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.

Scheidtweiler has created a building that will attract as many architects and their students as it will Catholic pilgrims. Yet, if Zumthor’s elemental building causes visitors to be silent for just a while, it will have achieved at least one of its ends. Here is one of those physical still points in the turning world that, in an era of razzmatazz architecture, can be hard to find.

@ Guardian (via Hermitary)

The micro compact home [m-ch] is a lightweight compact dwelling for one or two people. Its compact dimensions of 2.6m cube adapt it to a variety of sites and circumstances, and its functioning spaces of sleeping, working / dining, cooking and hygiene make it suitable for everyday use.

It’s like a Tumbleweed Tiny House for robots!

Would it be realistic to think that one day the majority of people will live or want to live in an organic house? What do you believe would be the consequences?

It is right and natural that different people have different aesthetics and I’m sure there will always be those who prefer straight lines to organic curves. However the dominance of linear forms comes largely from the aesthetic of the modernist movement and the world of mass production. I think we are moving beyond this now, both in our philosophy and the practicalities of our world. The age of cheap energy may well becoming to an end, as we respond to both environmental imperatives and dwindling supplies of oil. I think and hope that this will lead to more small scale, low energy solutions to meeting our real needs. This should mean an increase in individually produced homes of natural and local materials. This in turn means more opportunities for creative, non-linear and organic designs.

~ A Low Impact Woodland Home (via Jordon Cooper)

The Art Shanty Projects 2007 is a collection of artists who braved the elements and built art-inspired icehouses on Medicine Lake. Each weekend until February 17, 20 shanties will be open to the public for activities such as karaoke, knitting, and hot-chocolate consumption. Admission is free and art cars transport visitors from shanty to shanty.

@ City Pages (via Thinkery)

Welcome to That Roundhouse. This is an ecohome of wood frame, cobwood and recycled window walls, straw-insulated turf roof, with solar power for electricity, compost toilet and reed beds for grey water. We designed and built it over the winter 1997/8, and it was turned down for planning permission several times. After several court appearances, we decided to demolish it over Easter 2004, but changed our minds after demonstrations of huge public support in its defence. The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority attempted to get a court injunction to force us to demolish it, but were persuaded to allow it to stay up until July 2006, when we could re-apply under their new Low Impact Policy. Our new application has been considered, but officers still want to refuse permission. The saga goes on.

(via Plep)

The Mobile Hermitage is a freestanding moveable miniature house that operates entirely from battery power. This totally functional diminutive dwelling is an all-season habitat large enough for one or two (very compatible) adults. (via hermitary.com)

Someday, whatever Mrs The Wife says, we are going to live in a Tumbleweed Tiny House.

The most striking cultural significance of the front porch is its connection to nature and the land surrounding it. Throughout the history of our nation, Americans have idealized nature and land… Yet along with the idealization of nature came an ideal to control it. Americans’ “manifest destiny” induced them to conquer nature, by building towns and cities, clearing forests, and otherwise civilizing the land. The front porch provided a compromise for these two opposing American ideals and connected human control, in the form of the house, to nature and the wilderness outside it. In essence, the porch “served as a vital transition between the uncontrollable out-of-doors and the cherished interior of the home.”

Now that the weather’s warm enough for porchin’, I’m just glad ours doesn’t look like this anymore — though we are still having other problems with it (via plep).