Journal Summary

The story starts with my obsession with window shopping at IKEA and museum design stores. I always enjoy looking at smart little design inventions that change our way of living from different scales and aspects. My every trip there is always interwoven with countless “wow” and exclamation such as “this is such a smart design!” However, I’ve never carefully think about the inner implication of these great designs: what makes a design good and smart? After this semester’s following of the latest news of the design world, I think I’ve found one answer to this question: green and sustainable design is good design today.

My architecture journal this semester centered on posts from inhabitat.com and radiates to various other sources that have sustainability and green design news. Inhabitat.com is a weblog devoted to investigate emerging trends in product, interior and architectural design that are pushing architecture and design towards a smarter and more sustainable future. Its news has an extremely wide range of topics, including architecture and interior design, product design, art, technology, energy, transportation and fashion. This provides me a broad way of viewing green design. Start from the environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy’s nature art work and end at a new recycled material design of chandelier made with hangers, the stories I’ve covered during this semester may seem irrelevant at first glance, but inherently they all conveys the same message of today’s design trend, that is: design innovations today are becoming more and more eco-friendly, efficient, sustainable and energy-saving. This trend is so widespread that the applications of its design philosophy range from the microcosm — small objects for everyday use, through to the macrocosm — buildings, cities, and the earth's physical surface.

After taking this semester’s modern architecture class, I feel it is also interesting to look at our current green design revolution in a larger historical context. As mentioned in the mission of Inhabitat.com, the idea of green design is essentially the belief that design should balance substance with style, or more broadly put, that form and function should be intertwined, and form should follows function. The idea of “form follows function” was first mentioned by Louis Sullivan in his writing, The tall office building artistically considered. It also became the central concept of modernism architecture. After all, if we were to abandon the shape of the building from the old pattern book of medieval, ancient Greek and ancient Rome, something must arise to determine the form of our new age. It was not going to be religion, social hierarchy, nor the lavish and somewhat superfluous intention of decoration itself, rather, it was going to be the function of the building. I think what determines the form of the green design today is a further exploration in function, a function that seeks to create a more efficient, sustainable and energy-saving life style. This function is definitely extremely valuable because our world is more and more endangered by pollution, energy-shortage, global warming and other environmental issues.

However, we cannot ignore that currently there is still a gap between green design and designs that are actually marketable and can be widely accept by the general public. To solve this problem, we need a tight cooperation among architects, designers, engineer and environmental scientists. This cooperative nature makes the green design revolution so comprehensive, extensive and deeply associated to every aspect of our life. With green design’s central goal of creating something that is based on thoughtful consideration of the user, the social, economical context and the impact of an object on the surrounding environment, I am confident that we can eventually reach a best solution that solves all of these concerns, and the green design revolution is going to be the next great architecture and design movement recorded in history.

Hangeliers

Keywords: recycled materials, green products
Source: Orangelle Design



Clothes hangers are clogging our landfills at a rate of nearly 8 billion per year. We’ve recently brought you designers who have been developing brilliant ways to tackle the problem through eco-friendly materials and innovative new designs. Now industrial designers Alex Witko and Courtney Hunt at Organelle Design have hit upon another great idea — Hangeliers, wonderful chandeliers made from off-the-shelf plastic and wood hangers.

As many Inhabitat readers already know, re-purposing objects, recycled and/or found, can be a tricky business. It takes time, a good eye and not a little bit of luck. With Hangeliers, Organelle Design got it right. Organelle uses re-purposed off-the-shelf hangers, which removes them [if only temporarily] from the landfill cycle. Hangeliers are unique, beautiful and draw attention to the issue of landfill waste at the same time.

Not to be confused with ‘The Langoliers’ [the notoriously awful TV movie based on Stephen King's novella] Organelle’s Hangeliers are reminiscent of modern masters such as Nelson and Henningson—elegant design, precise thinking and a subtle nostalgia. With their commitment to innovation, sustainability and high design, Organelle is certainly a shop to watch.

Comment: Products with recycled and reused materials have always been a good idea, but few designs have achieved such a level elegancy as the hangeliers by the design firm Organelle. Forget about the expensive crystal chandeliers, this hangelier is usuful and beautiful, and most importantly, saved our already very crowded landfills.

