1. They build homes that glow.

2. They have a thing for orange. I happen to like orange – orange old school tupperware, burnt orange dresses, orange skies at night, orange roses, and more. It’s not like they build ONLY orange structures, I just get this orange feeling when I’m browsing their work. I’m betting you – they have a thing for orange.

[image via Highland Craftsmen]
I recently got the book, Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs from Nature from the library, and it got me thinking a lot about bark in design. I used to think of bark design as more just a rustic beach house look, but this book was cool; it shows a lot of different ways in which bark can be used for home design; from rustic to contemporary. I also didn’t know how sustainable bark could be. Of course there are ways it might be unsustainable, but if you work with a decent company, you could have a home …read more

Last week I posted the Hummingbird of Mummy Mountain which got me thinking about desert structures, which in turn got me thinking about the iT House by Taalman Koch Architecture. The model everyone adores is not exactly in the SW desert, but it is in a desert setting; near Joshua Tree in California.

This lovely prefab is simple, small, and focused on outdoor-indoor living. It adds a smaller footprint than many homes, and can be totally customized and in most cases up and running in about 12 weeks. Not bad.

You know, about 3 years ago, I was not the biggest prefab …read more

So, since I’m such an old school resident of Portland, I’m a little cranky with myself being that I’ve never noticed this project you see above, at Communitecture’s site. Seriously now, there’s just no good excuse.
This beautiful and quirky home’s plans utilizes trapezoids over rectangles and is sustainable to boot. The house, located in Orenco, OR, has locally-harvested oak structural columns plus salvaged materials from nearby barns.
Communitecture is a local (to me) architectural company who specializes in sustainable design that’s beautiful and bright. I’ve seen some of their commercial and multi-housing structures and they’re always very cool – very pdx. …read more

Rural Studio is part of the Auburn University campus in Alabama (College of Architecture, Design & Construction). They have various programs for students, such as…

“Second-year program: typically fifteen to twenty second-year Auburn University architecture students move to Hale County for one semester and design/build a charity home.
Thesis program: typically twelve Auburn University thesis architecture students move to Hale County for their fifth year. They form teams to plan, design and build community projects.
Outreach Program: non-Auburn University graduates from around the world come to the Rural Studio to work on a joint project alongside the Thesis students.”

They also …read more