Concrete gets street cred.

How many times have you slagged off a building – e.g., a school, shopping center or intentional eco community – for being concrete, and thus ugly? When I was kid, our next door neighbors moved out of their brick house into a concrete one (the dad invented some new kind of livable concrete) and I deemed them aesthetically challenged.

Concrete has emerged as an invaluable material in sustainable construction. Limestone, the most abundant mineral on earth, is the predominant raw material in the cement that makes the concrete. It can also be made from waste byproducts like fly ash, slag cement, and silica fume. It’s also a durable, long lasting material (just ask the Romans) and homes built with concrete walls, foundations and floors tend to be highly energy efficient. Moreover, since concrete can be produced as needed, it’s easy to predict how much you will need and excess can be crushed and recycled for use in other concrete structures.

In interiors, designers are molding concrete into unexpected, pretty things.

For example:

Stitching Concrete is a project by Florian Schmid created by manipulating folding fabric soaked in cement and water.

The Aplomb suspension light from Italian lighting company Foscarini.

The Espresso Solo, a conceptual product by Shmuel Linski. The goal was to make concrete into a “desirable consumer product.”

Also by Linski, his speaker collection, aptly named “Exposed.”

A concrete bench from Berlin-based firm Metrofarm.

A concrete television cabinet by Canadian industrial designer Jean Willoughby.

Another from Willoughby: a concrete table.

…in what appears to be snake print.

The post 8 Surprisingly Pretty Things Made From Concrete appeared first on EcoSalon.

What do we do with ugly, unused land in the hearts of our cities? You could camp there, of course – but the real challenge is to affordably fit new homes into the most awkward of spaces, and do it sustainably. In a world of custom-kit prefab housing, this is no pipe dream. Take a look at these 10 stunning examples of homes fitted beautifully into the tiniest spaces. Is one of these your dream home?

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Some people have an incredibly creative ability to make a pretty sweet lemonade out of very, very rotten lemons. What I mean is this: I live in northern Arizona, and much of our electricity comes from coal power plants on Navajo and Hopi land. Not cool. Not a sustainable industry or healthy for the residents. But that’s another story. This story is about turning coal burning’s poisonous by-product into homes.

Navajo Flexcrete is a small, innovative company, based out of the tiny town of Page, Ariz. Using the extremely toxic fly ash (think arsenic, lead, barium and mercury) from the local coal plant, it’s harvested, saturated with water and used as a concrete-like building material.

Now wait, you’re thinking, won’t this make a toxic building? Yes and no.

I spoke with Ed Dunn, an ecological builder who uses Navajo Flexcrete, and he says that during the construction process, builders need to use a particulate mask (just as they use when cutting wood or regular concrete block), because cutting or drilling the Flexcrete blocks will let out some toxic powders, but once the block is sealed and painted, there is no off-gassing and the product is stable and safe. Flexcrete has an R-factor of 35, providing excellent insulation, perfectly suited for homes utilizing passive solar.

Granted, this is not the most perfect of ecological home-building products, but when you consider the current situation of the coal plant’s fly ash being dumped into a side canyon of beautiful Lake Powell, wouldn’t it be better used to make well insulated homes that are suited for the extreme heat and cold of the high northern Arizona desert?

And I’m sure the creators of Navajo Flexcrete don’t want to perpetuate the dirty coal business in order to have more fly ash for their product – they are simply using the toxic waste that’s already there and safely turning it into homes.

Alchemy, if you ask me.

Image: ASU

The post The Alchemy of Turning Toxic Waste into Homes appeared first on EcoSalon.

Living in an energy efficient home made of eco-friendly materials is fast becoming a dream for many of us. No longer do we wish for a perfectly trimmed lawn and a white picket fence, but rather efficient appliances, well-placed windows and good insulation. Oh, and a xeriscaped yard.

And if you just so happen to be in the eco-home market, check out Sid Davis’ Your Eco-Friendly Home – Buying, Building or Remodeling Green. This book’s in-the-box approach serves its readers well and is engaging and accessible, with inexperienced home buyers in mind – but even experienced buyers will find something to chew on, because looking to build, buy or upgrade to green brings up new issues that most people haven’t even thought about. Davis meticulously describes securing financing, researching agents and contractors, retaining architects, using engineers, and many other traditional means.

