Zero carbon house

Birmingham, UK
Architect John Christophers has completed a project to make his early Victorian two-bedroom semi-detached house more energy efficient as well as extending it to more than double its size. Retrofitting existing housing stock is becoming an increasingly important way of helping the UK meet its carbon emission targets. The development features more than 14 reclaimed materials such as treads made from reclaimed 200-year-old Canadian honeydew maple, once a floor to a silk factory. 100% recycled waste newspaper Warmcell 500 insulation has been used to line the inside of the existing front elevation of the house. Other sustainable aspects include: 36sq m of photovoltaics to generate electricity; the presence of vacuum tube solar panels to provide about 70% of the hot water used; a mechanical ventilation heat recovery system; a wood burning stove; and a rainwater harvesting tank.

The Building Research Establishment has awarded the house level 6 or zero carbon of the Code for Sustainable Homes. “The code rating is based on the whole house without differentiating between the new and the old,” explains Mr Christophers, “The old house has reached the same very demanding standard as the new.”

Since its construction, Christophers and his family have held nine open days aimed at raising awareness and an understanding of sustainability and “to evangelise and inspire enthusiasm”, he says.


Above: Treads made from reclaimed timber.


Above:

bd online

Keeping warm without costing the earth

Sarah Lonsdale, reporter for the Telegraph, asks if it is possible for an average Victorian terrace to half its energy bills. "I’m in a quiet residential street in Balham, south London. The rows of smart Victorian terraces and semis, with their white stucco work and bay windows are now a desirable design classic. But for a government charged with reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, they’re an absolute nightmare. Increasingly, too, for the owners who have to heat these solid-walled, single-paned, airy-lofted, yet rather lovely dinosaurs, they are a growing drain on family finances," said Mrs Lonsdale.

Architect Susan Venner’s has set out to prove she can reduce the environmental impact of her Victorian terrace home. The only visible sign of the project is the cork cladding on the outside end of terrace wall: to be specific, 180mm- deep cork, in two layers fixed with wooden battens up which a few climbing plants have started to move. "This cork cladding has had a massive impact on heating bills, we used it where ever we could. The 130-year-old solid brick walls of these houses let out masses of heat, now 10 times less escapes through this cork," said Mrs Venner.

Other energy-efficient measures that Mrs Venner has introduced include underfloor insulation and newly fitted reclaimed flooring, laid on top of the original wooden floorboards to increase the installation. The reclaimed boards were from a gym at Loughborough University and found on an ad on SalvoWEB!!

"Solar thermal panels on the roof provides hot water for most of the year. Finally, autumn and spring heating is now done with a super-efficient wood-burning stove, licensed for use in smokeless zones, fed with builders’ offcuts and collected wood from Tooting Common. We have very nearly reached the 80% emission reduction we have been striving for." said Mrs Venner

Telegraph

Mazria lands national green building award

Santa Fe architect Ed Mazria is this year’s winner of the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing. The award is sponsored by The Hanley Foundation, EcoHome magazine and Hanley Wood LLC, a media and information company in Washington, D.C., that serves the housing and construction industries.

Mazria was selected from 18 nominees and will receive the award and a $50,000 grant at the U.S. Greenbuilding Council’s Hanley Award Dinner Nov. 12 during the USGBC international conference and expo in Phoenix. Mazria has had a powerful impact on sustainable housing for more than 35 years, said Michael J. Hanley, president of The Hanley Foundation and creator of the Hanley Award. “He has influenced innovative advances in design and technology through his creative architecture, energetic teaching and groundbreaking writing,” Hanley said in a press release.

Mazria’s book, The Passive Solar Energy Book, was published in 1979 and his work laid the foundation for siting, energy efficiency and passive solar design, said officials with the competition.

He suspended his architecture practice in 2002 to form Architecture 2030 in 2002, a nonprofit environmental research and education organization in Santa Fe. His research has shown that buildings are responsible for half of all U.S. energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, according to Hanley officials.

Architecture 2030

Business Weekly

Historic room returns home after travelling to USA

58 Artillery Lane in Spitalfields, London UK

It was John Harris in his book 'Moving Rooms, A Trade in architectural Salvages' who chronicled the export, on an almost industrial scale, of many historic rooms before protection by listing, mainly to destinations in America. Some, it seems, were never unpacked and others never put on display. One such room is 58 Artillery lane in Spiterfield which was bought by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1923 for $4,000. It was later decommissioned and has since been acquired by the Spiterfields Trust for repatriation.

