Gem of a little house sits lightly on its landscape

Reminiscent of Philip Johnson's Glass House, this guest house by Desai/Chia Architecture is a lovely gem. Modern principals expressed in totally up-to-the minute terms, including incorporating good energy practices like geothermal, rain water harvesting and photovoltaic.
What reminds me of the Glass House is the 'solid' core, which in P.G's home's case was just the bathroom, but here it houses the (probably considerable) mechanicals as well as the bath, so the surrounding perimeter is free to expose itself to the landscape. With no headers above the glass walls, this ceiling really does appear to float. The wood interior looks to be perfectly crafted – floor to ceiling.

Crisp and streamlined, yet warm, inviting and extremely livable. I'd love to be there the morning after a good snowstorm. via Pursuitist – GF

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

Sketch Pad: A Renovation on Long Island Sound

The Sunday Times has a new feature, called Sketch Pad, in which they find a house or an apartment that needs work, and then they ask an architect to design something new for it. Yesterday's happened to be a house in Clinton, Connecticut, on a tidal creek that leads to Long Island Sound. It's not modern, particularly, but it sounds like a good way to readapt a decent house rather than razing it and building a McMansion. And they strove for energy efficiency:

The whole house has been redesigned for the conservation-minded. Although the windows facing the marsh have been made much bigger, they are certainly more efficient than the tiny ones that inexplicably offered only a peek at the marsh and the tree-covered point beyond. The existing fireplace has been kept; the architects envision geothermal heating, solar collectors and scads of insulation.

I laughed at this part:

“If the phragmites are cut down,” Mr. Grover said, “you could put in a walk to the dock.”

Sure. Phragmites probably should be cut down, but convincing the local wetlands commission to let you do so and then put a walk through the wetlands would take longer than getting the house built.

Here's the story. Click on the slideshow, on the left side of the Times page, for a good look and some interesting audio from one of the architects, William Grover. -- TA