Forget about the 3D printer, the wave of the future is digital fabrication

What would our homes look like if designed around how we use them?


David Friedlander
Design / Green Architecture
September 2, 2014

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© J. Arnold
It's probably no secret that the American home is a bit of a porker. In 2013, the median and average new, single family house was 2,478 and 2,662 square feet respectively--higher than previous, 2007 pre- bubble figures. Compare this to 1950, when the average new home was a mere 983 square feet. And that's not all. Fewer people are living in today's home; average household sizes have shrunk from about 3.37 in 1950 to 2.55 today. And we are all probably familiar with the environmental implications of these bigger, less occupied homes: they require more resources to build and maintain, they lead to sprawl, requiring more resources to get to and from, yada, yada, yada.

But somehow the McMansion pill would be a bit easier to swallow if these big homes were used. If every bedroom was slept in, every dining room dined in, every rumpus room rumped in. Unfortunately, if we are to believe a group of UCLA researchers, such is not the case.

A book released a couple years ago called "Life at Home in the 21st Century" tracked 32 middle class Los Angelino families as they went about their daily affairs, tracking their movements and habits to see how people actually lived nowadays. With one family (#11), the researchers tracked the location of each parent and child on the first floor of the house every 10 minutes over two weekday afternoons and evenings. In other words, primetime for the family's waking hours at home.

What did they find? Basically, that Family 11 used a small fraction of the available area, with almost all traffic centered in the dining, kitchen and family rooms; the latter room’s activity focused around the TV and computer. Based on the above diagram, I would guestimate that about 400 of the 1000 or so of the first floor's available square feet are used. The rest of the spaces--the dining room, living room, porch--are, for all intents and purposes, extraneous architecture.

So the question becomes, if Family 11 is representative of the average American family, and if their home is about average size (tag an upper floor on the 1000 square feet and you're about there) why does their home have so much more room than needed? Moreover, if we were to start fresh, if we removed the influence of developers, builders, architects, realtors and legislators--most of whom have a vested interested in building bigger homes with bigger infrastructural appetites--what would the ideal single-family home look like?

What would our homes look like if designed around how we use them? : TreeHugger

More Proof That We Should Change The Way We Design Bathrooms


Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter)
Design / Bathroom Design
December 30, 2011

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Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Hospitals have a big problem, a bacterium known as Clostridium difficile. It has thrived in hospitals because it is resistant to many of the antibiotics we are so busy feeding to cows and pigs, let alone human beings who are sick and old in hospitals. It is often spread by medical staff who don't wash their hands, but a new study shows that it may be spread by flushing toilets.

Christopher Mims at Smart Planet writes that

It’s a process long known to hygiene experts, and it’s called aerosolization. Mythbusters did a segment on it and concluded that while toilets with lids up do spray water all over the bathroom, the risk associated with this process was negligible.

The study and Mythbusters don't exactly agree; the abstract describes the method used:

We performed in-situ testing, using faecal suspensions of C. difficile to simulate the bacterial burden found during disease, to measure C. difficile aerosolization. We also measured the extent of splashing occurring during flushing of two different toilet types commonly used in hospitals.

and the results.

Surface contamination with C. difficile occurred within 90 min after flushing, demonstrating that relatively large droplets are released which then contaminate the immediate environment. The mean numbers of droplets emitted upon flushing by the lidless toilets in clinical areas were 15-47, depending on design. C. difficile aerosolization and surrounding environmental contamination occur when a lidless toilet is flushed.

They recommend that toilet lids be closed when one flushes. I think we should go further than that and put the toilet in its own room, the water closet.

I have noted previously the work of Dr. Charles Gerba, who wrote that a toothbrush should not be in the same room as a toilet:

There have been found over 3.2 million microbes per square inch in the average toilet bowl. According to germ expert Chuck Gerba, PhD, a professor of environmental microbiology at University of Arizona the aerosolized toilet water is propelled as far as 6 feet, settling on your dental toothbrush inclusively.

Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

As I noted in my post History and Design of the Bathroom Part 6: Learning from the Japanese, we shouldn't be putting the toilet in the same room as the sink, period. Closing the lid or keeping the toothbrush in the medicine cabinet isn't enough; they should be in separate rooms. The new study just confirms it.

More Proof That We Should Change The Way We Design Bathrooms : TreeHugger

Woman designs stunning modern 140 sq. ft. Californian tiny home (Video)

Kimberley Mok (@kimberleymok)
Design / Tiny Houses
April 16, 2015


© Sol Haus Design
It's no secret we love the modernist aesthetic here on TreeHugger, and it certainly applies to tiny houses. We came across this 140-square-foot gem, designed by Ojai, California designer Vina Lustado of Sol Haus Design. Lustado gave Jenna of Tiny House Giant Journey a tour of her home, giving plenty of helpful design tips along the way. Check it out here:


© Sol Haus Design
© Sol Haus Design

Lustado's 8.5-foot by 20-foot home feels spacious and filled with natural light, thanks to the strategically placed windows over her lovely built-in drafting desk (which occupies an 18-inch bumpout), kitchen, bathroom and loft. Her custom-made sofa can become a guest bed, and is paired with some hand-built transformer furniture. Lustado made sure to work with local tradespeople and artists and her friends in the construction of her home.