Sainsbury and his architects – a practice called 6a, fronted by Tom Emerson and Stephanie MacDonald are bring back this old house to life and its neighbour number 56 Artillery Lane in a way that conjures something of the spirit of Spitalfields' history without sentimentalising it.

Several fires damaged these handsome Huguenot houses over the decades. The two buildings have been gently restored. One room boasts a joyous Rococo interior, with pedimented doorcases, Chinese-patterned cabinet window tracery and garlanded fruit and flowers. Behind the buildings, the architects have dug down a metre and a half to create two large, modern galleries. One occupies an old courtyard, its flat roof crowned with a pair of skylights. The other noses its way under a banal, concrete-framed office block, dating from 1972, which is shoehorned into the back of the site. A picture window looking into the alley brings daylight into this second gallery. Above it all, an upstairs flat is lived in by Rebecca Levy, whose family have rented here since 1925.


Above: Preparing Raven Row By David Grandorge




[photos from Raven Row Gallery achieve]



Guardian

Madonna, Princess Diana and Michael Hutchence hotel to be demolished

Stamford Plaza Hotel, Sydney Australia

IT'S been the hotel that has hosted everyone from Madonna to Princess Diana and was the scene of the tragic death of one of the country's biggest music stars, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. But now the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Double Bay, is to close its doors.

The 140-room Sydney institution is to shut up shop on March 28 and be demolished to make way for 14-storey twin tower apartments in a proposal by developer Ashington.

The Daily Telegraph

Reuse is in

Book: Thrifty chic: Interior Style on a Shoestring by Alexandra Campbell and Liz Bauwens

As the authors of Thrifty chic: Interior Style on a Shoestring say, "thrift" has become fashionable; it also encourages a new way of looking at interior style. The tone is set by the chapter Country Cool: rustic furnishings are set against wood paneling and walls painted in all shades of white, off white, cream and eau de nil (Farrow & Ball has much to answer for). There are projects for jazzing up old wooden furniture for both house and garden, and suggestions for pulling together mismatched items into cohesive schemes.The all-important finishing touches - display, china and ceramics, glassware, paintings and frames, fabrics and trims - are covered in detail, and you can learn how to create a variety of stylish accessories for your home.

Retro is a strong theme, with tips that include converting vintage curtain fabric into cushion covers; how to use paint; and how to buy from architectural salvage without being ripped off. There is an extensive retro bathroom section which shows how to make the crumbly falling apart look the new "beautiful" – if indeed the eccentrically shabby ever went away.





Telegraph

London Design Festival

Above: 'Captivate Lula Dot' by Lucy Norman who is part of [RE]Design, she tries to promote reuse and resource awareness by involving its owner in the collection and creativity of waste, as the user can select different bottle tops and change the lighting colour and pattern.


Above: [RE]Design chair and table made from covered electrical wire.


Above: Part of the 100% Sustainable section at % Design showing a model of sustainable resources to try to promote debate.


Above: Walter Raes wearable & design art


Above: A collection of well designed and sustainable pieces from The Greenhaus

London Design Festival, Across London UK

London Design festival saw many exciting things happening across the city including 100% Design at Earls Court (18 - 21 September 2008) and Tent London in Brick Lane (18 - 21 September 2008).

100% Design has more than 450 exhibitors showcasing their latest ranges. Lighten Up, launched at this year's 100% Design London, its an innovative sustainable lighting exhibition from [re]design. It looks beyond the bulb to explore what lighter lighting could mean, from energy and material use to make greener living aspirational and achievable. [re]design is a social enterprise that propagates sustainable actions through design, and promotes products that are genuinely good, attractive and sustainable innovative designs. Also, at the show was Stephen Johnson who exhibited at this years Salvo fair his work incorporates ornamental kitsch pieces from the home.

Within the show there is a specialist section called 100% Sustainable that looks at Models of Sustainable Design. The team have created a miniaturised world presented as a ‘00 scale’ model that asks questions of the viewer and deliberately sets us scenarios, which raise discussion and debate that can be discussed in the many workshops in the lecture theater.

