I drove to Arcosanti in January, having heard about his blending of architecture and ecology into the new term of arcology, finding form as a sustainable urban habitat in the desert. Arcosanti is architect Paolo Soleri’s urban experiment that combines the comforts of urban living into an efficient city that celebrates sustainability. Paolo Soleri...
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In this lovely and innovative passive solar retrofit, an older adobe home transformed to become an efficient, modern house with a south facing sun room and a south facing two-story Trombe wall. It is also a grid-tied solar electric home that produces enough electricity to have paid for the solar photovoltaic (PV) system within...
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Here’s a beautiful passive solar house that’s toasty warm in the cold, snowy winter. He has a gorgeous tile floor next to large southern facing windows. Beautiful! Take a look at his website. All the photos also link to the building category at Quadomated.com. It’s a bitterly cold day outside. The outside temperature is...
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Innovation from fresh minds is encouraged and spurred when colleges and universities compete in the most challenging solar home design competition in the world, the Solar Decathlon. Spanning over two years of work, architecture and engineering schools pooled their best and brightest to build efficient solar houses. Here’s a subjective “Best of” from the...
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To learn more about an innovative adobe home renovation, I drove from the bustling city of Albuquerque into the hills south of Santa Fe, as pinon trees, brown clay hills and buttes soon dominated the view. Various types of adobe structures stood proudly in the gleaming New Mexico sun. It was rejuvenating to visit...
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Hard to believe, but in 14 seconds, the sun provides all the energy that the earth uses in one day. Most of the energy striking the Earth is not utilized, yet more and more people are building passive solar houses that harness the sun’s energy. This passive solar house is a submission from...
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The 4D Home allows a homeowner to move walls and create a more open or private space as desired. It’s also incredibly energy efficient. The Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell combined their talents to create the 4D Home for the 2011 Solar Decathlon. The...
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The freedoms of living off-the-grid can be rewarding as well as comfortable. This article focuses on the electrical and active solar systems that augment the efficiency of the previous post that featured the design of the passive solar home. It’s a textbook-perfect passive solar home because they utilized all the design principles of efficient...
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This off-grid, owner-designed and built house is one of the most impressive passive and active solar combinations I’ve seen. Located at an elevation of 9,000 feet in the Colorado mountains, on a windy, snowy January day, after entering the home, I experienced a quiet confidence and a solid feel of warmth and comfort. ...
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One of the most poetic entries in the 2011 Solar Decathlon, Florida International University created the perFORMance House. It also won 1st place in the Energy Balance category, producing as much or more energy than it needs. It’s a house that would work in in any temperate, tropical area, not necessarily one that solely...
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