Sitting in a meeting for a client the other day, we were discussing green building and some trends.  It got me to thinking about modern homes and green trends (as in eco-friendly trends).  I think the cleanliness and open spaces often in modern housing equates in many people’s minds to environmentally-friendly.  That is not necessarily true but I do think that in today’s definition of what makes a modern home, we have to stretch and include what the emerging trends are of our time if we are going to define modern by Cheatham’s Rule (as I’m now calling this definition of modern homes).  And if there is a trend that’s important in the last few years it’s green and eco-friendly living.  It’s an industry in of itself.  In fact, if you want to sell anything lately, you slap a green logo on it and walah, your own marketing campaign in a organically ink-dyed, recycled box.

To that end, I saw some interesting photos that bring home this concept to me in different ways.

1.  Inviting the Environment In

There are as many ways to do this as there are ways to express it.  I know that even houses built in the mid-century style do this by having a courtyard or atrium ala Ancient Roman Housing.  In fact, Roman’s viewed the Atrium as key to their entire house.  I’ve seen a house in our neighborhood with a gorgeous atrium framed by a huge tree with all the rooms having access to the light and natural beauty of this open space.

With this concept, I ran across this house at Freshome and I really loved it.  It’s ideal to me because you are sitting right in the middle of the environment, viewing it with the comfort of climate controlled (egads is that really enjoying the environment) and furniture centric approach.  I can totally see having this room in my house and sitting there on the couch, with a blanket watching a storm blow in.  This house is in England and the addition was created by the Crawford Partnership.

Harpenden House - Glass Room Extension

Harpenden House - Glass Room Extension

2. Blending natural environment’s with the home itself.

This concept was first introduced to me way back in the 80’s when a house here in Dallas was built with a sod roof. It’s on Preston right across from Jerry Jone’s old house right where it becomes Oak Lawn and caused the good people of Highland Park fits. But it opened my eyes to the concept. I’ll get a picture in the next few weeks and show you.

I also would put windows in unique places, such as on the floor of a two-story home, trees being built around and incorporated into the design of the house and use of materials that help extoll the virtues of the environment. The last one is brought about by some glass I have seen that lets in the light, without the heat so that you can have better insulation in your house.

I discovered an excellent blog all about this titled – Green Roofs Australia. They have excellent examples of green roofing (in the sense of Grass as roofing versus sustainable roofing which includes non-organic roofing types but is eco-friendly).  I found an excellent visual example here in this article – Green tiles ideal for pitched roofs.

Japanese Green Roof

I’ll work on getting pics of the two grass / sod roofs I know here in Big D.