Going Green Underground: Eco-Retro Earth House Designs They may look a bit dated at first, or at least more whimsical than required for functional living. Still, these earth houses have more to offer than custom curves and a unique aesthetic – including a set of design philosophies, strategies and tactics that are far from just superficial nods to sustainable trends. The designs take everything into account from fire and earthquake protection to integral insulation-efficient arches and buffer rooms for energy-free temperature control. While not every Erdhaus is actually built under the existing ground on a site, they are all tied to their earthen surroundings by sloping sheaths of greenery. Some of these are built as continuous strip communities, a kind of eco-suburb that looks from a distance like a simple set of rolling hills. From an energy generation standpoint, all of the standard sustainable solutions are also available: geothermal, water, solar and wind.
Subtle Subterranean House is Underground & Understated Many underground homes have relatively extreme designs, either due to ultra-wealthy clients who give their architects a (literal or at least metaphorical) blank check to design a luxury dream house, or because of existing conditions (for instance; retrofitting an old military base and/or missile silo to be a new home). This modest alternative shows the power of simplicity in a nonetheless remarkable minimalist home in the ground. BCHO Architects started by carving a basic box-shaped void into the earth, holding a place for the space with likewise simple retaining walls of rough and raw board-formed concrete. A side stairway starts the sequence of movement down into this space, slowly taking into increasingly more enclosed areas. Along the way, the naturalistic texture of this bounding structure is reprised in real-dirt exterior courtyard floors, rammed-earth walls outside and natural-finish wooden furniture inside.
Fallingwater Cottages, or: How to Win a Design Competition The right answer is only obvious in retrospect, as with this wonderfully-integrated and highly-contextual solution to a difficult problem: what does one make that neither adds to nor subtracts from the most famous house in American architectural history? Frank Lloyd Wright’s own autobiographical words gave the winning group, Padkau Architects, the first hint: “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything …. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Another clue comes from the nature of the project – it had needed to be small and green, require few active systems and less electricity than a typical home, and ideally integrating natural heating and cooling techniques. The underground homes proposed are tucked into grassy mounds, blending in with the surrounding landscape and providing minimalist shelters for visiting artists-in-residence, architects and educators.
UK Celebrity Plans on Building Huge Underground Eco-Home Shaped like an abstract flower and amazing from any aerial view, this underground house is nearly invisible – a rolling hill in the landscape – viewed from on the ground and all around. From below it blends in seamlessly with the natural surroundings. From above it is a beacon in the night. And inside, well, the pictures show it all. At nearly ten thousand square feet, this house designed by Make Architects for all-star football player Gary Neville is as architecturally daring as it is eco-friendly – it aims to be the first carbon-neutral house in all of Great Britain. Local materials and traditional construction techniques will reduce transportation and technology waste while geothermal heat, solar roof panels and wind turbines will generate sustainable energy on the site. This may be the boldest, biggest and best modern underground home plan to date.
‘Invisible’ Set of Green Homes to be Hidden Underground Going green does not just mean eco-friendly building systems and sustainable construction materials. It can also imply a blending with the landscape – an implied recognition that our structures come second to nature. That, at least, is the idea behind this set of remarkable modern underground home designs commissioned by Michael Hill. The restrictions on their construction are severe with good reason: to preserve the rolling hillscape of this former golf course, all of the houses will be nearly entirely underground and environment-disturbing exterior amenities (such as spas or swimming pools) are forbidden as they would spoil the surrounding landscapes. Seventeen homes in total are planned for this expansive stretch of grassy hills. The design concept revolves around privacy but also around maintaining natural beauty and the seclusion that comes with being in a truly natural setting.
Modern + Green = Unique Underground Home Design Plan Underground homes tend to conjure mental images of hobbit holes and otherwise rounded, earthen residences. This extremely modern house by KWK Promes defies popular conventions and, despite its organic green roof, is constructed of clean lines and clear shapes. Viewed from above or around, the house blends wonderfully into the landscape – even the gentle curves and straight lines seem to work with the horizon and trees in the distance. The grass also absorbs moisture and helps regulate temperatures inside of the home. The barrier between inside and outside is highly permeable, providing continuous connections for residents with the natural world around them through giant sheets of floor-to-ceiling glass. Best of all (for the owners anyway): the lush green roof is only accessible from inside of the house through a set of secure stairs, reserving it as a private getaway for the home.
Classic Stone Barn Home With a Contemporary Other Half Converting an old barn into a home is quite a project in itself, but adding a new living space onto that barn can be a very ambitious undertaking. PPA Architects created a stunning modern addition to this barn conversion in Lesponne in the heart of picturesque Hautes-Pyrénées, France. The barn on the property had already been converted to a gorgeous vacation home with rich wood floors, exposed timber beams, and classic stone walls. The extension project added on a new living area that both complements and perfectly offsets the traditional stone architecture of the original barn. The stone and wood from the barn continue to play a large part in the interior of the newly-extended living space.