Tent London takes place in the Truman Brewery, a vast reclaimed industrial site in Brick Lane, showing art and architecture, vintage and contemporary design by emerging and established designers from around the world. The interesting stand of Walter Raes shows, "Wearable design art made from household and industrial cast-offs, retrieved from society's discarded and often everyday objects. I transform ironing boards into sheath-style dresses and mop heads into coats," said Walter Raes. Also showcasing at the event was The Greenhaus, who create beautiful, practical products for the home whilst still embracing the key principles of sustainability, including the re-use and recycling of materials and low energy footprint both from manufacture and usage.

Following on from the success of Circa's last year, Tent has a section dedicated to vintage design. It has high quality vintage pieces from a selection of dealers for both the public and trade to buy.


100% Design

Tent London

Walter Raes

[RE]Design

The Greenhaus

Salvo Guide to London

Salvo Guide London & Region, London UK

THE new free pocket Salvo Guide to London and Region 2008 was published last week and will be available from green shops, trade fairs and other events in and around London . . . so keep your eyes peeled.

If you can't wait to pick one up then please send a first class self addressed envelope to Salvo Llp, 10 Barley Mow Passage, Chiswick, W4 4PH and we will post one to you.

*****Birmingham and Midlands next!*****

THE next handy A6 pocket Salvo Guide will be for Birmingham and the Midlands 2009/10 is now under way. Please contact Colleen at Salvo if you would like your business to be in it. Emails and postcards calling for entries will be sent to businesses throughout the region soon. Dealers, allied craftspeople and makers of authentic replicas will be invited to apply for an entry. The copy deadline for advertising and entries is October 31st. The catchment area extends to Gloucestershire in the south, Herefordshire in the west, Staffordshire in the north, and Northants to the east.

Salvo Guide PDF

Thomas Hope Regency Designer

V & A museum, London UK

Thomas Hope can be seen as a designer, collector and innovator he played an important role in the early nineteenth century design. Hope's household furniture and decorative style was the designers bible of the time. He was a collector on a grand scale and also an innovative designer of great genius who helped define what we understand as the Regency style. The scope of Hope's influence is shown through sculpture, painting, furniture, interior design, costume, metalwork and silver.

Thomas Hope was a visionary born in Amsterdam in 1979, Hope inherited his family tradition of collecting and also a vast fortune from his families banking wealth. For ten years between 1787 and 1797, Thomas Hope travelled widely through Europe and the Near East. His travels enriched his passion for collecting and taught him how to improve modern design of the time. Hope made numerous drawings during these extensive travels which he later used as the muse for many pieces of furniture and interior design in his two houses.

Hope's houses - Duchess Street in london and the Deepdene in Surrey played a unique role in the history of collecting, interior design and display. Hope's juxtaposition of styles included Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Indian elements, as well as his own version of French Empire style. Classical sculpture and vases were displayed alongside modern paintings and sculpture. The Thomas Hope exhibition at the V & A recreates the atmosphere of three of the key interiors - the Aurora Room, Egyptian Room and Third Vase Room.

In 1807, the year after his marriage, Hope bought the Deepdene near Dorking Surrey. Just as he had challenged conventional urban taste with his novel interiors at Duchess Street, he now rethought what a modern country house should look like. The Deepdene was a red brick Georgian mansion which he redeveloped with a loggia-topped Italianate tower on which to pivot the whole composition and added a wing shooting out at an angle of 45 degrees. There is little record of the interiors of the Deepdene but the exhibition has a few enchanting watercolors of the interior and exterior of Deepdene.

Hope's influence continued long after his death with thanks to his, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration book. Sadly Duchess Street was demolished in 1851 but many of its images remained in trade journals and books on interior design. Its contents were taken to the Deepdene and later in 1917 his collection was dispersed in a great sale at the Deepdene. The interest in Hope's design led to many pieces being bought by collectors and museums in Europe and the USA and consequently Hope's design reached a wider public. Hope's style influenced the Regency Revival of the 1920's and 30's, and Art Deco Design.

Uses of construction waste

Sheffield, Yorkshire UK




90 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste is produced annually, of which 13 million tonnes are materials that were delivered but never used. The construction industry creates 3 times the waste of all UK households combined - 25% of all waste produced in the UK. After excavation and demolition waste, the majority of construction waste is made up of plasterboard, cardboard and timber.

