Video Interlude: Man Builds Whole House From 24,000 Used Plastic Bottles

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 28, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Faced with the collapse of the Argentina economy a decade ago, Alfredo Santa Cruz turned trash he had hoped to sell for profit into a full-on, fully inhabitable house. Called La Casa Ecologica de Botellas, it's made of 24,000 interlocking plastic bottles, many filled with sand or water for fireproofing; inside, furnishings are also made from recycled finds. Cruz estimates that 20,000 people have come and taken advantage of his free training sessions, making his project not only a really cool piece of green architecture but also something that combats homelessness around the community. Watch the video below.

The Video:

· Plastic Bottle House [YouTube via BuzzFeed]

View the original article here

Genius Pads: The Doogie Howser of Industry Builds Massive Florida Manse

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, September 29, 2011, by Rob Bear

Photo: David Albers/Naples News

When Blake Whitesell, founder and CEO of the Whitesell Corporation died tragically of cancer, his 21-year-old son Neil took over the reigns of the private manufacturing company. Over the next 25 years, the young upstart has grown the business from humble beginnings to a profitable conglomerate, at least profitable enough to build the largest home in Collier County, Fla. The Naples megamanse, currently close to completion, measures 32,000 square feet on 1.56 acres and will include six bedrooms and ten total bathrooms.
· The BIG house: 32,000-square-foot home about to become Naples area's biggest [Naples News via Homes of the Rich]

View the original article here

Toys 'n' Games: Guy Builds World's First Lego Greenhouse Using 100K Pieces

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, September 21, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Photo via Co.Design

Oh, Lego: wherever will you go from here? You've conquered classic American architecture and climbed the world's tallest building and now you're playing a part in global agriculture. The world's first-ever greenhouse made entirely of Legos has debuted at the London Design Festival, where industrial designer Sebastian Bergne has used 100,000 pieces—50,000 clear ones for the roof and walls and 50,000 brown ones for the "soil"—to form the translucent structure. Impressive, right? It gets even better: Bergne told Co.Design, which first covered the story, that he threw the project together "in just one night, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m." Jeez, now you're just making us feel bad. Over here for more mindblowing photos.

· Lego to Immortalized Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House [Curbed National]
· Lego Announces Newest in Architecture Series: Burj Khalifa [Curbed National]
· A Greenhouse Made of 100,000 Legos [Co.Design]

View the original article here

Demolition Porn: Berkeley: Mr. Kapor, 4th Horseman, Builds His Dream House

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, May 3, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

Demolition begins at 2707 Rose Street [Photo Credit: Jason Strauss via Berkeleyside]

In classic Berkeley fashion, there's been a brush fire raging over Freada Klein and Mitch Kapor's plans to build a new house on Rose Street, and this week demolition began on the dilapidated 1920's house that stood in the way. While the immediate neighbors supported the new construction, it seems like everyone else in Berkeley had (and still has) an opinion over the size of the Lotus software mogul's house and its accompanying subterranean ten-car garage. The Berkeley City Council denied an appeal of the Zoning Board's approval late last week. The Klein-Kapor's lot is large enough to absorb the project in 40% of the lot area and it fits within the buildable envelope. Additionally, the ten-car garage is mostly for visitors, since parking on Rose Street has always been problematic, plus they're putting in a turn-around at the end of the street where there was none previously. Comments in Berkeleyside's fourteen previous posts have that cluck-cluck you're-destroying-the-planet attitude from people who seem overly attached to someone else's shrubberies, although the project fits within Berkeley's green construction parameters. Probably it just means that critical thinking in Berkeley tends towards the Apocalyptic. So how green is an underground garage? Not much, but it's greener than street parking, if only because storm-water runoff can be managed. And a whole lot more attractive.
· Mitch Kapor Takes First Steps to Building Berkeley Home [Berkeleyside]
· Can One Call Mitch Kapor's Berkeley House Green? [Treehugger]
· Berkeley Gets Indignant Over a Ginormous House's 'Green' Label [Curbed SF Archives]

View the original article here

Balloon Rides: National Geographic Builds Amazing Real-Life House From Up

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, March 7, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Oh, National Geographic—what will you think of next? As the rest of us were downing greasy brunch food this weekend, these guys—scientists, engineers, and two balloon pilots—woke up at dawn to set free a real-life version of the house from Pixar's hit film Up on a private airfield outside L.A. Measuring 16 feet by 16 feet and 18 feet high, the yellow house was buoyed by 300 8' weather balloons—a total height of more than 10 stories—setting a new world record for the "largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted." It reached an altitude of 10,000 feet and flew for an hour. The Up adventure will be part of Nat Geo's new Fall 2011 series called How Hard Can it Be? Show offs!

· Up-Inspired Floating House [My Modern Met]

View the original article here

Snowpocalypse!: Former Blue's Clues Star Builds an Igloo in His Courtyard

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, February 9, 2011, by Sarah

Jason Schmidt, Right photo: Steve burns/NYMag

Today New York magazine's Wendy Goodman treks to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she revisits the apartment of former Blue's Clues star Steve Burns that was featured in the magazine's Fall 2010 Home Design issue. The dwelling, a converted 2,000-square-foot garage, was just as Goodman last saw it, except for—oh, right—now there's a mighty fine courtyard igloo. If Burns were ever able to list it in Craigslist, he told her, the blurb would go something like, "“Charming alcove studio, steps from L train. Cutting-edge green construction, locally sourced material, a MUST SEE! $1,100/month.” Later, he added, "Faced with a mountain of snow, I simply did what any self-respecting man-child would do: I built a fort. It was sort of an automatic response, really. All that snow had to go somewhere.” And what kind of man-child would he be without using it as a beer cooler during the Super Bowl!

View the original article here