Conveniently enough, this book is divided into three parts, each one focusing on Building, Buying or Remodeling green. Each section is full of information and examples.  Here’s a partial list of topics from the very long and detailed table of contents:

Finding and Qualifying for Eco-Friendly Financing
Finding an Eco-Friendly Agent
Shopping for an Eco-Friendly Home on Your Own
Successful Strategies For Making an Offer on a Home
Finding and Working With a Green Builder
Planning Your Environmentally Friendly Home
Protecting Yourself with Good Paperwork
Finding and Working with a Green Architect
Paying the Contractor and Managing Your Costs
Green Landscaping
Determining Where and What to Plant and Landscaping Mistakes to Avoid
Remodeling Your Home’s Exterior and Interior with Eco-Friendly Systems and Materials

This practical guide really covers it all. I even shared this book with my husband, who spent over 14 years working as a contractor and has owned a few homes himself, and he thinks it’s a great resource, too. His personal suggestion is that anyone considering remodeling would be best served by hiring a skilled local carpenter rather than a large licensed contractor, simply because the carpenter will be more willing to work with you and your family step-by-step to make sure your needs are met. It is your local carpenter that is familiar with the local planning department, local materials, local suppliers, and local specialty labor. And keeping it local is a lot of what eco-friendly living is all about.

The post Book Review: Your Eco-Friendly Home – Buying, Building, or Remodeling Green appeared first on EcoSalon.

Forget treehouses as you once knew them – plywood forts for kids bolted into trunks and branches. The new treehouse concept is all about taking the comforts of home (cooking, Facebooking, reclining) to new, sustainable heights. And look, Ma, no splinters!

Treehouses still bring out the kid in many grown ups, like Andreas Wenning, the design genius behind Baumraum Design in Bremen, Germany. His firm, which combines his own architect vision with landscaper understanding, has carved out modern tree homes in Germany, Austria and Brazil, including the extraordinary nests above.

“A treehouse is sort of a modern lifestyle product which respects and fits into nature,” Wenning tells me. “We work with tree experts who help us find the best solution to connect the treehouse with the tree without cutting or damaging the tree anywhere.”

In addition to its own projects, Baumraum (which means tree space) ships prefab elements to customers who want to design their own treehouses. They can assemble the structure between two or several suitable trees in their yards. Steel cables raise the structure in the air and anchor it to the land, but the foundation is largely dictated by the type of tree being used.

A Pear tree, for example, cannot bear the complete weight of a treehouse so part of the construction is propped up on two slanting supports, such as with this Pear treehouse installed in Heilbronn (below). It features a convenient staircase that leads up through a fork in the branches to a slanting terrace. From the perch, the owner has an undisturbed view of a side valley with vineyards. Small steps lead up to a cabin on the next level. Like all of Baumraum’s projects, this treehouse is fitted with glazing on all sides and features a large dormer window and sunscreens for the south facing side.

What’s the biggest challenge to living in a space like this? “It provides a rather small, concentrated space in nature which brings people intensely to the natural environment,” he explains. “It is a space for romantic, quietness and concentration and common space with friends and family. You are very close to nature and it feels different.”

While Baumraum has whittled a niche in the modern treehouse market, other architects are going even more out on a limb to lift up our eco lifestyle. Free Spirit Spheres of Canada makes wooden orbs to basically string in tall trees, such as the forest areas of Vancouver Island.

According to the inventor and maker, Tom Chudleigh, the spherical tree house concept borrows heavily from sailboat construction and rigging practices. “Wooden spheres are built much like a cedar strip canoe or kayak,” he explains, “and suspension points are similar to the chain plate attachments on a sailboat.” The stairways hang from a tree just like a sailboat shroud hangs from a mast. The nut like sphere attaches to a web of rope that connects to the strong points of trees, using the forest as its foundation.

The ladder staircase and earthy interior may be geared more for the Swiss Family Robinson than the average naturalist. “My personal goal is to produce 10 to 15 spheres and hang them all in a large area of old growth forest…a spiritual retreat for me and whoever else is interested,” says the inventor.

Perhaps a little more upscale but just as intrinsically organic, are the treehouse dwellings of Romero Studios, such as the Five Oaks House commissioned by Donna Karan in Chestnut Village outside New York City (below).

Adjacent to a Waldorf school and organic farm, the designer says the owners love the solitude and connection with nature offered by the heightened surroundings, including a stunning eyrie for writing and practicing yoga poses.

Whether you’re housing a top designer or a Partridge family in a pear tree, these homes nestled in the trees are here to stay..and not sway. The diversity in the growing treehouse industry has delivered spaces that are wheelchair-friendly, weather-worthy and resource sensitive.

“We have to develop a new consciousness in respecting and protecting our natural environment,” figures Wenning. “Architects have many possibilities to help us realize that aim.”

The sustainable treehouse is among those many possibilities, and gives a fresh perspective to the proverbial tree of life.

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