Build the home of your dreams hands free, from your hands to our factory.

We have been building the back end for this project for years and have decided to finally release an alpha version video.   Updates soon.

Bruce Sterling at Wired magazine posted the video here and is driving more traffic.  He referred to it as weird, we think it is exciting.  Wait until you see verion 2, 3, 4, etc.

Report on global market for prefabricated housing

The full report cost $4500. A freehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif summary is available here. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It would be a great read I am sure, but I do wonder about how they define prefab.

National Passive House Conference in Portland

The 5th National Conference starts on November 4th and includes an impressive list of speakers including Wolfgang Feist.

Masdar update in the New York Times

As a new, green city is constructed in the desert, the criticism grows.

I believe the criticism should be directed at other governments for not supporting and financing mini-masdars to support innovation and cleantech companies.

Passive House in the New York Times

Great National Coverage



The full NYT article is here. An interactive site with construction details is here.

For full information from the Passive House organization in Germany check here.

Green buildings won't save the planet

A great TED talk on architecture by Joshua Prince-Ramus. I wish more architects would watch this video and actually act on what Joshua is saying.

Builders and the public are tired of waiting. Watch the video here.

GSA Pushes For Reforms to Green Bulding Certification

Finally! And I really like the quote from the GSA official, "One of the things that I tease the USGBC about is that they really need to re-brand from ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’ to ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Performance,’ and they are picking up on that,"

"What's our exuse?" Seattle and Green Building

A serious discussion on green building codes and the local building community in Seattle is taking place on publicola. More good writing by Dan Bertolet of the architecture firm GGLO.

What is it with architects and prefabricated housing?

Colin Davies, author of a The Prefabricated Home and a professor or architecture at London Metropolitan University, revisits the topic of prefab and makes some very strong points about how architects continue to fail to work with builders to exploit the potential. His column is part of a series on "The Prefab Front" in the current issue of "The Magazine of the Royal Institute of British Architects" and definitely worth reviewing.

IDEAbuilder at GABreport

An article on our Lake Tahoe proof-of-concept project is now online at the GABreport website. The editor, Mignon O'Young is a green architect and the editor of the GABreport - a great online resource for the green building community.

Thank you Mignon! We look forward to seeing you at West Coast Green and keeping up with you at your website and at cleantech and green building events.

IDEAbuilder at West Coast Green

We will have a booth at West Coast Green in the innovation pipeline area. Please do stop by and visit us.

We will have demos to show and will be ready to answer your questions about the future of building, 3D design, robotic fabrication, sustainability and green building in Europe, etc.

Looking forward to a great event!

Green building - simply requiring LEED certification doesn't work

The New York Times coverage of LEED certified buildings that are not actually very green is great coverate of a growing problem. Simply installing bamboo floors and bike racks may get a building more LEED points but it doesn't make the building very green. Even a USGBC commissioned study shows how easy it is to "game the system" and get a high rating using the least expensive, point-winning features.

Obsolete Building Codes and Amory Lovins Changing the world

When I was up in Seattle a couple of weeks ago I met with some of the writers from worldchanging.com. I really like their site, support their work, and believe, as does Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Instititute, that" building codes are obsolete before the ink is dry."

Europe leads the U.S. in Green Building?

Here's the link and I agree. Real green building requires "systems thinking" and the integration of multiple systems and iterative design. Good ideas happen everywhere and integrating them quickly into new designs is the real innovation.

Here is an article from 2007 by New York Times architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, asking "Why Are They Greener Than We Are?" Much has change since 2007 but than Europeans have also passed a lot of new legislation mandating zero energy buildings AND moved further ahead in adopting advanced computer-aided-manufacturing technologies.

Sustainable Urban Planning and Green Building in the Netherlands

I will be attending this event in the AIA SF office on June 25th. I have always enjoyed the innovative architecture coming out of the Netherlands and recently watched an amazing presentation on new buildings in Rotterdam.

If only we didn't have earthquakes in California making it so difficult for Renzo Piano to design buildings like this one in Rotterdam - although we do have his great California Academy of Science building.

There has also been a lot of talk recently about the Amsterdam Smart City program. It will be interesting to learn how they mash-up technology and green. Watch a great introductory video here.

A quick slide show introduction to passive houses.
Passive House In Depth for Professionals

View more OpenOffice presentations from dylamar.

The Future of Green Building

Here is a great article by Eric Corey Freed, the Organic Architect, in Natural Home magazine on the next 10 years in green building. (I know Eric from multiple meetings and see him frequently at events in the office we share with Architecture for Humanity.)

Michelle Kaufmann, Sarah Susanka, and other well-known luminaries from the green building community share their views on green and the current housing market. As a strong advocate of integrated design, manufacturing and building systems, I was encouraged by Pliny Fisk's reference to the need for DfM, "From an industry standpoint it needs to be Designed for Manufacturing (DfM), and industry protocol that forces you to think from the start about how you are going to make something—what the tools are, the manufacturing technique." After reading the article I immediately called "The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems" in Austin where Pliny is the co-director to request information on what they believe defines DfM. Will they send references to BIM and CAM/CNC production, or advocate exclusively less technical building systems such as straw bale and rammed earth systems? I will post appropriately.

$571 billion green building market by 2013?

Will the green building materials market really be worth $571 billion by 2013. Here is the report. It really depends on how you slice the data and qualify products as green

Google's Larry Page building green in Palo Alto

Green meets a really techie smart house. Larry's new 6,000 foot back yard cabana will be a green showcase, although I don't suspect he is planning on hosting an open house for the public.

And he does need a building to install another google power meter. I wonder if he will make the data public?

Question: When is Larry going to call us so that we can help build the virtual and physical homes and integrate all kinds of green materials, systems, and tech toys? This kind of project would make for a perfect proof-of-concept house - and no worries about Larry missing any payments.