Fortunately financial implications of waste have become an issue impossible to ignore by contractors and builders, with landfill costs set to treble over the next three years. More changes are set to occur with loads containing over 10% plasterboard waste now have to be landfilled separately at increased cost. In addition it is likely that in April 2008 construction projects with a value of over £250,000 will be required to produce a site waste management plan (SWMP) outlining their measures to minimise waste and increase reuse and recycling. This has lead to an number of reuse initiatives throughout the country, helping builders and other business find positive solutions to their new found responsibilities.

One such initiative, Why Waste, run by the Bradford Environmental Action Trust, offers a free Yorkshire and Humberside wide online waste exchange. This matches business with waste with those that can make use of it. the scheme has been running since March 2007 and already has 2500 registered users, all saving money on their waste disposal bills and diverting valuable materials from landfill.

To raise awareness for their scheme, Why Waste commissioned postgraduate architecture students from the University of Sheffield to design and build a striking, demountable pavilion to be erected in the centre of Sheffield and to be made from waste derived from the waste exchange. Finding and using reclaimed and recycled materials from the waste exchange set an interesting challenge for the young trainee architects, as form most definitely followed available material with interesting results.

The frames were made of short lengths of 100x 50mm reclaimed timber. These were screwed together to make 150 x 150mm posts and 150 x 150mm posts and 150 x 50mm beams. Two of the walls were made from the waste 'skeleton' sheets of birch plywood and acrylic, left over from the manufacture of children's furniture, while the others were made from bailed blocks of polythene waste and colourful polypropylene banding previously used for strapping the cardboard around flatpack furniture. The roof was made from 900 faulty carpet tiles, which were otherwise destined to be dumped. Even the buildings display boards and lighting was recycled, with chandeliers made from cylindrical perspex offcuts from a shop-display.

Dan McTiernan, Why Waste's coordinator on the build, said "We're extremely proud of this project and of its award nomination. Space of Waste clearly demonstrates that something beautiful can be made from what most of us perceive as rubbish. We hope that this will make other people aware that materials, otherwise destined for landfill, can be used to construct buildings which are low in cost and environmental impact, and high in aesthetic appeal."

Sarah Hunt, one of the architecture students involved in the project, commented that: "The construction industry is one of the UK's most wasteful. By taking an unconventional approach to the design process, we were forced to rethink the way in which materials can be used. Architects and designers have the potential to divert a lot of waste from landfill and create building and objects that are both beautiful and original." [info taken from green building magazine]

Answer to 10% recycled materials law in Scotland?

A Scottish firm are creating blocks from glass. A partnership between Viridor and brand & Rae has lead to one million breeze blocks produced in 18 months using recycled glass. Crushed glass from Viridor's Bonnyrigg facility is said to comprise the same composition as the silica sand primary aggregate it replaces.

Jamie McBride, operations manager of Viridor Glass Recycling, said: "with one of Brand & Rae's factories next to our site we are helping to make a big difference to the carbon footprint of this essential building material. Together we are saving on energy, transport, and emissions, and by using this material there is less damage to the countryside through quarrying."

Houses of the future

Arco2 architects are developing houses that can be erected in less than 4 days made of timber and straw rather than concrete and polystyrene. They are affordable and have virtually no impact on the environment. Aesthetically, there is little or no difference. The walls are 61cm thick and therefore do not require insulation, the building naturally stays warm in the winter and cool in the winter. When questioned about the added increase in fire Penk ,who have just completed one such home for a customer said "Timber is misunderstood. Steel and concrete warps and breaks whilst timber chars in fire. there are two layers of plasterboard in front of the bales which is 60 minutes of protection in itself. It ties up carbon dioxide for a lifetime in building". Since a conventional house constructed today emits 3.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, this model could become mainstream within the next decade. [extracts taken from London Metro]

Crazy Architecture

All over the world there are hundreds of architects, builders, carpenters, laborers and designers working on a single build project. However, there are exceptions to this including these five excentric individuals who primarily work on bizarre buildings by themselves and in many cases they take decades or even lifetimes to construct. Despite having this essential factor in common the ultimate build outcomes range significantly in style, execution, materiality and purpose.


Above: Mr Cheval's Palais Ideal

Facteur Cheval lived in Hauterives in France, he was a mild-mannered mailman by day and a pseudo-architect and builder by night, he had no formal design or construction training. His Palais Ideal (Perfect Palace) took him decades to construct.


