I will gladly accept donations toward my modular houseboat fund.

A rurban hamlet is density neutral and arranges the units in a mixed building type cluster … on only a small portion of the overall site. For example, on a 10 acre site with an allowable density of six units per acre, or 60 units overall, it can locate all 60 units on four to six acres, saving or conserving six to four acres, respectively, in contiguous open space. All with conventional building types using detached, attached and multiplex homes.

@ James Glave

Shedworking is the only daily updated guide to the lifestyles of shedworkers and those who work in shedlike atmospheres.

Permanently Unfinished House with Cell Phone Tree

A cell tower is disguised as a tree. The house remains unfinished, so the owners can avoid paying taxes. Visual pollution and deregulation shape both the built and the natural environments.

~ Marjetica Potrc

In fall 1996, my students at the University of Pennsylvania and I embarked on an adventure with teachers and students at the Sulzberger Middle School in West Philadelphia. Our goal was to explore how a new curriculum organized around “The Urban Watershed” could combine learning, community development, and water resource management.

The whole neighborhood was the classroom with the school at the center. At the heart of the story was Mill Creek, a stream that once flowed across the field where the school playground is now, and still does flow, buried in a sewer that runs right past the school.

~ Anne Whiston Spirn, The Mill Creek Project

Gingerbread folk have a proud architectural history – from the Icing Buttresses of the past to the sugar spun spires of the present day. Recently, the world of Gingerbread house design has been pushing towards sustainable practices – houses that exist in harmony with the environment, but still look good enough to eat.

Terry* applauds our Gingerbread’ren’s efforts. In solidarity, we are launching a design competition that combines eco and spice and everything nice. The challenge in a nutshell: apply sustainable building design practices to a gingerbread house.

(via Oronte Churm)

For more than thirty years, Louis Le Roy has been working on an enormous structure in a meadow at the Friesian settlement of Mildam in the Netherlands. There, on a two-hectare site, he piles up with his bare hands paving bricks, paving stones, kerbstones and other discarded street rubble while allowing nature to proceed about him unhindered. Le Roy calls this fascinating jungle populated by large stacked edifices an Eco-Cathedral.

@ slowlab (via PART)

It is one of Emory University’s most environmentally friendly buildings, a hallmark of the institution’s efforts to “go green.” To hear John Wegner describe it, it’s also a slaughterhouse.

The soaring glass windows in Emory’s Mathematics and Science Center reflect the woodsy view, confusing hapless birds who smash into it at full speed.

The pretty reflective glass on the Mathematics and Science building at Emory University is an ‘aviary slaughterhouse, says John Wegner.’ It kills dozens of birds who confuse the reflective woodsy view with the actual forest. The school puts up netting during the migratory season.

“The building killed 60 birds in the first year,” said Wegner, Emory’s chief environmental officer. “It was the wall of death.”

And also:

The night my husband became a transvestite, crows started dying. They fell from the sky like black umbrellas, hitting the ground with a thud. A rainstorm of birds. I figured it was a virulent strain of bird flu that drifted into the clouds and killed them all just like that. There they were, flying around in circles, and bam! Sick. Dead. A virus that behaved like a shotgun pellet.

~ Debbie Ann Eis @ Night Train

All Things Considered looks at an icon of American life in summertime, the front porch: its role in history, architecture, community, literature and culture. From Southern verandas to New Urbanist porches, we explore the mediating space between indoors and out.

Also, this.

I’d love to get one of these Kids Crooked Houses for our player to be named later. We could build it right next to the Tiny House we’re going to live in.