© Sol Haus Design

The glazed, French patio doors in her central living space open out onto an 80-square-foot deck, allowing her to open up the living room to the outdoors -- great for larger parties.

© Sol Haus Design

The kitchen is generously sized (Lustado says it's the biggest one she's ever had), and there's clever hidden storage at foot-level too. Though she's on solar, Lustado uses a propane stove to heat the space due to electricity constraints. The stove and its flue were the most expensive item in the tiny house, totalling $3,000. For the whole project, materials and labour cost USD $40,000.

© Sol Haus Design
Tiny House Giant Journey/Video screen capture

The bathroom features a tiled shower, made with flexible grout, which Lustado says has not cracked during towing. Shower greywater is piped out to feed her grapefruit tree. The composting toilet is a simple, Seperatt bucket system, and is hidden under a hinged surface that gives extra seating.

© Sol Haus Design
© Sol Haus Design
© Sol Haus Design

Up in the sleeping loft, Lustado explains that she sloped the roof at 40 degrees, rather than 45 degrees, to give an extra 12 inches of height to the top plate. This also gives the loft more space at the sides. The loft also has the next most expensive item: the operable skylight window, which is manufactured to rotate in two different ways.

© Sol Haus Design

Lustado's tiny home is well-thought out and is packed with elegant, functional details that refine upon common tiny house design strategies, as well as presenting some fresh, new ideas. Lustado gives tours, and you can also purchase a set of construction drawings of her house here. See more of Vina Lustado's work over at Sol Haus Design.

Living with Less: First, Hide the Bed


Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter)
Design / Sustainable Product Design

The New York Times has a wonderful monthly feature called Sketch Pad, which "focuses on an apartment, house, loft or shack now for sale that has unrealized potential. Each month, a different architect or designer is asked to create a vision of what the place might look like"

Yen Ha and Michi Yanagishita of New York's Front Studio redesigned a 380 square foot straight-line studio for an imaginary client. It is full of great ideas for small spaces; I loved the idea of the trundle bed sliding under the platform. (in most murphy beds, one has to make the bed, remove the clothes on it, and fasten a strap. Here you have the works in a drawer, just push it all under when the doorbell rings)
open and closed: everything hinges and slides, the dining table folds down, the kitchen opens up and the office goes away at night

The architects were asked how they came up with the idea of sliding the bed under the living-room floor.

"We were frustrated thinking of all these different solutions, and we got hungry," Ms. Yanagishita said. "We went to have Korean food in a restaurant on 32nd Street. We were eating kimchi — pickled cabbage — and we noticed the raised platform we were sitting on.

"Then all the little pieces came together like a Japanese puzzle box: things slide out, things fold in, things tuck away. It is clean, we hope, without any fussiness." ::New York Times and be sure to watch the ::slideshow.

Japanese students design home heated and cooled by fermenting straw




© Waseda University
We know that composting is good for our gardens, but what about heating our homes? Harnessing the heat generated by the composting process to heat our homes sounds like a far-fetched idea, but it's been proposed before and experimented with quite successfully decades ago.

Students at Japan's Waseda University built this intriguing prototype that is heated by composting straw encased within acrylic boxes that make up the house's perimeter walls.

© Waseda University

Seen over at Inhabitat, this simple home uses a simple, low-odor composting technique called "bokashi" (meaning "fermented organic matter"), the fermenting straw releases a lot of heat -- 30 degree celsius (86 degree Fahrenheit) heat, in fact -- for up to an impressive four weeks.

© Waseda University

Designed by student designers Masaki Ogasawara, Keisuke Tsukada and Erika Mikami, the "Recipe to Live" house is located in Taiki-cho town on Hokkaido island, a place that is known for its dairy farms (and lots of locally-made straw).

In the summer, straw will dry inside transparent window shelving which act as "heat shield panels," thus releasing moisture that will help cool the ambient temperature. During winter, the fermenting straw will give off heat thanks to the microbial process that gradually breaks down the organic matter.

© Waseda University
© Waseda University

Of course, this "living house" will require extra care as the straw will have to be changed a few times per year, but this is a fascinating concept that takes advantage of the energy created by a natural process. More over at Inhabitat and LIXIL (Japanese).

7 Ways to Get Rid of the Bed

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For LifeEdited, Graham describes his sleeping requirements:

The apartment should have at least a queen size bed, ideally raised off the floor.
Or should the bed just go away?


