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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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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Built by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology for the 2011 Solar Decathlon, the home comfortably inhabits the seemingly contradictory extemes of lightness and strength, practicality and sparse modernity. Perhaps it’s the aestetics of the ‘floating roof’, a transparent band of glass that seemingly supports the...
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The building style is modern, exhibiting a state of simple grace and elegance. This owner-built passive solar home utilizes concrete as its priniciple building material. Concrete is a dense material that can absorb, store and radiate heat. Concrete is a material with thermal mass. The thicker the material with thermal mass, the more potential...
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