Ashmount Residence Garden

Ashmount Residence Garden provokes the concept of courtyard living, interior garden keeps your interiors away from peeps and provides fresh air. Ashmount Residence Garden asks us why cut a tree in your backyard?
Ashmount Residence Garden brings space deck when you can use it in the most beautiful of ways to provide fresh air, cooling and above all keeps home away from the awkward eyes trying to get to your interiors?
Ashmount Residence Garden are designed by Ohashi Design Studio, the Ashmount Residence Garden tries to integrate a beautiful sprawling oak tree into an even more beautiful deck.


The fence of Ashmount Residence Garden matches the shape of the tree’s low-hanging branches and the sandblasted glass.
Ashmount Residence Garden provides security and natural lighting to illuminate the interiors in a green way. The indoor garden also facilitates plantations and opportunities for landscaping.

Largest eco-village in UK

Sustainable housing project will be the largest in the UK.

Aspiring to be the largest eco-village in the United Kingdom, the Hanham Hall Development will consist of over 190 homes built to house people with a green mind. The development will include an onsite biomass CHP plant, which will generate heat and power for the village. The village will also feature reed beds, shops for farmers to sell their produce, bicycle storage and an ecofriendly drainage system as well.


The project is slated to be completed by 2016, with the first home coming up next year. Falling under the government’s Carbon Challenge Programme, the complex will be designed in a green way to its core. The development will be free of VOCs to ensure healthier living. SIPS Panels will be used at the main structural element throughout the complex with other energy-efficient systems also finding a place for themselves. Waste materials will be recycled onsite to ensure the complex’s zero-emission aesthetics.

Homestead House by Michael Jantzen

Modular home generates solar and wind electricity, harvests rainwater.

Designed by Michael Jantzen, the Homestead House is a design for alternative housing that explores the potential use of renewable energy generating systems and recyclable materials to reduce the carbon footprint of its owners. The modular house is to be made from recyclable steel sheets, which are to be bolted together for easy disassembly. This allows the homeowner to construct it with ease and in minimum time and with minimum cost.

Being easy to disassemble, the house can also be reconstructed at any preferred location without spending too much on the entire process. Once the steel arches are bolted together, they don’t require any additional material to hold the house together.

The Homestead House is designed to function off-the-grid, where photovoltaic cells and a small vertical axis wind turbine generate the required amount of electricity to power the home. Other than on-site energy generating systems, the Homestead House harvests rainwater through the roof arches and directs it to water storage tanks that can be placed underground. Passive solar techniques are used to heat and cool the interiors according to seasons and the requirements of the homeowners

Sears Tower to get a green

Energy efficient systems and wind turbines to grace Sears Tower.

Often being criticized as one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gases, the Sears Tower will be changing the misconception, at least for itself, as the authorities are planning a $350 million retrofit which will reduce the tower’s energy consumption by as much as 80%, owing to five years’ worth of thorough upgrades.


The plan is to install energy efficient internal lighting, heating, cooling and elevator systems, wind turbines that sprout from the tower’s recessed rooftops and an overall energy reduction by upgrades in the glass exterior. With the enormous size of the architecture that totals to about 4.5 million square feet of office and retail space, the tower’s retrofitting is expected to be one of the largest ever tried on site, even bigger and better than the Empire State Building’s makeover that was planned earlier this year.

Vodafone Mobile Home

Solar-powered mobile home for Vodafone.

Vodafone is promoting its fixed phone and wireless internet service using a transparent mobile home that is powered entirely by the energy of the sun that is harnessed through roof-mounted photovoltaic panels. Designed by Waskman Design Studio, with Creative Space Culdesac, the home is currently being occupied by a blogger and his family of wife and two children, who are presently using the mobile home for a vacation.


Since the home has no built-in propulsion system, carrying it around town won’t be an ecofriendly affair. However, with lightweight construction that includes walls made of white polyethylene panels and a transparent polycarbonate structure, the mobile home doesn’t add much weight to the four-wheel-drive vehicle, which is used to tow the home. The 6m long and 2.5m wide home is divided into two floors, with a modernized interior and a well-equipped bedroom.

Uboat, houseboat that’s wholesome green

Solar-powered houseboat recycles waste.

For those of you who have had the pleasure of living in a houseboat, the experience might have been mesmerizing. From fun, this experience can quickly turn into a necessity if glaciers keep on increasing the sea level at a pace at which they’re today. Industrial designer Wyatt Little is trying to keep abreast with the needs of the future in the greenest possible way. Little has designed a stunning houseboat, which has been carefully planned after living in a houseboat for about six years.

