The House that One Man Can Lift. Sanctuary Magazine Showcases This and More.

by Warren McLaren

Magnetic Island house exterior Photo: Robin Gauld for Sanctuary magazine issue 12
When it came time for our architecture writer, Lloyd, to select the Best Shelter Magazine for TreeHugger's 2010 Best of Green Awards in Design and Architecture he quickly made his choice: Sanctuary Magazine, from Australia's Alternative Technology Association (ATA). Indeed he gushed, "so much beautiful stuff -- stunningly photographed and presented I just want to pack up and move to Australia. [...] The magazine's website is full of excerpts and info, but the magazine is a joy to hold."
And it is no accident that Lloyd is so enamoured. For TreeHugger was conceived as a vehicle to make green design and sustainable lifestyles attractive to a mainstream audience. Sanctuary magazine does that so effectively for eco-architecture. It's twelveth issue recently hit the news stands, continuing the thread of lush photography and green residential design. We look at some of the highlights below.

Images: Sanctuary magazine
Six houses are profiled, with sumptuous imagery, informative descriptions and backed up with a simple list of their 'sustainable features' such as the material used, the type of glazing, rainwater harvesting systems, lighting, landscaping, etc.
But probably the nub of info that most intrigues me is that the respective home owners have, in most cases, been trusting enough to provide Sanctuary magazine with project costings. I think this is an important consideration, for it is very easy to throw a barrowload of money at a home, and say "there, look it's 'green.'" It's another matter entirely to achieve sound environmental results on a tight budget. Thus Sanctuary's published costings keep the eye candy honest.

Photo: Christopher Federick Jones for Sanctuary magazine issue 11
Similarly, new houses tend to get the lion's share of attention when it comes for green housing media coverage. But Sanctuary consistently has a collection of renovations to show what clever eco thinking can impart to existing dwellings.
And the most recent issues of the magazine have also stepped outside of the pure green house reviews and covered related information. In the current edition you can get up to speed on energy ratings, reupholstering furniture, thermal window blinds, ceiling fans and landscaping. In the previous issue, the focus was on how to make a cool pantry that would give a fridge a run for its money, along with discussions of greener concrete, lawns, how to buy recycled kitchens and understanding housing ventilation.
But all this wonderful information is really just the backdrop to the reviewed houses.
Issue 12 showcases half a dozen homes, but the one that most captured my imagination was a Magnetic Island residence, with corrugated iron cladding, a material so ubiquitous in early Australian buildings. Here it is used in a tropic dwelling that has won a bunch of awards, including from the Australian Institute of Architects. In fact, the team behind its design, Troppo Architects, were this year, the first Australian firm to win the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture.

Magnetic Island house interior Photo: Robin Gauld for Sanctuary magazine issue 12
Although sited in the humid tropics, the house avoids need of any air conditioning, through the judicious placement of three separate buildings connected by passive venting outdoor breezeways and backed up with insect screened adjustable louvre windows, and ceiling fans. Large eaves help keep direct sun at bay, while a lap pool also adds a cooling feature.
There is almost as much outside deck area as there is enclosed house, allowing the dwelling to appear larger than its 107 square metres (1,151 sq ft) suggest.
This three bedroom, two bathroom house was constructed by one man. All the materials are therefore relatively lightweight and easily transportable and managed. The exposed steel frame was bolted together rather than welded, so it can all be disassembled at the end of a useful life. The house itself is raised off the ground to minimise site disturbance (although we're not sure how this design feature applies to the lap pool). The builder used leftover construction materials to create furniture for the house.
The lighting is LED and this is powered via a grid connected 3kW Kyocera polycrystalline photovoltaic solar array. (See more pix on the Troppo Architect's website.)
The other homes highlighted in the twelveth issue of Sanctuary magazine each have their own unique green design features. Like sliding walls that convert otherwise private rooms into expansive open space. An idea similarly explored by another house whose entire eastern wall swings open like a massive door to turn a room into an open air pavilion. Or the house whose internal thermal mass uses rammed earth construction, with the twist of employing recycled concrete aggregate.
Sanctuary magazine is a print magazine, not available online, although excerpts of articles from back issues do appear on the magazine's website.