I think another important thing is that this design actually shows us a new possibility of reuse materials-- use massive amount of recycled materials in a repetitve form to recreate. Hangers are not inherently related to chandeliers, nor are they the only thing to make a recycled chanderlier, we may also make recycled chanderliers by shattered mirrors, combs, cups, glass bottles, whatever thing you could think of. On the other side, chanderlier is not the only form recycled materials can lead to. Any daily objects we see can be made from something else. I think by doing this kind of open-ending, unending thought experiment, we will definitely have more amazing green designs like this.

UrbanBuds: Soiled Suitcases Grow Food

Keywords: recycled materials, green products
Source: designboom, urbanbuds


Gionata Gatto, an Italian designer based in the Netherlands, has soiled and seeded suitcases and such for gardening on the go. Designed as a graduation project, UrbanBuds enlivens luggage to grow up to 36 different food plants, either as still life or meals on wheels. Get a handle on your personal baggage and turn any place into a sustainable space simply by showing up and showing off some cultivation.

Used suitecases seem to be doomed to go to our landfilles. However, Gatto's design gives used suitecases a new life. With this design, the growth of landfills will definitely be minimalized dramatically, and it is promoting a new idea of garden on the go. A used suitecase is undoubtedly the best object for a garden-on-the-go, for 5 out of its 6 faces will be able to be planted plants on. This three demensional approach also challenges our traditional way of making a potted plan: why can't we build plants on all faces of a bulk of soil instead of just one? In that way, our green space will be increased while the actual space the plant takes is not increased at all. Also, it may not only be suitcases that can be recycled, but all kinds of other containers.

Meanwhile, i think it is very important to grow organic food in alternative ways nowadays. If these urbanbuds can be further developed by put in a variety of built in vegetable seeds and ferterlizer, and then put them into mass production and actually sell in the market, I'm sure there will be a new trend of "grow it yourself" hit our world.

Old School Bus As Bus Stop

Keywords: recycled materials
Source: Christopher Fennell, spaceinvading, inhabitat

Decommissioned school buses get sent to the scrapyard every day, so sculptor Christopher Fennell created this brilliant yellow bus shelter to keep the spirit of these buses going round and round. Situated in Athens, Georgia, the shelter is composed of three iconic yellow school buses dating from the years ‘62, ‘72, and ‘77. To create it Chris carefully chose pieces from the scrapped buses and then welded them together along with seats taken from an old city line. We love how the shelter’s beautiful reuse of salvaged materials perfectly suits its new purpose as it stands ready to welcome passengers as they wait for their next bus.


Designer: Christopher Fennell
Location: Atlanta, GA
The Bus Shelter is made from 3 old school buses, years: 62, 72 and 77. The seat is from one of Atlanta's decommissioned city buses.


Old school bus can always reminds me a lot of good memories back in elementry school. It is kinda sad to see them retired. Fennell's design is a very smart way to rescue the retired school buses. This design is meaningful in that it not only recycled the materials, but also produce a metephorical (or symbolical) meaning, create an association to the viewers. I think good design should always contain a substantial meaning--such as recycled material, and a symbolical meaning-- reminds us its original function and how it is related to the current function, in this case.

World's Largest Mountain Towers Over Berlin

Keyword: artificial nature

German architect Jakob Tigges has unveiled a plan for a 1,000m tall faux mountain at the site of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, and his supporters are taking it rather seriously. Dubbed “The Berg,” the snow-capped colossus would be the world’s largest man-made mountain and would serve as a tourist attraction for skiers in the otherwise slope-less city. We’re all about adding green space to urban environments, but devoting an enormous amount of time, energy and resources into a gigantic landmass that isn’t even inhabitable on the inside seems like a huge mound of you-know-what, if you ask us.
Plans for The Berg seem to have spawned out of a severe case of “peakis-envy”. Says Tigges in his manifesto “While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain… Hamburg, as stiff as flat, turns green with envy, rich and once proud Munich starts to feel ashamed of its distant Alp-panorama and planners of the Middle-East, experienced in taking the spell off any kind of architectural utopia immediately design authentic copies of the iconic Berlin-Mountain.”

