Tag: eco home
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149 Collective Carpentry
In the town of Invermere, about 3 hours west of Calgary in British Columbia, there’s a workshop where high performance, energy efficient homes are constructed all year round, regardless of the weather. The workshop is home to Collective Carpentry, a small but inspiring building company doing great things. Collective Carpentry When first got in touch,…
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140 What happens when eco becomes mainstream?
Marketing can be used in an ‘evil’ way, but Kristy Hoare always wanted to use her marketing skills for good. She’s done this by helping to promote products that she believes can me the world better. As solar power and eco homes become more mainstream, it’s increasingly important to have somewhere to find unbiased information, and that’s…
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108: How to make a sustainable house
How do you make a house sustainable? Talking to the team at Sustainability House would be a good start. Sustainability House believe that all buildings should aim to have low embodied energy, use energy efficiently, generate electricity, collect and recycle water, be passively thermally comfortable and provide safe indoor air quality. Sounds reasonable. But how…
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104: Architecture in Harmony with the Earth
Can you imagine meeting someone at university with similar interests, falling in love with them, then starting a practice together offering complementary design services to provide beautiful, functional architecture in harmony with the Earth? Sounds pretty idillic. And it’s what Matthew Swett and Sarah Birger have done to create Taproot Architects. Throw in the fact that they…
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How to get a Passive House
In episode 30, I spoke with Elrond Burrell and asked if Passive House (or Passivhaus) was really relevant to some parts of the world. This sparked some great debate and I subsequently caught up with Jon Iliffe of eHaus to find out how to get a passive house in New Zealand. European Inspiration Jon’s training is in mechanical…
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Designing Environmentally Functional Homes
Duncan Firth feels ‘compelled’ to do what he does – designing environmentally functional homes. He’s very conscious of humans taking more than giving from our environment and he sees the potential for architecture to be a positive influence in correcting this balance. Responding to the Environment Many architects (and people writing about houses) talk about buildings…