Off the Grid is a study of thirty families living in Maine without electricity, plumbing or phones. Scattered throughout the Maine woods, these homes are disconnected from the grid of wires and media that bind distant Americans together. Although they have all rejected aspects of the modern world, their beliefs and commitments vary widely — ranging from environmentalism to evangelism to anarchism. Yet the families living in these homes — and on the occasional commune — form a sort of makeshift community. I see this project as an examination of how homes become an expression of personal ideology. I am especially interested in depicting the relationships between people and their homes through the mundane details of the material worlds they have built around themselves. (via wood s lot)
The largest sealed environment ever created, constructed at a cost of $200 million, and now falling somewhere between David Gissen’s idea of subnature — wherein the slow power of vegetative life is unleashed “as a transgressive animated force against buildings” — and a bioclimatically inspired Dubai, Biosphere 2 even included its own one million-gallon artificial sea.
~ photos by Noah Sheldon @ BLDGBLOG
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)