For the past two years, my husband and I have worked slowly with an architect to build our dream home. Over time our initial image has morphed as we have become more educated on green materials and living lightly on this earth. Unfortunately, the subdivision we have bought property in has not been on-board with our more modern and eco-friendly design and said that our design "would bring down the value of the neighborhood". Mind you this is a neighborhood that wants minimal yards and impact on the surrounding environment. Needless to say, our area is conservative and anything other than traditional or European architecture is "just plain weird"! With our heads hung low after our initial architectural rejection, we soften the look of our house by removing our flat roof and hard lines on the exterior. This past weekend, we went to Chicago to take our 6 year to the Museum of Science and Industry. He was just as excited as I was to finally have a look at Michelle Kauffman's Smart Home on exhibit. He is my budding young architect who promises to build me a home in Hawaii when he is older. (I'll take that, thank you!) Michelle's Smart Home was everything I could want and more and a wonderful example of green living. Sadly we could not take any picture of the interior, but I will say it was absolutely fabulous!
This lovely patio off of the dining area allows for maxium indoor/out door living. Many of the windows on the main level retracted to fully open the indoor living space to the exterior living space. There is another outdoor eating area such as the next to the kitchen.
Although you can't see it here, this house has a living roof! Green areas on the roof as well as a patio/roof top garden not only add to the home's sense of earth friendly design, it's just plain cool!
Outside of the home and around the exhibit, you will see wonderful examples of urban garden's. Compact, but full of visual impact, these vertical gardens were one of my favorite features. Below features another great vertical garden structure that would be great for adding privacy as well as beauty.
My son decided that the Smart Home was the best thing he saw at the museum that day. Today, I ordered him some more Lego's so that he can replicate the home in Lego's. My husband and I walked away ready to sell our lot and start again, but this with a smart home. This home was initially manufactured only 25 minutes from us and installed piece by piece on site as part of the new manufactured home boom. We were so excited with everything we saw in this home and a bit more anxious to build the original dream home in our heads.
This is the first piece I made and I was just as excited with the shape that the pendant took on as I was the stone. Each stone has an irregular honeycomb shape, which reminded me of those molecular models I vaguely remember from chemistry. I have come up with some complimentary designs just using this shape and I can't tell you how anxious I have been to find some time to work on them.
