Forgot Password?
Home arrow GreeniacsArticles arrow Home & Garden arrow How to Love and Live in Your Eco Inspired Home
Written by Shireen Qudosi   
Share |
Wednesday, 30 September 2009

How to Love and Live in Your Eco-Inspired Home

Glass House

Long before the mod designs of today’s sustainable homes, there was the “Glass House,” built in 1949 by Philip Johnson for his personal use in New Canaan, Connecticut. It was a ground breaking project in its time and continues to astonish those of us today who cannot fathom living in a see-through house.

While most people love the concept of a glass house, they have one major problem with it - privacy. But there’s a simple solution – curtains. Lightweight curtains would provide both shade during summer months as well as privacy, without compromising the structure’s aesthetic appeal. But what a lot of people also don’t realize is those eco homes aren’t cookie cutter houses. On the contrary, they can be built with a lot more forethought and personalized design than traditional real estate. Just ask Michelle Kaufman of MK Designs.

When Michelle Kaufman and her husband moved to California, they decided to fill the market for clean green homes after their own difficulty in finding one. Clients can design their own custom home and choose the features that work for them. According to Michelle, “the real challenge, and the critical area for a successful project, is the implementation and the production.” Fortunately, through many years of being in the business, Michelle and her team have been able to iron out this wrinkle. Regardless of whether or not you’d choose to live in a glass house, our love of aesthetic and design are instantly drawn into Johnson’s minimalist creation. A balanced sense of proportion and a design that connects with the environment is what ultimately has paved the way for modular and prefabricated homes.

Yet no matter what your home is like, you can get it to be more sustainable – and contrary to what some may think, sustainable doesn’t mean living a ‘bare bones’ lifestyle. A sustainable lifestyle can be chic and creative while still being eco-conscious.

With Fall at our doorstep and Winter around the corner, the number one consideration is learning to reduce heating costs. Insulating your home, using an energy-efficient space heater, and good old fashioned bundling up will certainly help you do your part in reducing energy consumption. But for extreme green, try installing a geothermal heating system, with loops deep in the ground around your home, and a heater exchange to collect relative heat from the ground.1 If you’re already in a do-it-yourself (DIY) renovation mode, then consider installing windows and skylights that’ll let more light come in – thus reducing your dependency on electrical lighting. There are also a number of window designs that not only let more light in, but also help keep in the heat.

But if you’re a quick-fix type, there are still versatile ways you can prep your home for winter and reflect your stellar taste – especially if you’re a notorious coveter of wooden floors.

Redeploy Rug
If you’ve got wooden floors (hopefully bamboo), try covering them with rugs during the winter. The use of rugs is a quick DIY insulation that gives you a chance to add a new style element in your living space. Far from perhaps overbearing eclectic themes too strong for certain tastes, some eco-inspired pieces are also designed for the utilitarian thinker. For the military-minded eco-enthusiast, there’s Rebekah Rauser’s Redeploy Rug that combines the necessary military durability of surplus blankets with organic fluidity. Made of 100% wool Russian army blankets, with topographic pattern, the Redeploy adds a unique dimension that makes the piece not only necessary but stylish.

Ultimately, no matter which route you choose, the goal is to create a home that is both functional and stylish, while still doing its part for the environment.

Browse all Greeniacs Articles Browse all Greeniacs Guides        Browse all Greeniacs Articles
_______________________________________________________________________________

1http://www.canadianhomeworkshop.com/home-reno-and-design/green-renovations/five-ways-to-make-your-home-more-sustainable/a/21292

Image 1: Philip Johnson’s ‘Glass House’
Image 2: David Salmela
Image 3: www.rauserdesign.com




Comments (1)
RSS comments
1. 07-10-2009 11:23
Wow, awesome! This is a fantastic article. That second picture sure looks comfortable and warm! What it must be like to live in a glass house...Thanks for the tip about the heater!
Registered
greeniac11155

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Click here to Register.  Click here to login.
Last Updated ( Monday, 07 February 2011 )

SEARCH GREENIACS.COM

Green Facts

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.