Dubbed the Uboat, the electrically propelled houseboat eliminates the environmental issues commonly associated with boats. Mostly in all urban areas, there is always some sort of large body of water, be it a canal, bayou, lake, or ocean, which Little wants to make just as livable as land. By implementing this idea it would reduce commuter and residential pollution, all the while bringing a fresh new look to city waters that more often than not go unlooked.

The boat will not produce any sewage what-so-ever. All waste will be incinerated using a special toilet. Water comes from 2 different sources - the gray water will be collected by the vessel’s Heavy Duty PAR pump at the bottom of the vessel. This pump is capable of pumping 24 gallons of water per minute, so it is perfectly suited for daily tasks that require large amount of water like showers.

When considering drinking water the designer focused on the statistics that everyone needs to consume 1/2 ounce of water per pound of body weight. So, with this formula in mind Little designed a water cistern in the form of a glass wall that will sustain one person weighing approximately 200 pounds for at least a year. When the rain water is collected it will pass through a filtration system and zapped by an ultraviolet light inside of the tank, which makes it suitable for consumption The houseboat’s wooden deck is made from Plyboo FSC certified bamboo plywood, which is 100% renewable. The facades are Insulated metal panels which have a thin metal skin and foam insulation for the core. They provide excellent thermal protection and efficient use of materials. The boat floats on two large pontoons made of recycled polypropylene.

Sustainable dormitories for Thai orphanage

Dormitories made from locally harvested bamboo collect rainwater.

Architecture firm TYIN Tegnestue has designed sustainable dwellings, which will serve as dormitories for an orphanage in Noh Bo, a small village on the Thai-Burmese border. The area where majority of inhabitants are Karen refugees, had one orphanage sheltering 24 children. As the number of children grew to 50, the orphanage was in need of new dormitories which needed to be green and somehow recreate what children would have experienced in a more normal situation.

The answer was six sleeping units where each of the children had their own private space to call home, a neighborhood of friends and space to play and interact. The shape of the houses helped the workers christen the dwellings as “Soe Ker Tie Hias”, which means “Butterfly Houses”. The dormitories are made using the traditional bamboo weaving technique and most of the bamboo is harvested within a few kilometers of the site.

The unique shape of the roof is designed in a manner in which it can harvest rainwater to provide water for the children during drier periods. The entire construction is prefabricated and assembled onsite with bolts to ensure reasonable strength.

Dutch architecture

Dutch architecture firm, Monolab, has designed a high-rise sustainable tower for Rotterdam that will definitely be like a green star on the city’s skyline. The 450m high tower will leave conventions aside and will use the latest in technology to keep the carbon footprint of the eco architecture to a minimum. The ambitious plan will minimize wind and shadow effects and will make use of a network of walkways to connect the tower to the land.

To lower the structure’s carbon footprint, the tower’s façade will use photovoll glass, which will harness solar energy to power the structure. Unlike a central core that is used for elevators and stairs, this new tower will be designed with the elevators and stairs placed on the outside of the tower. During evenings the outside of the tower will be illuminated with LEDs that make the outermost skin of the façade.

Ivory of Dubai

The sustainable structure features a beautiful latticed facade inspired by traditional motifs, and includes plans for solar film, geothermal heating and cooling, a green roof, and grey water recycling. The sustainable tower is designed to be constructed from mostly recycled materials at net zero energy, and it can generate enough solar energy to completely power itself!

According to XTEN the sustainable Architecture, the woven design featured in the tower’s tubes is inspired by traditional patterns that relate to the Islamic religion. The tubes unfurl at the top of the sustainable structure in a trio of petals that are “oriented towards specific views and directions that resonate with both the past and future of Dubai. The first petal is aligned with Mecca, to the Southwest of the project site. Moving clockwise at the top of the ZPO Tower, the second petal is directed toward the old town of Deira, a neighborhood of traditional souks, mosques, old fortress walls and wind towers. From the observation deck in the third petal of the sustainable tower one surveys the changing skyline along Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Road.”

Portable vertical gardens

With the land available for farming being used to develop skyscrapers, environmentalists are of the opinion that in a couple of decades millions would starve to death if something serious is not planned at the moment. While architects are envisioning vertical ecosystems that are capable of generating food and energy, there are others who are following a much more decent approach to tackle the food crisis. Industrial designers Daniele Adamo and Ravel Casela have designed a portable vertical garden that can fit in a wall just 3 meters long.

renewable electricity campus

The South Ayrshire Council has approved the Ayr Campus, which will be constructed on the Craigie Estate. The construction of this £260 million Ayr campus of the University of the West of Scotland is believed to start in September by Bovis Lend Lease UK. The design of Ayr campus that is located very close to River Ayr has adopted policies that include rainwater harvesting and on-site power generation using sustainable sources, giving it a high environmentl value. The Natural Garden Society, Historic Scotland, Scottish development.