It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything by Arkin Tilt Architects – over a year maybe. I really like their work though, especially their commercial structures; a rare thing for me to say (I’m more a residential kind of girl), but they always add a little pop of unique to their office and other commercial structure work.
This is not a commercial structure below though, it’s a really nice sustainable house, or more a compound I should say.

The Dar Residence has so many amazing features:

The compound is split into 2 shifted bars, a studio building and main living space.
The 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

Peggy, over at Tree Hugging Family, did this killer post about IslandWood at Bainbridge Island. The whole article is worth a read – it’s an environmental learning center and Washington state’s first LEED Gold project. Very slick. Of course I was most smitten with the structures at IslandWood. Terribly unique, sustainable, and simply amazing.
Metropolis – one of the best magazines around, featured IslandWood in their January piece – Into the Woods. To give you a taste, here’s IslandWood’s version of a treehouse:

Stunning! To see more cool structures at IslandWood read the entire Into the Woods article, or visit IslandWood.

Before launching into this post I did want to point out one reader’s home in Amsterdam. It’s a very cool boat home with a green roof (as in eco-green — not color green; well, it is green in color too but well, you get the point). Home dweller Andi posted this in an older post but I thought some of you who aren’t combing the archives might enjoy it. Take a look.
Back to my original post; yup enthralled I am. Drew Heath is a swinging architect from Australia but I can’t find much information on him. His website is minimal …read more

Today we’re going to continue with more of Michael Jantzen’s work. As noted yesterday, it’s hard to pick favorites, but when I first saw Jantzen’s designs, his Wind Shaped Pavilion was the one of the designs that first drew me in. So, I’m sharing that one today. The other design I picked to share was inspired by a readers comment — but more on that later.
The Wind Shaped Pavilion:

What I like about this design is that it’s not static. Literally. From Jantzen’s site:
“The Wind Shaped Pavilion is a design proposal for a large fabric structure that …read more