While it may seem counterintuitive to think that building a massive office building or condominium is more environmentally friendly than a mountain, it’s important to point out that inhabitable buildings cram tons of useful space onto relatively small footprints while a mountain (which from the renderings appears to be filled-in with no livable space inside) occupies a huge footprint while providing almost no other use than a place to enjoy outdoor sports.

While it remains unclear whether or not The Berg is an actual project with plans of being built or simply one man’s pie-in-the-sky dream, the concept has already become a hit on Facebook with almost 3,500 fans and has been published by multiple outlets in the German press. What do YOU think? Is The Berg worth building or just a mountain of unsustainable rubbish? Sound off by commenting below.

Source: Inhabitat
"The Berg" Official Website: http://www.mila-berlin.com/theberg/#


Comment: The building of this huge man-made mountain throws what we usually thought as "green design" into question. When talking about a mountain, one would usually associate it with green, good for nature. However, can an artificial mountain bring exactly the same green effect as a natural mountain does? When taking all the money and labor cost into consideration, building an artificial mountain may not be cheaper than building an office building or a commercial building. Furthermore, if we take the output of the investment into consideration, building an artificial may even be a worse plan: the mountain can do nothing but create a outdoor activity space, while building an office building may generate more social and economical effect. Furthermore, if we want green space, we can also achieve this by buiding a green roof on top of the office buildings.
Building this massive berg in the center of this city of Berlin may be a good experiment in artificial biosphere, but its economic cost should still be put into doubt. This reminds us to relook at sustainable design--something that looks green may not necessarily be sustainable. We should comprehensively review all aspect of the design process before making the conclusion of if a project can be considered "sustainable".

EDEN FALLS: Skyscraper Zoo Topped With a Waterfall

key words: artificial nature

Comment: Visiondivision's proposal for this vertical zoo is very innovative; it is almost like a sustainable skyscraper for animals. From enclosured zoos to safari park, our vision of zoos is once more changed by this bold and creative proposal. It also invokes us to thinking about the energy we used in maintaining a zoo. In order to create an artificial climate that is resemble to the original habitat of animals, traditional zoos uses a lot of energy in maintaining the temperature, humidity and so on. The proposal of Eden Fall makes us to think about how to create and reuse these energy by the zoo itself. The idea of use the energy of waterfall by turbine and generator is very smart, and the vertical division of areas for different animals employed the same idea of vertical plant zonation.

However, there are still a lot of issues left in terms of the project's practicality. Afterall, animals are unlike plants, they may not be that easily vertically arranged as plants' vertical zonation; will certain animals feel unconfortable of living on the 5th floor of an apartment? Also, the pumping of the water to such a high level also seems to be a big problem-- the energy generated by turbines may barely compensate for the pumping power. But in all, I still think this project is a very interesting idea that's worth building. Maybe the revenues generated by zoo admission fees can sustain its cost pretty well.

A Campbell Soup House?

Keywords: Prefab
Source: inhabitat, Austin+Mergold

Grain silos aren’t difficult to source from farm supply companies and they are fairly sturdy, designed to withstand wind and rain while keeping the grain inside dry. Made from 14 GA galvanized corrugated steel (a little over 1/16″ thick), a grain silo could serve as a beefy, industrial looking exterior for a home. Similar in concept to using a shipping container as the shell for a project, grain silo fabrication is easily and cheaply accomplished.

The House-In-A-Can home design utilizes a 36-foot diameter grain silo and features with three levels totaling 2,000 square feet of living space. Two or three bedrooms can be located on the second level, with the living and dining space on the bottom. The top floor can be used as a deck, extended living space, or even a greenhouse. Also, multiple silos could be connected to each other to create larger homes or apartment blocks. And if you buy 5, Austin + Mergold will happily give you the 6th for free!

Made From Wood Pallets and Shipping Containers

Keywords: Prefab, recycled building materials
Source: Inhabitat, arch daily

While not totally prefabricated, the Manifesto House by Infiniski utilizes pre-made materials like shipping containers and wooden pallets to create a totally rad modern house. Infiniski’s mission is to build homes cheaply and quickly using sustainable materials while incorporating renewable energy systems. They have many designs already available, which can be interchanged and easily modified.

