Eco News for a Better World!

Warehouse residence in Japan

This house called the Warehouse is located in the suburbs of Hiroshima, Japan. It has been designed by Shinichi Ogawa and associates. The Warehouse has a neat shape with an inner court providing an absolute privacy. The layout of the interior has a linear orientation creating a single room space with no limits. Rooms that needs an access to the water, as a kitchen or a bathroom, are stepped down from the living-room.

The placement of the furniture is functional, these free-standing wooden pieces with embedded toilets or closets should divide different spaces instead of a wall. The interior is separated from the enclosed court by a large sliding door that connects the outside with the interior and allows communication and interaction between these two areas. The dominant colour is white symbolising peace, harmony and light. White colour is complemented by black coloured elements or natural colour as decoration stones or flowers.

via design-milk.com

7 More London

“7 More London” is a new headquarter of the company PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Southwark, London. This building has achieved very good results in BREEAM which is BRE Enviromental Assessment Method for sustainable technical building. BRE method was presented for the first time in 1990 and provides testing of the sustainability of new office spaces in Great Britain. The building is located near Thames river and Tower Bridge. The existing 10 storey building was extended by more than 60 000 square meters.

Architecture studio Foster&Partners created a multi-angle building with a polygonal inner court where the wings of the building meet by concave bridges. The facade of the inner atrium looks very simple and discrete. The building has a number of ecological and energy saving technologies and materials. A solar facade made in Germany for example with an incredible surface of 16 500 square meters. Because of the low sunlight transmittance of the facade covering, the interior has an optimal temperature even in the summer, what reduces air-conditioning costs.

A Remote Control for Your Shower

Kohler‘s been busy gadgetizing the bathroom for a few years with its DTV system. Now it’s added the DTV Prompt, a digital showering controller that mounts on the wall and lets users precisely select water temperature with its touch controls.

In essence, it’s a wall-mounted electronic shower remote with a one-button pause control. DTV Prompt works with up to two shower heads or faucets, letting users toggle between one or the other with a button push.

Before getting into the shower, the system’s “warm-up and pause” feature lets a user select the desired temperature. As soon as the water heats up to that level, it pauses the flow, awaiting a touch to begin showering, saving water in the meantime.

Further water and energy savings are possible with a countdown timer that can be set from four to 12 minutes, warning the user with a beep when there are two minutes and one minute left.

The controller, available in four different finishes, can be installed up to 20 feet away from the valves that control the water flow and temperature.

The DTV Prompt, priced at $187 for the controller and $455 for the thermostatic valve (plus installation), is a lower-cost addition to the Kohler DTV (Digital Thermostatic Valve) system. It was first introduced in 2006 with a $2,000 touchscreen shower controller that seemed modern at the time.

DTV Prompt Diagram

 

 

 

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Yellow Brick House – Vilnius, Lithuania

This residence in the Pavilniai Regional Park, near the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, is one of those that we just have to point out, although it is neither brand-new nor unfamiliar to many readers.

The confident combination of history and modern needs of an upscale family was achieved by the architectural firm G. Natkevicius & Partners.

Join the congregation

A couple of weeks ago I was stalking a church conversion in Adelaide. Modern behind a traditional bluestone facade. A little too modern for some. Want to join this congregation instead? Such a pretty little church and definitely loads of space for preaching to the converted. Just outside Adelaide this time in Houghton. A divine transformation? Link here while it lasts.

GM Assembly Plants Going Solar

General Motors has taken a number of significant steps to make their vehicles greener, and they are doing similar things with their manufacturing plants, as well. This week, the company has made two announcements about using rooftop solar arrays to power its manufacturing facilities.

The Detroit–Hamtramck plant, which produces the Chevy Volt, will be having a 516 kilowatt solar array installed on six acres of land on the south side of the plant as part of a cooperative venture with the local electrical utility company, DTE. Using power from the solar array is expected to save GM $15,000 per year.