When architect Karl Wanaselja built his home in Berkeley, California the junkyard became his urban forest for materials. For months he visited one of three local yards looking for car roofs and Dodge Caravan side windows. The windows became awnings and the roofs became siding for the top floor of his home. Wanaselja designed the home with his partner (in business and life) Cate Leger. They liked the look of the old cars, but they also believe firmly that reusing trumps recycling. They reused more than just cars to build their home. The lower half is sided in poplar bark, a waste product of the North Caroline furniture industry. Exterior wood is salvaged redwood and the fences and windowsills are on their second life.
Because they wanted to blend into the neighborhood as much as possible, Wanaselja and Leger played with perspective to create a home that looks small on the outside, but feels big on the inside. The home is only 14 feet wide on the ends, and it pitches forward and pinches in at the ends so from the street the home looks small. And it is just 1,140 square feet- more than half the U.S. average- and only 700 square feet on the ground floor. "It's kind of like Dr. Who's TARDIS. He's got this little phone booth, he goes in and then it's a giant space inside."
In this video, Wanaselja and Leger give us a tour of their home, their car part shed and their shipping container architecture studio in the backyard. For more details about the house see: lwarc.com
The awnings are fabricated from junked Dodge Caravan side windows. Once
advertised as “America’s best selling minivan”, now a common item in
junk yards. lwarc.com
The Complex, Drop City, 1967. An abandoned hippie commune made of old cars. www.museomagazine.com
Ideas for furnishings... Made from parts of the AC Cobra 427. www.la-ds.com
The earth-house uses the ground as an insulating blanket that efficiently protects it from temperature extremes, wind, rain and extreme weather events.
Underground homes with a modern bent. A large thermal mass stabilizes inside temperatures, giving you free heat in the winter, free cooling in the summer.
For those in northern, high altitude or windy climates who wish to grow their food year round. Take advantage of the insulating properties of the Earth.
The rocket mass heater works on similar properties as a masonry heater. A fast, high heat and oxygen-fed fire burn up the volatile gases and particulates, leaving very little pollution, and turn almost every ounce of wood fuel into energy.
Bake ovens can be either white (the fire is in another box, usually below the oven) or black (the fire is in the same compartment as the food being cooked).
Heat, not pollution. The cleanest burning wood stoves have been around for centuries, yet have taken a backseat to metal wood stoves and other polluting energy sources for far too long. Time for a revival!
If you live in a cool climate, you might as well investigate adding a masonry heater along side your pizza oven. Or at least understanding them so that you might take advantage of exhaust heat.
Although lots of mass and beautiful, most heat goes straight up the flue. Build a conventional fireplace for beauty alone, build a masonry fireplace for heat.
Somewhere around 30 million steel shipping containers exist today. 8 feet wide by 8.5 feet high, and either 20 or 40 feet long, they have been the globally standardized transportation module since 1956.
Call them bug condos, insect hotels, insect habitats, wildlife stacks, insect boxes, insect houses, insect walls, wild bee walls, insect accommodation, wild bee houses, solitary bee walls or wild bienenhaus. Wildlife habitat is rapidly disappearing. Building beneficial insects a special habitat will help your garden and the bugs.
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Reply #1 on : Fri September 28, 2012, 06:06:49