Above: Nikolai Sutyagin's wooden skyscrapper

In Archangeisk, Russia Nikolai Sutyagin took what he had learnt from running a small construction business and built a wooden skyscraper in 13 stories (114ft). Sadly he later went to jail for supposedly imprisoning a worker and his building went to pieces and all that is left is the strange wooden skyscraper.


Above: Simon Rodin's Watts Towers

Simon Rodin was an Italian immigrant who moved to LA and started an architectural masterpiece known as Watts Towers. This comprised of shells, scrap metal, pottery shards, rocks, glass and pretty much any other random material he could find.

Justo Gallego was a Spanish monk in Mejorado del Campo before he was forced to leave because of ill health. He created a radically individualistic catedral. He used all sorts of donated and recycled building materials.


Above: Tom Avery Foreverton

Tom Avery from Baraboo, Wisconsin is responsible for the world's largest scrap-metal architectural sculpture known as Foreverton. Weighing over 300 tonnes, climbing 50 feet in the air and reaches 60 to 120 feet in either direction.

Green Houses

The drive towards creating 'greener' housing is gathering pace. In May all new-build homes in england must be rated against the Code for Sustainable Homes. It will be compulsory for house builders to give new homes a star rating between one and six or issue a nil-rating certificate. This measures nine categories of sustainable design, including how the new building uses energy and water and how waste is dealt with.

The aim is to make as many new homes as possible 'zero carbon' which means they will generate sufficient energy and waste very few resources. New home buyers will be able to find out how sustainable they are before they buy. the star rating has been designed to make the code easy to understand. the government hope that the new system will encourage home buyers to choose energy efficient homes and make all new homes zero carbon by 2016.

It is estimated that Britain's homes produce 30 per cent of the country's CO2 emissions that contribute to climate change. It is hoped that many more properties will be built with less polluting and recyclable materials. Barratt's Hanham Hall site near Bristol aims to be the first zero carbon development in England, meeting level six of the Code for Sustainable Homes. The site will have 200 homes and it is thought that it will cut a families carbon footprint by up to 60 per cent. One way they will do this is by slashing water usage by recycling rainwater run off from the roofs so that it can bbe used in toilets, washing machienes and gardens.

Renovation Award

Bethnal Green Road, East London UK


Above: Rich Mix new arts venue from redundent building (pict. from londontown.com)


A project by Penoyre and Prasad has won the inaugural European Aluminum in Renovation Award for the best use of aluminium in a public building. "Rix Mix" is an East End of London property that has been transformed by the use of external aluminium louvres whilst still maintaining its original facade. not only has the property been totally transformed but also the internal space has been giver a new lease of life by controlling solar gain. Situated in bethnal Green Road in East London the project involved the conversion and enlargement of a derlict concrete frame building previously used as workshops for the manufacture of leather goods into new intercultural arts centre and performance venue.


Bernard Fitzimons commented, "This project is called Rich Mix and when you look at it, it is a rich mix. it uses an animated facade and colour to reveal that animation. i hope it proves to be a building that the people of the East End of London and the users of the building continue to enjoy."

Look out for the Pyeroy Group

Pyeroy Limited was founded in 1973 as a marine and industrial painting contractor. Pyeroy specialises in large scale protective coatings and refurbishment projects which include major refurbishment carried out on the Tyne Bridge. The Forth bridge where the repainting almost 40,000 meters of the southern stretch of the landmark structure took over four years. HMS Illlustrious Edinburgh and Westminster and the Lords Cricket Ground.

Protective coatings specialist, the Pyeroy Group, has successfully completed a £1.3 million contract to refurbish North London's Iron Bridge for Transport for London (TFL). The work has been completed in several stages during the last three years. The contract saw Pyeroy act as the principal contractor completing traffic management, scaffold, grit blast paint, refurbishment, concrete and steel repair work to the superstructure as well as repainting the bridge soffits. An interesting aspect of the work was that the sixteen-strong Pyeroy team of contractors and underground engineers only had access to the Victorian bridge for one to two hours a night (for the soffit works) when trains were not running. During these restricted time the team had to erect the scaffolding, prepare and apply protective coatings to the soffit steelwork before dismantling and clearing the site each night before the trains started running again.

