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Designed to occupy 1,200 square feet of building space and 900 square feet of exterior deck, this vacation home is actually the prototype of the T-modulome, a prefabricated building system first developed in 2002 by Nottoscale.

This stretch of desert near Scotty’s Junction, Nevada, had to be transformed in order to accommodate a modern lifestyle – a well was dug and a leach field created, electricity was brought to the site and a dirt path was built to lead up to the wood, concrete and glass house.

The powerful connection between the inside and outside was created by placing floor-to-ceiling windows in all spaces and slightly raised the building on a concrete plinth to take advantage of the views...

Looking like Epcot Center in Disney World, Montreal’s Biosphere is a museum dedicated to the environment. Originally built as the United States pavilion for the 1967 World Fair Expo, the dome was repurposed into the museum in 1990.

The interactive museum initially showcased the water ecosystem of the Great Lakes region, but has since expanded to encompasses environmental issues such as climate change, air, eco-technologies and sustainable development.

In the words of the great German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling, “Architecture in general is frozen music.” 

If this is to be believed, then the Portland, Oregon based architect Robert Oshatz could be considered a regular virtuoso. Having worked as an architect since the early 70s, Oshatz has become renowned for designing homes with a unique “sense of poetry,” and an appreciation for the natural world – resulting in homes so catered to the local environment that they often appear to blend into the landscape. According to Oshatz, his unique style of design is part of a larger belief in creating human dwellings that exist at peace with the environment that they occupy.

Building a green home, while increasingly popular in recent years, isn't a completely new concept, and the House in Regensburg by Thomas Herzog, built in 1977, still resonates today as a unique and beautiful example of thoughtful, site-responsive architecture.

Elegant in its simplicity, the design employs key sustainable principles, including passive heating and cooling, appropriate material selection and responsive building form, all of which enable the structure to have minimal development impact while maintaining a high degree of efficiency- the result of an integrated approach to site, technology, and design.

Herzog's House in Regensburg is not only a beautiful example of modern design, but also a testament to the fact that creativity is not compromised by sustainability. In fact, creativity is enhanced by this type of contextual and innovative thinking, making for a project that is not only green, but timeless and visually engaging, in both concept and execution.

Situated along the Connecticut shoreline of Long Island Sound, this single-family house is conceived of as an extension of both its natural and social contexts. The crux of the project lies in the juxtaposition of two systems of geometry—projective and radial—defining the project’s response to these environmental and social conditions in both formal and conceptual ways. Projective geometries render the site as pure landscape; that is, as an expanse of scenery that can be viewed from a single point. The radial geometry at work in the house, tied to notions of water, waves, and sea, creates the spiraling form that relates social spaces to private spaces and seamlessly adjoins interior with exterior.

As guest professors at a weeklong workshop at Italy’s largest technical university, the Politecnico di Milano, Visiondivision sought to explore immediate ways to integrate environmental consciousness with contemporary design. The result was “The Patient Gardener,” an 8-meter diameter ring of cherry trees that will be bent, twisted, and pruned to grow into a sprouting, two-story structure.