Built in Curacavi, Chile, for a grand total of 79,000€, the modest home is composed of two 40′ shipping containers and two 20′ containers. The use of wooden pallets on the exterior of the home gives it fantastic texture, but also has purpose — they provide shade and allow the home to be naturally cooled, since air can move freely between the slats. The containers meanwhile, are completely weather tight and provide the necessary structural capacity for the home.

Inside the home is airy and open due to a large living space on the bottom floor created by the placement of the containers. What seems like inexpensive storefront windows are used as the walls, which can be slid open to naturally ventilate the home. There is also a folding screen to create a covered outdoor porch or shade the interior from the sun when folded down. Geothermal heat pumps also help provide heating and cooling. The architects at James&Mau are also the founders of Infiniski, so the designs are not only design-worthy, but practical in terms of build-out.

Project: Infiniski Manifesto House
Architects: James & Mau
Location: Curacaví, Chile
Built Area: 160 m2 ( + 15 m2 terraces 2nd floor)
Landscaping: Infiniski
General Contractor and manager: Infiniski
Renewable strategy: Infiniski + Geotek
Project year: 2009
Execution Time: 90 days
Total Cost: 79.000 €
Photograph: Antonio Corcuera
Furniture: Cómodo Studio, gt_2P

Made From Recycled Shipping Containers

Keywords: Prefab, Recycled Materials
Source: Inhabitat, Envision Prefab Facebook Group

Shipping containers are known for their inherent strength, wide availability and relatively low cost — making them a practical and sustainable option for affordable housing. Last year, South Florida-based design, manufacturing and retail company, Envision Prefab set out to create a eco-conscious home, the “E-House,” constructed of sturdy cargo containers. They also wanted to educate homeowners about sustainability, so they recorded all the steps involved in retro-fitting shipping containers to construct the home and shared it with Jetson Green.

Using the framework of shipping containers to create the basic structure of the residential house, the E-House successfully combines container architecture with residential housing to provide environmentally-responsible design and construction to the housing marketplace. Ranging in size from 740-square-feet to 1300-square-feet, the homes are assembled off-site and then shipped to the specified location.

Following typical construction procedures, the assembly begins with the layout of standard cargo containers. Windows, doors, mechanical, and plumbing vents are marked out at the onset and are cut out of the corrugated metal of the containers walls. Prior to the start of construction, container walls are sand-blasted and coated with an anti-rust primer to insure maximum durability. Exterior walls are then welded together to create the desired form of the structure. When the walls of the house are in place, framing begins. Using steel studs, the exterior walls and the ceiling are framed. Subsequently, electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems are then added to the structure, as well as proper insulating. Lastly, the exterior walls are covered in the proper sheathing and house wrap while sheetrock is hung on the walls and ceilings.

Developed to meet the standards of all major green building programs and to retain the smallest carbon footprint as possible, the E-House contains a number of green features, including: energy efficient appliances, a split air conditioning system, low-flow toilets, HEPA air quality filters, tankless hot water heaters, grid-tied solar panels, an electric car charger, LED lighting, low-VOC paints, non-toxic insulation, a Solar Energy system, smart home lighting, greywater recycling, an organic waste composting machine and a custom made recycling center.


The “Agere” (coming from the word “to act” in Latin) is a 960 SQ/FT sustainable, efficient and cost affective home. This three bedroom, two and one half bath container home model proves that efficient use of space, good looks and affordability can co-exist.
Buyers of this home will enjoy a modern, sophisticated space with enough room to accommodate growing family.

Some of the Agere’s features include:
-Greywater recycling system
-Energy Star certified and energy efficient appliance package
-Low maintenance home with low utility costs
-High efficiency insulation
-Ductless A/C system
-Instantaneous hot water heating system
-Low-E windows and doors
-Low VOC paints
*Optional 1020KW solar power system

2009 London Design Festival

Keywords: Design festival
Sources: London Design Festival, inhabitat

One of our favorite shows from the 2009 London Design Festival was Corn Craft, a beautiful showcase of sustainable materials hosted by Gallery FUMI and Studio Toogood. Held in Gallery’s FUMI’s personal live/ work space on Hoxton Square, the exhibition hit all the right notes with tactile, emotional art-design pieces by Max Lamb & Gemma Holt, Nacho Carbonell (above) and Raw-Edges Design Studio.

