If only it were this easy...

I liked it when it was called a camper...

It's happened more than once...

You're sitting at an Ohio State tailgate, a beer deep for every hour after midnight, and you think to yourself, "I could really go for a power nap right now."

I present to you the Travelodge Travelpod [Version 2.0]!

These glass shipping container-like boxes can be rented like regular hotel rooms and travel virtually anywhere! The initial trials were carried out last summer, but now they've added 40% more space and all kinds of crazy new Travelpod amenities.

From their website:

Travelodge has produced the ultimate accessory for lovers of outdoor entertainment. Forget waterlogged tents - now you can have for the first time, a mobile bedroom or 'Travelpod' to make even the fussiest festival-goer feel at home.

The room comes complete with:
- Air conditioning
- Heater
- Flat screen TV
- DVD player with a collection of DVDs
- Ambient lighting which includes bedside lights and a illuminated headboard
- Tea / coffee making facilities
- Washroom with biodegradable toilet and washbasin with running water facilities

In addition, the furnishings are made from recyclable timber and lighting has been designed to use low wattage bulbs. The room comes complete with a luxury double bed, bedside lights, duvet, pillows, fully carpeted floor, window blinds, dressing table with light, mirror and chair.

The palatial pod is sealed in a 6 metre (length) by 2.4 metre (width) x 2.6 metre (height) clear polycarbonate glass box but inside, the features replicate the conventional Travelodge hotel room just recently re-designed.

Prefabbed modular sectional everything...

After seeing me Dad burn through three drills as he Bob Vila-ed our back yard into a deck lovers paradise, I'm interested to see how a product like this takes off.


Deck work isn't easy. It's hard, laborious lifting and setting that can be made all the more difficult if you're too cheap to buy the beer (i.e. your friends won't help you out). Since we've seen modular carpeting, garage tiles, furniture, storage...why not modular decking?

At about $600 for a 100 square foot room (with you as foreman...free labor!), I'd say that's not a bad price...given you already have an extremely flat surface to work with.

While the modular/prefab/preassemble/sectional craze continues to go bonkers, I can't help but think that a product like this takes something away from the aesthetic of an area/building. Maybe it's because I'm a wood traditionalist, but in my opinion decking, shingles and crown molding lose a lot of artistic integrity when they're prefabbed or mass produced. While definitely easier to construct and maintain, a part of me would stand on that product and say "I'm standing on a modular surface," not "I'm standing on a deck." Does that make sense?

I guess there's just something to be said about the sturdiness and sweat put into a "man deck" with all of the built-in barbeques, flat screen tvs, fire pits, hammocks ($19,500!!!)....I could keep going, but I'm starting to drool.

From their website:

Snapping Deck Tile : a do-it-yourself product designed for the average homeowners. It instantly provides a solid hardwood floor on the patio, balcony, roof top, next to a pool or spa, and also kitchen and bathroom areas in a couple of hours without the hassles of building a deck in the conventional way in multiple days.

Snapping Deck Tile comes with with a plastic base engineered with an intelligent interlocking mechanism, which allows flexibility and variety in use. You can design a unique balcony deck for your apartment, pull it up 6 months later, and create another balcony deck for your next apartment in an hour. Tiles are easily rotated, mixed, and matched to create various patterns. The possibilities are endless.

Little people, big houses....

How low impact is a $4 million house?

How low impact is a $4 million house?

How low impact is a $4 million house?

I keep asking the same question because I can't come to an honest conclusion!?!?!

The first ever Wired home, built in conjunction with LivingHomes, is coming to Los Angeles this fall. Apparently, environmental frugality comes at a bank-breaking price.

Flash saturated gallery HERE.

I just don't get it.

Of course, I'm the kind of person that will take a $700, Vegas-style bar tab over an iPhone any day. So maybe it's just me.

But isn't there an inherent economic responsibility in green design? Bueller?

LivingHomes, the pioneer in green, prefabricated environment(s), would/could/should have a better conceptual understanding of what this movement actually entails.

Pioneer [pi-o-neer]: one who is first or among the earliest in any field of
inquiry, enterprise, or progress.

It's a straightforward concept: modular design and prefab construction are driven at their cores by a lust for simplistic efficiency, both in labor and waste reduction, AS WELL AS ECONOMICS.

4057 square feet in what is destined to be a 2-person home is extravagance at its worst, regardless of the LEED rating. Even at half that price, I still think that luxury and the environment were never meant to live in harmony. Life is supposed to equal subsistence, not proof of existence.

Still, the one-day installation video is kinda cool. Size it down to 900 square feet and you could race an Amish barn by sun-up!

The press release can be found here.

Fortunately, projects such as these are beginning to be seen as the financial flops that they really are, and (woohoo) a "small house" movement is afoot.

From the SF Chronicle: Open plans, unpretentious design characterize new, small houses

Wanna take it to an extreme? Take one of Jay Shafer's courses. He's been living in small houses for a decade now. How small? Really small. How worth it? Really worth it. Under most circumstances, building costs for a home affixed to a permanent foundation range from $100-$200 per square foot.

I'll take a B-52 Bungalow: A not-quite-so-tiny tiny house, the B-52 interior has many great features - porch, daybed, cast-iron stove, ten gallon water heater, tub, toilet, vanity, four-burner range, stainless steel refrigerator and sink - with the addition of a bump-out over the porch. The form of this house was inspired by the airplane bungalows of California. Here it is pictured with optional cedar siding and a cedar shingle roof.

















More?

The M-House.
Alchemy Architect's Wee House.
The Small House Society.
On wheels?
On wheels ala the circus?

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep your Wired home.

Unless you're giving it away.

In that case, I'll take it.

No?

Damn.

Silver twinkie, eat your heart out...

I have been a fan of the Airstream since I was a kid. There's something about chrome-on-wheels that calls out to you as a boy. It runs deep, from the loins to the spine, obviously something set in our DNA. Like grunting. Kind of. OK. Not really. It's just a camper, but it IS a symbol of the great outdoors. You can't see one rolling down the road and without thinking firewood, bonfires, and bank liens.

But alas, my baby truck, a mere puppy to my father's Bull Mastiff of an F350, can't take the weight of the polished beast. Well, it couldn't take the weight of this either, but it would be an excuse to buy a new (eco-friendly, of course) truck.

It's a green, space-saving, fits-on-the-back-of-your-truck minihome!

The design team, Sustain Design Studio (site bogged down with Flash, so no sharing), describes the home as:

The world's first, completely self-sufficient, ecological trailer design, the miniHome features many of the 'mod-cons' that consumers have come to expect, without the associated energy, resource or material use. Within a well-organized 38 sm (350 sf), there is everything you need for comfortable, year-round, sustainable living.

To cool for home school.