Stanford Unveils Solar Cells Thinner Than Light Wavelengths

by Timon Singh

One problem with solar cells is that the thicker and more powerful they are, the more expensive they are to make. However engineers at Stanford recently announced that they have developed a new type of solar cell thinner than the wavelengths of light that could absorb 10 times the amount of sunlight that current cells do. The engineers believe that by configuring the thicknesses of several thin layers of films, an organic polymer cell could transform the solar energy industry.

Stanford’s new ultra-thin solar cell stops the lights from bouncing around as it would in a conventional cell, allowing it to be absorbed more easily. This technique is called “light trapping”, and it works best in nano-thin cells. Speaking to PhysOrg.com, Shanhui Fan, associate professor of electrical engineering said, “It’s the same as if you were using hamsters running on little wheels to generate your electricity – you’d want each hamster to log as many miles as possible before it jumped off and ran away.”

“The longer a photon of light is in the solar cell, the better chance the photon can get absorbed,” Fan added, who is also senior author of the paper describing the work called Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We all used to think of light as going in a straight line,” Fan said. “For example, a ray of light hits a mirror, it bounces and you see another light ray. That is the typical way we think about light in the macroscopic world. But if you go down to the nanoscales that we are interested in, hundreds of millionths of a millimeter in scale, it turns out the wave characteristic really becomes important.”
With that in mind, if a solar cell can be made that is around 400 to 700 nanometers thin (billionths of a meter), it can produce a remarkable amount of energy. The potential for this technology is enormous — not only would nano-thin solar cells save money in materials, but by using organic polymers over silicon they make the cells cheaper to buy and easier to install due to their thickness.

Wave Power Lights Up U.S. Electrical Grid For First Time

by Ariel Schwartz

We write a lot about wave power here at Inhabitat, but functional wave farms are few and far between. Now Ocean Power Technologies has hooked up its PB40 PowerBuoy to the grid at the Marine Corps Base in Hawaii, marking the first time waves have provided energy to the U.S. electrical grid.

 

Unlike many tidal power devices, the PowerBuoy generates energy from the rising and falling of the waves. A 10 MW PowerBuoy station occupies 12.5 hectares of ocean.
The Hawaii-based PowerBuoy was first deployed three-quarters of a mile off the Oahu coast in December 2009. With the new Marine Corps hookup, OPT hopes to prove that the PowerBuoy can produce utility-grade renewable energy. If all goes well with the Marine Corps station, we can expect more wave power to hit the U.S. soon — OPT already signed a stakeholder agreement for a utility-scale wave energy project in Oregon.

Magnetic Energy Device Could Mean 40% Power Savings

by Brit Liggett

The US Navy is on their way to having 40% of their power come from renewable sources by 2020 and a big part of that move is helping their buildings save energy. They’ve got their researchers hard at work devising new technology and one solution that recently emerged from the U.S. Office of Naval Research Global has us marveling at its ingenuity. It is a magnetic energy regulation device that controls the flow of energy to lighting sources. The device also captures residual magnetic energy given off by energy transmitters which it redirects back into the lighting — total savings can be up to 40% at peak times.

 

“The device not only conserves electricity, but produces far less heat and produces less electromagnetic interference than conventional technologies” said Dr. Chandra Curtis, program officer in ONR Global’s Tokyo office. She noted that she was excited about this device providing savings across the power grid. In practice in barracks at a Navy base in Tokyo, Japan the device proved to work wonderfully in all intended aspects and significantly reduced power consumption over time.
Curtis and her team are working on a proposal for a larger test installation at the same barracks in Tokyo that would include a break room, printing press room, laundry room, gymnasium and several offices. The device was originally tested in an area that required 24 hour lighting, but using it in these varied spaces would show its efficacy in different situations. The tests should run into 2011 if approved.