Raw-Edges Design Studio’s table appears to magically carry ceramic dishes from which food was served at the opening party. 60 were invited, 100+ attended!

Oscar Narud ’s crafty slotted Keel tables 002 and 003.


Very Good & Proper’s ‘Canteen Table leg set’ found value in a discarded science lab table that the designers salvaged in their university years. This set of modular legs can be attached to reclaimed wood pieces such as old doors to convert them into tables.


Scott Jarvie’s One Cut Chair has been designed to minimize energy and manufacturing time by using water-jets to create a single continuous cut into a single sheet of plywood. The chair can be adjusted slightly to suit the sitter. Jarvie is a finalist in the British Council’s UK Young Design Entrepreneur award for 2009.

Tomás Alonso’s light experiments continue the Mr Light aesthetic in a smaller series, inspired by energy-efficient T5 LED dimmable light tubes.

Seating for Eating by Studio Ilse produced by De La Espada.

Buon Appetito is Andrew Haythornthwaite and Jordi Canudas‘ creation. Feeding off unwanted paper waste, the sculptural funishing grows, providing a place to sit and rest.

Inspired by Martin Hocking research into reusable vs. disposable cups, Australian company KeepCup, take on the throwaway paper coffee cup problem. KeepCup’s Jamie Forsyth explained how each paper cup takes approximately 1000KJ of energy to produce, whereas their plastic cups take 9000KJ each to produce and can be recycled once at the end of their lifespan. Including washing, it would take 20 – 30 uses to break even with paper cup consumption. This is quite impressive when compared to a 1000 break even point with a re-usable steel coffee cup, which lasts approximately 5,000 uses. KeepCup pointed out that as fervent espresso-coffee drinkers, in the UK alone, we throw away 1.7 billion paper coffee cups each year. They have sold 50,000 to Australian public services in the last four months.


Bokja by The Quirico Company is a piece of found furniture reupholstered with beautiful vintage fabric.

Kyeok Kim’s Chair (left) made from reclaimed materials. The Easy Willow chair (right) by Cornish-based designers Boex is made from sustainable wood and British grown willow.

Building With Whole Trees

keywords:
Source: New York Times , Whole Tree Architecture

ROALD GUNDERSEN, an architect who may revolutionize the building industry, shinnied up a slender white ash near his house here on a recent afternoon, hoisting himself higher and higher until the limber trunk began to bend slowly toward the forest floor.

“Look at Papa!” his life and business partner, Amelia Baxter, 31, called to their 3-year-old daughter, Estella, who was crouching in the leaves, reaching for a mushroom. Their son, Cameron, 9 months, was nestled in a sling across Ms. Baxter’s chest.

Wild mushrooms and watercress are among the treasures of this 134-acre forest, but its greatest resource is its small-diameter trees — thousands like the one Mr. Gundersen, 49, was hugging like a monkey.

“Whooh!” he said, jumping to the ground and gingerly rubbing his back. “This isn’t as easy as it used to be. But see how the tree holds the memory of the weight?”

The ash, no more than five inches thick, was still bent toward the ground. Mr. Gundersen will continue to work on it, bending and pruning it over the next few years in this forest which lies about 10 miles east of the Mississippi River and 150 miles northwest of Madison.

Loggers pass over such trees because they are too small to mill, but this forester-architect, who founded Gundersen Design in 1991 and built his first house here two years later, has made a career of working with them.

“Curves are stronger than straight lines,” he explained. “A single arch supporting a roof can laterally brace the building in all directions.”