The company has recently been awarded a Euro 3 million contract for the coatings maintenance and refurbishment of wind turbines at the Arklow Offshore Wind Power Plant in the Irish Sea.
Located on the Arklow Bank about 10km off the coast of County Wicklow and 60km south of Dublin, the wind farm comprises seven, 3.6 megawatt turbines providing renewable energy to meet the electricity requirements of around 16,000 Irish households.

As part of a 6 month refurbishment contract Pyeroy will carry out the abrasive blast cleaning and repainting of the base sections of all seven tubular steel towers extending from the sea level splash zone to the turbine’s access platform located 13m above. The special anticorrosion paint specification comprises abrasive blast cleaning followed by the application of a 400 micron glass flake epoxy coating and a urethane acrylic top coat at 50 microns. A specialist compound is also used in the splash zone location.

Visions of a straw bale Auction House

GE Sworder & Son Auction House, Essex


Above: Straw bales being put into place to create walls


Above: Sworder's auction house visionary project

Robert Ward-Booth is a partner of GE Sworder & Son, fine art and antique auctioneers, a company founded in 1782 and based in Stansted Mountifitchet in Essex. His vision is to build the largest commercial straw bale building in Europe and the only auctioneer's sales room to be constructed with straw bales in the world. The £1.2 million project to build the new auction room and offices is on time for completion in the spring and is scheduled to hold its first auction in May.

"Whatever we build, we have built for the future," explains Mr Ward-Booth. "It is all about diminishing resources. There is no longer such a thing as cheap energy and it's only going to get worse. We wanted a building that is going to be genuinely sustainable."

The design of the single storey building incorporates straw bales (450mm wide x 350mm high x 1 to 1.1m long) which infill a timber frame. Other sustainable measures within the building include a rainwater catchment system, 4m2 solar water heating panels, a biomass boiler and lime rendered and plastered walls. Another feature that makes the sales room unique is the building technique. "It is what we call a compressive frame, whereby the roof structure is lowered onto the straw walls once all the straw is in place, thus adding the advantages of a load-bearing structure to a framework building," Explains Ms Jones.

In the USA there are about a dozen houses nearing 100 years old that are still inhabited and showing no problems. Mr Ward-Booth is even more optimistic and puts the anticipated age of the new sales room at 150 years. "There are plenty of them about an no evidence of them falling," he adds. When questioned about the safety of the building in terms of fire risk he said "It may seem strange, but when you stack bales up in a wall and plaster them either side, the density of the bales is such that there isn't enough air inside the bales for them to burn," explains Ms Jones.

"Technically we will be self-sufficient in that we will be harvesting all the water that falls on the building" says Mr Ward-Booth. Mr Ward-Booth said that "in terms of cost it works out about £100 a square foot which is about right."

Acqua, sapone e creativita

Casantica, Novembre/Dicembre 2007

L'antico incontra l'hitech
La soluzione piu bizzarra della nostra passerella e sicuramente rappresenta-ta da questo curioso (e, a nostro parere, efficacissimo) matrimonio fravecchio e nuovo, fra legno di recupero e materiali hi-tech (il vetro e le rubinetterie iper-contemporanee).




Un lavabo da antiquari
Siete in cerca di un lavabo elegante e classico? Questo vecchio tavolino rinvenuto in un mercantino antiquario e adattato allo scopo puo facilmente fare al caso vostro. Un consiglio: quanto piu e bello il mobile scelto come supporto tanto piu risultera ricercato ed esclusivo il risultato finale.

Barcelona beachside nightclub

KUBIK, the Berlin nightclub franchise, has built a trendy new nightclub bar designed by Jan Kampshoff and Marc Günnewig of arty ModulorBeat on the sea front in Barcelona from green internally illuminated polyethylene industrial chemical stillages (photo above). Inhabitat describe them as having a 'contemporary air of reclaimed material usage' but they are in fact made from new plastic.

Inhabitat story

Radical reuse at Postopolis

New York USA - INHABITAT's mission is to make good design green, and this includes support for the reuse of shipping containers for housing, eg Zigloo Domestique by Keith Dewey in British Columbia, which featured a lot of polyurethane foam insulation.

Inhabitat co-organised a get-together of designblogradicals, called Postopolis, featuring some very interesting talks from radical designers including the UK's own Tom Dixon, in New York in May 2007, which are available as youtube videos.

Postopolis
Reuse and Inhabitat