Jan 28

OCTAGON Sustainable, Affordable Secure Housing Octagon offers an innovative response to the global need for sustainable building, affordable housing and secure shelter… visit their website for more information on Octagon products like the “CoreHouse (TM) Single” house, which can be built in 3 hours. www.octagoneu.com

The following time-lapse video shows the CoreHouse Single pre-fabricated building being built by normal people without specific building or physical skills. This represents the one day of work which it took to complete the build.

Jan 8

Architect Cameron Sinclair hopes to inspire architects and home designers to respond to the world housing crisis. Projects include transitional shelters like an Inflatable Hemp House, a Shipping Container and other ideas that will allow residents to eventually build a more permanent home or improve these sustainable homes. His focus is on how architecture interacts with the community and provides several plans for community centers. Countries include Africa, India, México, U.S.A., Brazil, China, Israel, Palestine, Vietnam.

His group provided Sunami relief shelters, community centers and schools. The parents and kids built and are now using theses schools. He worked with residents and volunteers in New Orleans after Katrina hurricane, to clean, redesign and rehabilitate homes without waiting for FEMA to tell them what to do. Quick assembly emergency shelters and tents, devemoped by hundreds of architects and designers and inventors that are getting involved around the world in humanitarian work.

Apr 29

Architect Michael Reynolds has spent the last thirty years developing the ideal sustainable home. He calls this type of design “Biotecture” and makes good use of recycled tires and aluminum cans for the building’s foundation and walls. The Earthships cost about the same as a conventional home to build, but without having to pay as much or in some cases no utility costs. Michael Reynolds has just released a new “Garbage Warrior” DVD documenting his plight.