Green House continued - The Glidehouse
One of the best things about the National Building Museum's Green House exhibit was walking through Glidehouse, a pre-fabricated, modular house designed by Northern California architect Michelle Kaufmann. Kaufmann designed the house in 2004 and has been working with builders in the U.S. and Canada to sell variations on it ranging in size from 672 to 2,016 square feet.
According to her website, the house is designed "to collaborate with nature":
The design is based on basic sustainable—green—design principles. The house is designed as a series of shallow buildings to allow maximum natural ventilation. Through the use of the gliding glass wall and the opposite operable clerestory windows above the storage bar, breezes are maximized. Indirect lighting minimizes the need for electric lighting.
Depending on the location, the house can either have solar panels, a geothermal, or a wind generator system, or a hybrid system. The exterior walls are made of maintenance-free Cor-Ten steel, Galvalume, Hardi panels or cedar planks to blend in with the context.
Through the implementation of sustainable design and solar, geothermal, or wind generator equipment, the Glidehouse™ modular home provides owners with reduced, if not eliminated, utility bills. The Glidehouse™ could be situated in a rural area, and through the use of solar, geothermal or wind generating equipment, the Glidehouse™ would not need to be connected to electricity lines, therefore reducing the long term cost of ownership and widening the range of potential building sites.
A modular home also affords construction efficiencies, virtually eliminating waste materials that are normally associated with new home building. Construction impact on the new home site is also minimized through factory-based modular home construction
The slats on Glidehouse (pictured at right) remind us of Taylor Smyth's pre-fab Sunset Cabin, which we blogged back in August.
Pricing, which includes the cost of design, transporting materials to the site, and construction, starts at $132 per square foot, or around $200,000 for most variations. According to the Building Museum, that's $83,000 less than the average cost of a new American home in 2005.
Learn more at Glidehouse.
Read More in: Green Homes | Home | Really Natural Houses
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Posted by Jess Brooks at November 7, 2006 7:11 AM
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