The firm, recently renamed Whole Tree Architecture and Construction, is also owned by Ms. Baxter, a onetime urban farmer and community organizer with a knack for administration and fundraising. She also manages a community forest project modeled after a community-supported agriculture project, in which paying members harvest sustainable riches like mushrooms, firewood and watercress from these woods, and those who want to build a house can select from about 1,000 trees, inventoried according to species, size and shape, and located with global positioning system coordinates, a living inventory that was paid for with a $150,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

According to research by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, run by the USDA, a whole, unmilled tree can support 50 percent more weight than the largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. So Mr. Gundersen uses small-diameter trees as rafters and framing in his airy structures, and big trees felled by wind, disease or insects as powerful columns and curving beams.

Taking small trees from a crowded stand in the forest is much like thinning carrots in a row: the remaining plants get more light, air and nutrients. Carrots grow longer and straighter; trees get bigger and healthier.

And when the trees are left whole, they sequester carbon. “For every ton of wood, a ton and a half of carbon dioxide is locked up,” he said, whereas producing a ton of steel releases two to five tons of carbon. So the more whole wood is used in place of steel, the less carbon is pumped into the air.

These passive solar structures also need very little or no supplemental heat.

Tom Spaulding, the executive director of Angelic Organics Learning Center, near Rockford, Ill., northwest of Chicago, knows about this because he commissioned Mr. Gundersen to build a 1,600-square-foot training center in 2003. He said: “In the middle of winter, on a 20-below day, we’re in shorts, with the windows and doors open. And we don’t burn a bit of petroleum.”

“It’s eminently more frugal and sustainable than milling trees,” he added. “These are weed trees, so when you take them out, you improve the forest stand and get a building out of it. You haven’t stripped an entire hillside out west to build it, or used a lot of oil to transport the lumber.”

Mr. Gundersen had a rough feeling for all of this 16 years ago, when he started building a simple A-frame house here for his first wife and their son, Ian, now 15. He wanted to encourage local farmers to use materials like wood and straw from their own farms to build low-cost, energy-efficient structures. So he used small aspens that were crowding out young oaks nearby.

“I would just carry them home and peel them,” said Mr. Gundersen, who later realized he could peel them while they were standing, making them “a lot lighter to haul and not so dangerous to fell.”

Mr. Gundersen, who built most of the house singlehandedly, also recognized the beauty of large trees downed by disease or wind, and used the peeled trunks, shorn of their central branches a few feet from the crook, as supporting columns in the house. “I thought they were beautiful, but I didn’t think how strong they were,” he said.

“In architecture, how materials come together and how they are connected is really the god in the details,” he continued. “The connection is where things will fall apart,” he said, adding that the crook of a tree “has been time-tested by environmental conditions for 200 million years.”

He refers to that first house — which cost $15,000 (for plumbing, electrical, septic and other basic amenities, as well as $4,000 in paid labor) and a year of his own labor — as his master’s degree in architecture. Divorced in 1997, he now lives there with Ms. Baxter and their two children.

After finishing the A-frame, Mr. Gundersen built a 100-by-20-foot solar greenhouse next door with thick straw-bale walls on three sides, banked into the north slope. He used small-diameter, rot-resistant black locust trees for the timber framing.

A wall of double-paned glass, positioned to optimize the low-angle winter light, faces south. Growing beds angled slightly toward the sun are planted with rows of mustard greens, kale, chard, arugula, lettuces and herbs. Hanging trays of micro-greens and a fig and bay tree promise fresh food for the fall and winter.

But it is the Book End — the little house attached to the greenhouse, which is home to the firm’s project manager and his wife — that quietly vibrates with the spirit of the forest.

“We used a lot of standing dead elm here,” Mr. Gundersen said, pointing out the delicate trails, or galleries, left by the beetles that killed the tree. Peeled of their bark and satiny smooth, these trees have a presence that seems to draw one’s arm around their trunks and invite a viewer to lean into them, to soak up strength from these powerful old souls.

In this quiet farming community, where people may not have a lot of money to spend, but do have plenty of wood and straw, word of the beauty and practicality of Mr. Gundersen’s structures has spread. Solar greenhouses made of local materials can extend the growing season through winter, even in a place where temperatures can drop to 30 or 40 below. In the last 18 years, Whole Trees has built 25 of them here.