Torus House: Curved Courtyard-Wrapping Urban Oasis Privacy and green space can be hard to come by in the city – this house manages to feature both in spades, despite its central location in the Quang Ninh province of Vietnam. Designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects, a fundamental architectural gesture gives shape to the structure and space alike – an upward-spiraling stone building that forms around and within green gardens and roofs. From the architects: “Circulating flow runs around the courtyard and continues to the green roof, connecting all places in the house. This courtyard and green roof compose a sequential garden, which creates a rich relationship between inside and outside the house.” The result is a series of rooms that look down on the central light well and garden area, or allow residents to walk right out into it or onto the tops of the boundary-defining walls, which are themselves grass roofs. Of the materials: “To create a wall with smooth curvature, cubic stones with a thickness of 10cm were carefully stacked.
Hobbit Houses: 15 Grassy Hill-Shaped Dwellings “In a hole in a ground lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing to sit on or eat: It was a hobbit hole and that means comfort.” This line by J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the beloved The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fantasy novels, has inspired hundreds of copycat underground hobbit homes around the world – and is itself inspired by ancient Viking hill houses. These 15 green-roofed dwellings that take a page right out of Tolkien’s books come in all sizes for all kinds of functions, from hotels in New Zealand to backyard playhouses and vintage underground hill-dug duplexes. The World’s First Hobbit Motel (images via: wayfaring.info) For tourists the world over, New Zealand will forever be associated with The Lord of the Rings, since it served as the filming and production location for the film version of the saga. Modern Hobbit Home in Switzerland (images via: toxel) (images via: webecoist)
Maisons intégrées dans le paysage Les anglais les nomment "earth house". Une "earth house" est un style architectural caractérisé par l'utilisation du terrain naturel dans la construction des murs de la maison. Une earth house est habituellement installée partiellement dans le sol et recouverte d'une fine végétation. Ce type de maison est l'une des plus efficaces sur le plan énergétique. En Suisse (Dietikon), village conçu par Peter Vetsch, version très moderne : Cette implantation contraste avec l'environnement des maisons individuelles traditionnelles. La résidence se compose de 9 maisons, dont certaines peuvent comporter jusqu'à 7 chambres. États-Unis : Cette maison est intégrée dans le paysage et possède des murs en béton sur deux côtés avec des murs de verre entre. Surface totale de la maison : 255 m² pour 3 chambres. Écosse, îles Hébrides Version moderne d'une construction de l'âge de pierre. Pays de Galles Maison qu'on peut facilement louper si on n'y prête garde. Maison enterrée unique en Suisse (Vals)
Earth Sheltered Earth Sheltered Homes "Another type of building is emerging: one that actually heals the scars of its own construction. It conserves rainwater and fuel and it provides a habitat for creatures other than the human one. Maybe it will catch on, maybe it won't. We'll see." - Malcolm Wells, 2002. The earth sheltered house uses the ground as insulating blanket which effectively protects it from temperature extremes, wind, rain and extreme weather events. Fifteen feet below ground the soil maintains a fairly constant temperature equal to the annual average temperature of the area's surface air. There are two types of earth sheltered building. Honingham Earth Sheltered Social Housing. Looks like vertical placed logs are helping to support the berm on the right. Earth sheltered home with conventional facade. Earth sheltered home, as above. The facade may accommodate any architectural styling of the home owners choosing. An award winning earth shelter dwelling by Cam Architects. Casa Organica.
Subterranean Living Down a dirt road and between thickets of trees, Paul Queen lives inside a grassy, man-made hill. Deer try to stroll across his rooftop. Gopher tortoises attempt to tunnel into the walls. But inside, Queen can barely hear the rain — or deer hoofsteps. His home is earth-sheltered, meaning it's not exactly underground but is surrounded and insulated by a massive mound of soil. Stephanie Thomas-Rees, a research architect with the Florida Solar Energy Center, said the state's sandy soil and high water table make managing moisture difficult in an earth-sheltered home. "If some contractor came up with a bunch of model homes and put them all in one place where the general public would just walk through them, it would change a lot of people's minds in a hurry," he said. Now Take A Look At This One In Australia:
Green Building Elements | From brick and mortar shops to city planning, we cover sustainable trends in construction, renovation, and more. A byproduct of fossil fuel addiction, massive pit-mines scar the landscape of several US states. The mines have destroyed families, ecosystems, towns, and- when they close- economies. Despite the harm that these mines have caused, however, they may yet play a part in a sustainable utopian future. Not as a mine, but as a vertical, underground, sustainable city. That’s the vision of Matthew Fromboluti the designer behind an “underground skyscraper” that he believes could help heal the mine-scarred landscapes of the US, starting with the desert outside of Bisbee, Arizona. At the heart of Frombulti’s design for these pit mines-turned sustainable cities is a passive climate control system (shown, above) that he calls a solar chimney. You can see more of the Above Below design project below, and see several more pictures at the Frombo design site using the source link at the bottom of the page. Above Below Concept Turns Pit Mine into Underground Sustainable City
Beautiful Green-Roofed Barn Extension in France is Barely Visible From Afar This barn extension in the Pyrénées Mountains has a gorgeous green roof that minimizes its impact on an incredible site overlooking the Adour de Lesponne river valley in France. When the client commissioned PPA Architects to extend the original stone barn building that once stood alone on this enviable pastureland, they made it clear that the existing site and vernacular architecture had to be preserved at all costs. So the firm tucked the new holiday home into the side of the slope and gave it a deceptive log facade wrapped in steel, ensuring that the extension is barely visible from afar. The new extension consists of a guest room, a multi purpose room, a utility area, and a garage. This storage area is quite deceptive. + PPA Architects Via Arch Daily