The architects from Mareines + Patalano in Brazil, created a beautiful eco-friendly beach house in Angra dos Reis, called Casa Folha (Leaf House), one hour south of Rio de Janeiro. Shaped like a giant lotus flower, this house’s concept is inspired by Brazil’s indian architecture, said to be perfectly suited for hot and humid climates. For this project, the architects were looking to integrate the living spaces with the surrounding environment, connecting the occupants with nature. As such, most of the living spaces are open to the outside and most of the materials used for the construction of the house are natural.

There’s a lot of neat green elements in their design. The roof protects the occupants from the sun and collects rain water in the center. The roof is also supported by a central steel column that also redirects the collected water to be used to water the plants in the garden and to flush the toilets.

There are no air conditioning systems in the house. The house is cooled through natural ventilation, taking advantage of the breeze from the sea. Most of the material used for the construction of the house is natural or recuperated. For example a portion of the wood floors comes from old electrical posts. This is definitely a green vacation home that’s respectful of its surroundings and the environment. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new era of environmentally friendly vacation homes.

source: Mareines + Patalano | inhabitat

ORIGINAL POST DATE : 2008-01-22

What is a green building? According to the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC), there are 5 levels of “greenness”: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze or Certified. The level of greenness is determine though a point rating system that evaluates the building based on five main categories:

- Sustainable sites
- Water efficiency
- Energy and atmosphere
- Materials and resources
- Indoor Environmental Quality

There are quite a few rules to follow when it comes to determining if a building is green or not, but I can’t help but think that the ice hotels (in Quebec and in Sweden) deserves some recognition.

When you consider the fact that traditional buildings are guilty of producing a large portion of the trash that ends up in landfills, the ice hotel and surrounding buildings are pretty innocent. I believe they are made entirely of snow and ice, a very sustainable product. Even the furniture and details such as the candelabras in the chapel, and the shot glasses in the bar are made of ice.

Photo by Etolane via Flickr

All in all, the site seems pretty sustainable. I don’t think that any of the buildings affect the environment in a negative way. As far as water efficiency, since these building are temporary, I doubt they use a lot of water in the building. For energy usage, except for the stoves, there isn’t much energy used. Materials and resources are for the most part sustainable, recyclable, reusable and/or natural. Lastly, as far as indoor air quality is concerned, since most of the indoor is made of natural material, I would guess that it must be good. I’m curious to know what their real rating would be. Nevertheless, I still think they deserve some form of recognition.

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Tags: , GREEN BUILDING

I’ve been talking about this for a while now, and I’m happy to see it come to life. Finally! Fast food restaurants are starting to recycle… Well at least the McDonald in Casselman, ON. Hopefully, it’s not the only one.

I used to complain (and still am) about the fact that many fast food restaurants have recyclable food containers but have no place to recycle them. What’s the point of using these containers if there are no places in the restaurant to recycle them? Most people won’t bring them home. So they end up in a landfill anyway.

It would be great to see recycling stations in all fast food restaurants. Better yet, it would be nice to see them use biodegradable containers like the ones from Verterra among others. There are so many choices nowadays.

source: Veterra

The next thing would be to have composters along side (even instead of) trash cans. Now that would definitely help reduce landfill problems and help the environment! In fact why not have composters in the kitchen of all restaurants? I wonder what’s keeping them from doing this. It seems like it would be rather easy to implement. Can you imagine how much waste would disappear if all fast food restaurants used biodegradable containers and all restaurants were using composters in their restaurants?

source: Dynamic Architecture

I recently came across this incredible building by David Fisher of Dynamic Architecture who created a new way of designing buildings. Unlike traditional architecture, this building will move. As Fisher puts it, the building is “designed by time, shaped by life”. Each floor in this 80-story building will rotate independently. Its shape will constantly be changing, as each resident (one per floor) will be able able to rotate his or her entire floor as he or she sees fit. It’s almost as if the building becomes alive. I imagine the residents would also be able to create building a choreography. (so you think your building can dance)

source: Dynamic Architecture

There seems to be a lot of benefits in constructing such a building. For example, construction time is considerably reduced and since the building in prefabricated in a factory, there’s probably a better control of quality. This building is also eco-frienldly as it is self-powered by wind turbines cleverly fitted between each floor to fulfill all the electrical demands of this luxury tower.

source: Dynamic Architecture

Of course, only a selected number of very wealthy people will be able to live there. But eventually this technology will probably be used for other buildings and be more accessible to the general public, especially if there are important cost savings associated with it. And I bet the assembly of the building will eventually becomes robotized too! We shall see… In the mean time the first construction of this revolutionary building is expected for 2010 in Dubai.