewhere. Well, West Coasters, hang on to your hats because there’s a new LV in town - a Rocio Romero LV is open for tours and much more against the amazing backdrop of Napa County, just a short drive north of San Francisco, and Inhabitat’s hometown in Marin County.

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High Line 23, or HL23, is a new green building from Neil M. Denari Architects that is currently under construction and turning heads soon in the Chelsea art gallery district on Manhattan’s west side. The structure is a 14 floor mixed use of gallery space and condominiums with amazing views of the evolving High Line elevated park preservation and green space reuse project. With an impressively small footprint of just 40’ x 99’ and a multitude of green building technologies, HL23’s cantilevered silhouette is made even more exquisite by the expected achievement of LEED Gold certification.

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LivingHome’s KT1.1 Expandable Single Family Residence

The environmentally conscious, award winning architects KieranTimberlake always manages to amaze us with stunning residential designs that define the true synthesis of green building and architectural excellence. We’ve also been equally enthralled by the business vision of Steve Glenn’s LivingHomes, a development company which has been extremely successful in commissioning and building architecturally-stunning green prefabs. Until now, KieranTimberlake and Living Homes were connected only by their shared drives to bring the best green residential designs to market, but this week the firms announced a partnership to design an exciting new line of versatile, sustainable, and modern prefabs that will make green living affordable and stylish.

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Architect Steven Holl always appeals to our sustainable side, capturing our imagination with beautiful designs that incorporate both social and environmental responsibility. His new design for a mixed use development in China is bringing a green sensibility to the skyline of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. The ‘Sliced Porosity Block’ will house offices, apartments, retail, a hotel, cafes and restaurants within five towers and a multi-level plaza rivaling Rockefeller Center. This high-performance building will integrate green strategies in heating, cooling, lighting and materials to attain an LEED gold certification.

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It is difficult to ignore the designs of Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid. Bold, brave, often controversial - her ambitious experiments in form always seem to stir discourse and debate. Hadid’s design for the new civil courts building in Madrid is no exception. Planned as part of the new Campus de la Justicia at Valdebebas in the Spanish capital city, Hadid’s Civil Court is expected to become a focal point among works from Norman Foster, IM Pei and others. While we are not always big fans of Hadid’s obsession with form, we are intrigued by the “intelligent” façade of this Madrid courthouse, that in addition to being extremely eye-catching, is intended to regulate the building’s indoor environment.

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A collective celebration of colorful creatures is taking form in an amazing crochet project that aims to raise awareness about the threats to delicate ocean ecosystems. The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is growing organically with the clicking of crochet hooks and the determination of skilled, multi-disciplinary crafters from around the world. Together, they will produce a massive crochet version of the Great Barrier Reef to serve as an engaging textile testimony to the pollution and climate change that threaten this natural wonder.

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Danish architect Knud Kapper has drawn from the tradition of handmade, mid century furniture to create the new eco-friendly Living Kitchen Architecture series which was recently unveiled in New York. The pieces are attentively hand built from solid woods that were harvested from sustainably managed forests under stringent regulations. Engaging, durable and finished with natural wood treatments, Kapper’s kitchen furnishings have a built-in longevity that embody the core meaning of the rooms they establish.

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The Ab?d™ is a prototype prefab created by BSB Design for use as affordable housing in South Africa. The simple design uses a strong, natural shape as the core. It’s durable, lightweight and can be easily shipped in a compact box for quick on-site assembly. Perhaps it’s the shape or the vibrant colors of the corrugated paneling, but this design brings a cheerful presence to a very serious issue: addressing the need for high-quality, low-cost solutions to South Africa’s housing shortage.

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If all of the ideas and concepts that were highlighted at the Greener Gadgets Conference were rolled into one product it would look and operate like the LINC Lifestyle Concept Phone from The Greener Grass. This team of forward thinking conceptual designers has envisioned a touch screen smart phone that puts complete connectivity into the hands of the mobile consumer without the social and environmental burden of e-waste.

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