Canada Becomes First Country to Ban Toxic BPA

by Ariel Schwartz

Photo by Steven Depolo
As avid Inhabitat readers know, BPA is a nasty substance. The organic compound, found in everything from reusable water bottles to soup cans, is thought to cause both hormonal and neurological issues. But the anti-BPA movement is growing strong — so strong, in fact, that Canada just moved to ban the substance altogether.

Canada banned BPA-containing plastic baby bottles in 2008, but the new move will see BPA removed from all products on store shelves. As a result, Canada will become the first country in the world to declare BPA as a toxic substance. There’s no word on when the ban will take effect, but the North American chemical industry is reportedly angry with Environment Canada’s decision to abolish the stuff.
Even though the U.S. hasn’t made any moves to ban BPA outright, the Canadian ban could reverberate across the border — and that’s a good thing for anyone concerned about their health.

 

Liquid Energy: New Microbe Tech Turns Sun and CO2 Into Fuel

by Timon Singh

Biofuel startup Joule Unlimited has announced that it has engineered microbes that require only sunlight and CO2 to produce ethanol, diesel, or other hydrocarbons. The company formally announced that it has obtained a patent for a genetically modified version of cyanobacteria that converts carbon dioxide, dirty water and sunlight into a liquid hydrocarbon that is functionally equivalent to regular diesel.

According to the patent, the engineered cyanobacteria contains “a recombinant acyl ACP reductase (AAR) enzyme and a recombinant alkanal decarboxylative monooxygenase (ADM) enzyme.”   What this concoction of cyanobacteria and enzymes does is allow for hydrocarbon production in a single step, converting captured sunlight into ‘liquid energy’, that can be either ethanol or diesel.

“This patent award represents a critical milestone for our IP strategy and validates the truly revolutionary nature of our process, which has the potential to yield infrastructure-compatible replacements for fossil fuels at meaningful scale and highly-competitive costs, even before subsidies,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO, Joule. “Our vision since inception has been to overcome the limitations of biomass-based technologies, from feedstock costs and logistics to inefficient, energy-intensive processing. The result is the world’s first platform for converting sunlight and waste CO₂ directly into diesel, requiring no costly intermediates, no use of agricultural land or fresh water, and no downstream processing.”
Formerly known as Joule Biotechnologies, the company, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced late last year that it had developed technology which could produce the equivalent of 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year and 15,000 gallons of diesel per acre per year of drop-in hydrocarbon fuels, using only sunlight, CO₂ and  water as inputs. The Solar Converter along with the new bacteria and a technology known as helioculture is the basis of this claim. Pilot production on diesel begins later this year.
While the project is still in its pilot testing phase, it’s already producing 10,000 gallons of ethanol a year, or 40 percent of its goal, on its pilot lines in Leander, Texas. It is expected that production will begin by the end of the year with commercial production commencing in 2012.  If it is successful, not only could it mean cheap biofuel (selling at $30 a barrel, compared to $70 for oil), but it could mean a fully sustainable form of fuel that doesn’t need food crops to create it. Fuel could literally be created out of thin air!

House-in-a-Can Recycles Grain Silos Into Housing

by Lloyd Alter

All images via Austin-Mergold
Grain silos, made from corrugated and galvanized steel, are among the cheapest and most efficient enclosures one can buy; that's why Bucky Fuller played with them during World War II, with his Dymaxion Deployment Units.
Updating the idea, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG brings us Austin + Mergold's House-In-A-Can, recycling these grain silos into housing, from single family to condo.

The architects describe them with some marketing flair:

36-foot in diameter American grain dryer with 2000 SF single family starter home inside. Instantly assembled off-the-shelf 14 GA galvanized corrugated steel exterior a 2000 SF developer house inside. Optional greenhouse. Buy 5 get one free!!!

They can be arranged in a number of configurations.

Manaugh calls the models "delightfully absurd and inspiring" and suggests further iterations:

A thesis presentation performed as a series of metal cans extruded outward into models of inhabitable architecture... Cinema-In-A-Can. Library-In-A-Can. Gym-In-A-Can. Dome-In-A-Can Republic.

More at House-in-a-can via BLDGBLOG