Last week Anh-Minh gave us a sneak peek into the Sunset Idea House. Saturday's Chronicle included her longer article on San Francisco's first Idea House, which is also one of the first remodeled homes in the country to be LEED-certified. What's so green about a two-unit house that includes a 1,200-square-foot apartment and a 3,600-square-foot main house? Go below the jump to see.
The floors use wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and concrete and fly ash. The paint's low-VOC Benjamin Moore. There's a 50-foot wind turbine in the garden. Computers monitor energy sources and consumption.
However, even the architect, John Lum, says, "as a demo project it's great, but to be truly green it would probably have to be more modest."
Click here to read the article.
Images: Eric Luse
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Comments (9)
This is a trend that I can unfortunately see people going to. This is going to be the "fat free" misfortune that Americans like to fall into. We think that because something is now fat free, we can eat as much as we want. Similarly, just because a house is labled green because of it's use of environmentally friendly products doesn't mean that you can (or should for that matter) build a gigantic house. It seems trendy for the sake of trendy. Being green is about leaving a relatively small footprint. That house is a big ol' foot.
That is a good point. But America is all about "bigger is better."
http://zero255zero.com
I live in a house that is too heated and no one turns out the lights when they leave for the day. But I don't have heat in my room and use a sleeping bag as a blanket to keep that heat on. In no way do I then compensate for my "saving" by doing something spendy with the utilities. I don't even like to use tin foil for lasagna because I know that it is disposable. I need a grey water system as does the rest of the world. I wouldn't flush more if I was using grey water though. We need to be forced to do what we should. Ralph Nader shouldn't just be a 70s pop culture phenom.
I want the chartreuse chairs.
PS--Anybody know about those chairs?
Aulaire - Those are the Kite chairs by Karim Rashid:
http://dwr.com/productdetail.cfm?id=6755
I like the shower tiles.
"as a demo project it's great, but to be truly green it would probably have to be more modest."
brittanykate - The tiles were probably my favorite thing about the house. They used some gorgeous Heath and Ann Sacks designs.