Like this article? See also: 10 More Ways To Get Rid Of The Bed
Buckminster Fuller said:

"Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It's time we gave this some thought."


While Bucky notes that beds are used for a third of the time, we are asleep for much of that. So why do we give them so much space? What else can we do with them? TreeHugger has shown dozens of transformer sofas, but what about a more permanent solution?

One thing that designers never talk about when they put in alcove or bunk beds is that they are hard to make; there is nothing easier than walking around a conventional bed at conventional height. That is why Italian designers, the masters of squeezing furniture into small spaces, do things like this, that let the bed pull out and drop for easy access. But try and find something like this in North America. More on this neat bed design at Less is the New More: Building Loft and Alcove Beds

Another Italian version of a loft bed that probably costs as much as buying a bedroom, but will help you make the most of small spaces, is the spectacular Tumidei line, which is full of interesting ideas.

There are a whole range of Murphy bed solutions where you just make the thing disappear; the biggest complaint about Murphy beds is that you have to make the bed, strap it down and make sure you didn't leave a book or magazine on it when it folds up. This problem is dealt with effectively with the BEDUP, where the bed goes straight up to the ceiling. Just make certain everyone has gotten out first. More on this design here: BEDUP: The Space-Saving Bed that Falls From the Ceiling

But perhaps the best solutions are those which are adapted to the particular situations and needs. Yen Ha and Michi Yanagishita updated the traditional trundle bed by building it into the floor of a unit. See the rest of that design here: Living with Less: First, Hide the Bed

Built-in lofts can be modest little exercises created by young architects. Kyu Sung Woo Architects dreamed up the Interlocking Puzzle Loft to make the most of the oddly-shaped room.

More photos: Students Loft Box Home

The Students Loft Box Home can be put anywhere. Christine wrote:



Students-Loft offers a win-win concept. Empty space gets used with a minimum of re-engineering required, leaving the originally commercially planned space intact (for when the businesses and industry come storming back on the heels of successful economic reforms). And students get living spaces, cost-effective and close to the site of their studies.

Then there is the over-the-top architecturally designed loft that probably cost as much as a house in America, like this one designed by Hogarth Architects "to provide all the functions required by a man about town."



Don't know if it is sustainable, but this is one of the prettiest staircases anywhere.
More photos here: Loft in Space by Hogarth Architects

Laurent McComber, Less is More: Loft Bed Makes Room for Baby

In America we seem to purchase our houses for a short period of a long lifecycle- instead of adapting our spaces to the quarter of our lives that we share with kids, we buy for the biggest crowd. That's why we love these clever adaptations of space to accommodate the bulge in numbers.

The Best Use of 500 Square Feet In New York's East Village?



It is fascinating how the choice of a photograph can make such a difference. Back in March, Apartment Therapy covered a lovely 500 square foot apartment by Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture; they led with a picture of the kitchen, nice, but nothing to grab you by the lapels and shake you.

Then last week the Village Voice picked it up via NOTCOT, with it's display of a far more dramatic photograph, and declared it "The Best Use of 500 Residential Square Feet in the East Village, Period"

They may be right.

The architects, JPDA, describe it:



The East Village Studio renovation addresses the client's desire for multi-purpose living space. While the footprint of the apartment is minimal, meticulously detailed millwork conceals extensive amounts of storage and shelving; thereby maximizing floor space. The aesthetic is clean and concise, while providing the warmth of a home and functional desires of the client.



We are always fans of storage stairs, and of designs that show how much people can do with a little bit of space.



There is nothing really unusual about living in 500 square feet in New York City, lots of people do it. But this unit also is a home office; between the two functions, they need a lot of storage. They certainly got it; storage defines the place.

"Smart Student Unit" is a 100 square foot timber wonder


© Tengbom Architects via Designboom
Designboom shows two of our favorite things in one little project: A 100 square foot "smart student unit" made out of cross-laminated timber (CLT) the super-strong wood panels made from sustainably harvested wood.

© Tenbom Architects via Designboom

I love how the tables fold up into the wall and seal the windows. This thing is solid and safe.

Tengbom architects write:

This truly compact-living flat still offers a comfortable sleeping-loft, kitchen, bathroom and a small garden with a patio. Through an efficient layout and the use of cross laminated wood as a construction material the rent is reduced by 50 % and the ecological impact and carbon footprints is also significantly reduced. Energy efficiency is a key issue when designing new buildings.

© Tengbom Architects via Designboom

Choosing right material and manufacturing methods is vital to minimize the carbon emission and therefore wood was chosen for its carbon positive qualities, and as a renewable resource it can be sourced locally to minimize transportation. The manufacturer method was chosen because of is flexible production and for its assembling technique which can be done on site to reduce construction time.