The backyard-shed-as-home-office idea is catching on in North America, but it is nothing compared to what is going on in the UK. There, they are being promoted as turnkey solutions that reduce commuting, save money for companies, and are being offered as fully outfitted workspaces, the cubicle of the 21st century.

Lanefab

It takes guts to make change happen, and some cities have them, others don't. In Vancouver, they changed the regulations to permit housing in back lanes, calling it EcoDensity; it is a carefully crafted bit of legislation that protects views and privacy but gets rid of the NIMBY factor that has paralyzed this kind of thing elsewhere.

The website Sunday Magazine has an interesting idea: it looks at the New York Times Sunday Magazine of exactly 100 years ago for the most interesting article.

Vision Zero

Houses of the future just aren't what they used to be. These days, the vision of the future people want to see is exactly what they have now, the big suburban house with a three car garage. So that is what Dow Chemical and Cobblestone Homes created with their Vision Zero demonstration project.

Images by B. Alter

Grand Designs Live is a biiiiig show, covering every aspect of home design: building products, gardens, interior design, technology and show homes.

The Earth Advantage Institute promotes a green building standard from the Northwest that combines the energy requirements of Energy Star with healthy home attributes like air quality, environmental responsibility and and resource efficiency.

Image from CMX-CIPHEX, Lloyd Alter

27% of North America's greenhouse gas comes from the production of electric power, so it makes sense to use as little of it as possible. That is why I am not as enthusiastic about ground source heat pumps as many others are; they run on electricity.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, but you won't get to build yours

At the start of the mortgage crisis, I wrote:

"In the last decade, appraisals didn't matter that much; the banks were just selling the paper in CDO s to someone else.

Image by Ian Duke, via Wikipedia Commons.

The boundless growth of suburban sprawl in the US, long blamed for everything from climate change to social segregation, may finally be slowing down.

Very few houses have hydronic (hot water radiator) heating in North America; most have forced air systems with ductwork that does double duty as heating and air conditioning, supplying air to the wrong place at least half of the year. Almost everyone in Europe and those of us in older houses have radiators; it is quieter, there are no bulkheads for ductwork, and there is less dust moving around.