It’s part of a vision Mr. Gundersen developed after spending three years as a project architect on Biosphere 2, the three-acre glass-enclosed miniature world constructed near Tucson in the 1980s, which tried to replicate the earth’s systems, but foundered on carbon dioxide, acidic seas, failed crops and internal intrigues. After that experience, he wanted to build something more basic to human needs.

Mr. Gundersen grew up in nearby LaCrosse, where his Norwegian great-grandfather, a doctor, founded a local institution, the Gundersen Clinic; he comes from a clan of doctors and tree lovers. “There are 23 doctors in the family,” he said, including his father and uncle and four great-uncles, but he seems to be wired more like his great-grandmother Helga, whose family still owns a tree farm in Norway. He and his grandmother would often picnic on this piece of wild land, where he remembers picking watercress and wildflowers and building tree forts.

Now, to be in his buildings is to be among the trees.

“It almost feels like we’re in a forest, the trees have such a presence,” said Marcia Halligan, a client who is a farmer and Reiki instructor, standing among the birch posts of her airy bedroom.

She and her partner, Steven Adams, who grows seed for organic seed companies, worked with Mr. Gundersen on a design that uses 22 different kinds of wood, most of it from their own land outside Viroqua, southeast of Stoddard.

The economic downturn has put commissions for several large buildings for nonprofits and a 4,600-square-foot residence on hold, Mr. Gundersen and Ms. Baxter say, but the demand for small houses like theirs is up.

“It’s remarkable how many people have called this last year asking for 1,000-square-foot houses,” Ms. Baxter said. “People are downsizing for their retirement homes, and even younger folks are thinking about energy costs, environmental awareness and simplicity.”

Whole Trees can keep construction costs as low as $100 a square foot, not including site preparation, if the client is willing to shop for secondhand fixtures and the like.

As people begin to see forests as a resource, they may begin to take care of them rather than cutting them down to make room for cornfields or pastures. And the forests keep giving back.

“I’ve taken 20 trees per year off one acre, for 12 buildings,” Mr. Gundersen said. “You can never tell that we’ve taken out that much wood.”

Vision for a Vegetal City

keywords: nature, urban planning, vision for the future
source: Vegetal City, Inhabitat



Ever wonder what our modern-day cities could look like 100 years from now in a perfect world? Architect Luc Schuiten endeavors to find out with his Vegetal City installation, currently on display in Brussels. The entrance, made up of an archway with branches covered in blinking yellow lights, leads the exhibit’s visitors into a magical world of architectural drawings and models of cities where city residents live peacefully with nature.
According to the 65 year-old architect, “You cannot feel good in light of all the environmental pollution and the grim perspectives for the future.” Instead Schuiten, a self-proclaimed utopist, sketches alternatives.

Among the cities of the future on display are the Lotus City, the Woven City, the Treehouse City, and the City of the Waves. Each city takes on a unique character based on its environment. The Woven City, for example, features habitats made up of a “vegetal mesh” formed by the roots of a strangler fig tree wrapped around the host tree. The fig tree grows so tall that buildings can be built into it. Buildings are made from biotextiles that capture solar power for electricity.

Schuiten’s designs are fantastical, sure, but they offer an inspiring vision of what cities in harmony with their surroundings might look like.

Evolution of the city (click the image to see lager image)

Overview

The Woven City


The Lotus City

Urbancayon

The City of the Waves

Building Model

Ornithoplanes with flapping wings

cyclos

The click car

The tractainer

This vision for a vegetal city first reminds me the Art Nouveau style. It is like the concept of art nouveau applied on a huge scale of city planning.

One question that triggers my interest is: if we use natural form in the urban scale, what would the difference between natural and urban be? I think this question is really interesting because it calls us to look at the very purpose of urbanlization and the implication of urban form. Do we really want to go that far in abandon our urban form in order to achieve sustainability? Although our current urban form creates a lot of pollution and unsustainable issues, it still symbolize the great civilation of human beings. And there are profound social, cultural and historical implications that make it so important to us. I guess Luc Shuiten's vegetal city may be very good to use at creating a new city from nothing. It may be very easy to transform the existing nature into this vegetal city with relatively low cost. As for the great cities such as New York, Paris which we've have for such a long time, I guess it is better to keep as it is and thinking about some other ways to "greenalize" the urban space.