18 January 2008

Green Building, This Time in San Francisco

There's another interesting modern, sustainable housing projet/experiment happening in San Francisco's Mission District, where Sunset magazine ("Living in the West") has built one of its Idea Houses and made it as green as possible:

Our San Francisco home is also the first Idea House to rise in an urban setting. Which is part of the point: Until now, eco-friendly architecture has often been limited to the West's rural or exurban regions, where there's more space for new construction and potentially bulky energy systems. Our goal was to show that resource-savvy design can be just as appropriate in more densely populated cities and suburban neighborhoods. ...

But what makes the home truly groundbreaking are the eco-features it incorporates, some of them still in experimental stages. For example, hot water will be provided by rooftop tubes that collect solar energy, says Matt Golden, founder and CEO of Sustainable Spaces and a project consultant. The home's electricity will come from SunPower solar panels and a wind turbine installed in the backyard — a power source so unusual in San Francisco, the builder had to get a one-year provisional test permit before it could be installed. A high-tech resource-monitoring system will keep tabs on energy and water use.

Take a look, here. The house is open for tours (at $20 a pop) until later this month. I learned about it on Hatch, the blog of a company called Design Public, which seems to have furnished the house for the tour and is selling the stuff it furnished it with. -- TA

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