Architect Claims Reboot House Is Eco-Friendly

would we have to wear skin-tight jumpsuits to live here?

;)

It still looks awfully big for a residence, unless there's gonna be a lot of people living in it. The key to sustainability shouldn't be in making our lavish lifestyles more green; it should be reducing those lifestyles to something more sustainable.

This makes my brain hurt.

Why can some poorly conceived grad-student project get a billing on TH? This is horrible on so many levels. It is constructed of non-existent materials (solar cell paint?), is material inefficient, space inefficient (rounded rooms?) requires extra energy to lift everything up to the 3rd floor, would promote sprawl, and so on.

Please can someone at TH think and filter before posting every mid-numbing qwel idea?

I would rather see people in these than in some suburban junk box that aims at nothing and produces the same.

Even if the house is sustainable, the residents would have to be airlifted for their commute every day, which isn't. Unless there's a Star Trek transporter unit in there, which I'm not ruling out.

As RV alluded to above, the key to sustainability is density. Not only is that awfully big for a single family dwelling, you'd have a hell of a land footprint if you tried to line these suckers up side by side, given the overhang of the upper floors. Anyone of my generation who's ever tried to pack their old Transformers into a box knows that oddly-shaped hunks of plastic don't make for the most efficient use of space.

Also, I look terrible in spandex.

I find this house oddly attractive. It does remind me of Star trek, but I would still like to live in it. The size and layout does make it seem like a multi-family dwelling at the least.

It's not terribly outlandish... and they *are* working on solar cell paint. At the very least it is rather interesting.

Who says solar cell paint is non-existent?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html

maybe this wouldn't be effective as a year-round family home, but it could be well used as a research base in remote areas. the cabins could be bunk rooms, housing 2-4 scientists, the media room could be the computer room, you know, for data processing, office work, communications, etc; and the dining room could be the lab with the bridge serving as the recreational/relaxation/etc area for the research team(s). one of the galleys could be specimen storage, who needs two kitchens?

that being said, i still think this is a very cool design... and it belongs on TH because it is innovative, and the materials do exist - though some are still in experimental stages.

I like the design. We have lived in rural areas for most of my life and it makes me laugh when people hop on these lists and say things like "you can't be green unless you live in a tiny apartment and walk or ride your bike everywhere". or "you can't be green unless you are packed into your home and city to the point that you can't sneeze without bothering your neighbor."

Efficient use of space in an urban setting makes sense. Putting a 900 square foot home on a 30 acre lot is dumb.

You can have my single family residence when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Looks like some kind of hand held scanner from a retail store(minus the trigger) blown up to make it look like some kind of futuristic craptastic home.
Looks like the 'architect' was bored and tried to put a green spin on a ridiculous product. Not an effecient use of space, nor is requiring an elevator an effecient use of power. And who wants to live in a plastic house?
Maybe he should spend some time to find out what an 'eco-friendly' house really means. (im sure a few minutes on this site would give him some better ideas than the ones he came up with!)

Who's the tiny man standing next to the toilet?

strange project, but great design...!

Hey, where is the three car garage for my family's SUvs :-)

Solar Paint - as Seen in 2005.

A Nat. Geo. Article on Solar paint, quoting an inventor, does not make solar paint a reality. Can I buy some solar paint? I'd pay dearly for a 1-oz. bottle.

LOL @ toilet and scanner comments.
Cool? Certainly! Green? .....Maybe?
what if you drove your compressed air car to work.... geez, what if you rowed your boat there?!

It reminds me of SimCity 2000 when you got so advanced (usually because you cheated) that all you could build to sustain your population were those funky looking arcologies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_2000

I am not quite convinced that TH readers have hemp keyboards and pedal powered computers when they bash every other design that tries something fresh for a change.

Someone was asking "who wants to live in a plastic house?". At the same time readers adore everything made of recycled plastic etc.

I like the design - although it's shape does not look too space-efficient.

The large convex surface area uses alot of surface material for the volume that it encloses. That means worse heating and cooling as well as wasted construction material.

It also doesn't have optimal solar orientation.

It's also looks like a big synthetic eyesore.

It always gets to me how so many architects think. I deal with them all the time and it seems most of them (not to generalize of course) think of their building or site as an isolated object. There is all too often a lack of understanding that the building sits within an ecosystem.
While this design does look at some really good things it seems to avoid the bigger issues like how we live and issues to with our life style.
The architect claims that it is "self-sufficient" yet where do the people work? and where does their food come from? perhaps entertainment too? I have a strong belief that no building or site can be "self-sufficient" it should instead interact and coexist as harmoniously as possible with the surrounding ecosystems.
If somebody wants to claim something to be "eco-friendly" they must address these issues. To be honest it would be more "eco-friendly" and self-sufficient to build a traditional construction building on the site and surround it with vegetable and fruit gardens.

This is a great idea, although maybe impractical for most of us. A far more practical, and yet, also an eco-friendly house is that of Jerry Wilson's that he describes in his new book, "Waiting for Coyote's Call: An Eco-memoir from the Missouri River Bluff."