Hey everyone, it’s friday again, and Black 50L Friday and Reek’s got new stuff all across the board. The big change you’ll notice when you come by will be a nice, new snowy Mainstore showcasing the new Snowy Cottage.

The cottage is custom sculpted with baked textures, snowbanks and a bunch of fun little details. Cute french and dutch doors, along with a cozy little loft with a handmade ladder leading up really make it cozy. You should come down and just give it a quick walkthrough at the least

Also, out for today, and for 50L today ONLY, is the Reek Couples Bench, custom sculpts and baked wood textures, along with a custom couple’s sit pose made by Autumn Hykova of Tiny Bird.

Oh, and here’s a few detail pictures of the cottage:

Come on over to the Reek Mainstore on Buster to grab your 50L Item and the Snowy Cottage!

Teleport to Reek!

-Riq

After the Second World War 98% of buildings and houses in Tokyo had been destroyed. During the reconstruction of the country some Japanese architects thought that the future of architecture should be the most “modular” possible; they were part of the metabolic movement. These architects, worried about the future of our society, thought that living standards would be better if architecture structures were flexible and extensible, they would be better if they grew as if they were a living organism composed by modules. One of the most important metabolist architects of the post-war era was Kisho Kurokawa. He designed the first modular building: the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Shinbashi, Tokyo.
The building consists of two big columns that form the core. 140 prefabricated capsules were added to this core, each of them attached to one of the two columns with four big screws. Capsules can be replaced by new ones as time passes by and they are built in a factory. The current capsules have a television, a bathroom, a mini-kitchen, a bed, two built-in closets and even a calculator.

One of the first designs of the currently installed capsules.

After almost 40 years the Nakagin Capsule Tower is still in place but the capsule replacement system is not as simple as it was thought at the beginning and the building is getting old. The inhabitants of the tower have decided to demolish it to build a traditional office tower, something the international community of architects opposes. Many of them consider it an exponent of high historical value of how our cities could be nowadays but never happened. It is a reminder of the paths that were not taken, that there was a possibility of other worlds in where we could live in.

(via kirainet.com)
(all photo’s are courtesy of tomio ohashi)

Site-Specific and Bluebrown has joined forces and launched Prefab Company Limited.  The focus of this newly founded company is to further research and develop technology for prefabricated construction system in Thailand.

We have recently introduced the first product of our up coming product line.  It is a small 34 square meter home with one bedroom, one bathroom, one living room and an outdoor patio with small kitchenette.  The price of the home starts at 600,000.00 Thai Baht.

The home was designed around the concept of shipping container but with improved dimensions allowing higher ceiling height and wider width. 

The structures are made from re-approprited or recycled steel elements where possible.  The exterior finish is made from a wood product that has been engineered from saw dust and recycled milk bottles.

The home is available initially for Thai market with several roof options.

Clothing – Gorean silks, FW gowns/robes of concealment, Panther outfits, She-Urt
Market items – Cheese, pottery, vegetables, flowers, fabric carts, crates of mirrors, daggers, sugar & more.
Hair – Medieval inspired styles as well as contemporary
Skins – Modern & Drow
Furniture – Servery Set, Baths & Thrones, Scrub Bucket & Washing Basin (animated)
Prefabs – Panther Camp, Panther Exchange Point, Medieval buildings, taverns, theatres & more!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Breven/22/99/73

ZETA Communities, a San Francisco-based green prefab builder, has been quietly developing an energy management system that it says will be ready to be installed in all the startup’s projects starting next year. The system, called zTherm, automatically opens vents, draws heat from thermal mass, and takes other low-cost measures to cool or heat a house without cranking up the air conditioner or furnace. While ZETA, founded in 2007 and backed with $5 million in venture capital, has so far built just one structure and is in the process of completing another, CEO Naomi Porat tells us the firm has a pipeline of projects totaling more than 1,000 units that are scheduled to be built in 2010 and 2011.

ZETA constructs buildings as modules in a factory and then assembles them in the field, cutting construction time in half and using about 50 percent less material in the process. The startup aims to construct multifamily housing and mixed-use commercial structures that are net-zero energy — meaning they produce as much or more energy than they consume — and that are priced competitively with conventionally made buildings. zTherm is an important part of the firm’s energy-saving and pricing goals. The technology, which has so far just been installed at a demonstration home in Oakland, Calif., is what Porat calls ZETA’s “central nervous system” because of its ability to make choices about economizing heating and cooling settings to reduce building energy use by 10-15 percent.

ZETA says the proprietary system will cost about $200 to install (it won’t, at least initially, be sold as a separate product). zTherm automatically takes steps to achieve the desired indoor temperature, starting with the least costly approach, such as opening a skylight or fresh air vent (a sensor detects if it’s raining). If that doesn’t do the trick, said John Stockton, an engineering consultant to ZETA for zTherm, the system will take an intermediate step like turning on a fan to cool the building or, if the concrete basement has absorbed and retained a large amount of heat during the day, closing the vents and allowing the heat to rise and warm the interior. These “passive” measures will be used first before air conditioning or heating — the most energy-intensive and costly actions — are taken, according to Stockton.

ZETA has plans to add more features to zTherm that could be ready in about 18 months, said Shilpa Sankaran, VP of business operations, who described the system as an “ongoing innovation.” They may include controls of additional systems such as lighting; a front-end, web-enabled dashboard (the current version is controlled through a wall-mounted unit, but ZETA is open to partnering with existing energy dashboard developers); and smart grid interoperability, such as the ability to communicate with smart meters and appliances and reduce energy use during peak demand.

The zTherm energy system is part of a host of other technologies that ZETA employs to achieve its promise of net-zero energy, Porat said. Others include wastewater heat recovery, a heating, cooling and ventilation system that uses a high-efficiency heat pump and an air-to-air heat exchanger, and a super-tight building envelope with high-performance windows and insulation. Such features allow ZETA buildings to use 40-60 percent less energy overall than conventional, site-built structures, according to Porat. To achieve net-zero energy, ZETA adds solar panels – which would generate as much renewable energy or more than is needed by the building over the course of a year and then feed it to the electric grid (for example, ZETA’s currently building an environmental center and lab in San Francisco that will use a 3.6 kW PV system to achieve net zero). ZETA’s clients can choose to have a third party validate the net zero target, and the startup will monitor actual energy usage for all projects for an entire year and make any needed adjustments.

The goal of building net zero-energy buildings has been gaining momentum in recent years. The Department of Energy launched a zero-energy initiative last year aimed at developing “marketable” commercial buildings that produce as much energy as they consume by 2025, and in June the DOE set aside $100 million for research projects that will help “achieve net-zero energy buildings.”

Last September, California adopted an energy efficiency plan that calls for all new residential construction in the state to be net-zero energy by 2020 and all new commercial construction to be net zero by 2030. And the White House issued an executive order this October requiring all federal buildings planned after 2020 to be designed to achieve net zero.

The construction industry as a whole, however, has been hit hard by the economic slump, and as a young startup ZETA faces an uphill battle to win major deals. Financial services firm Canaccord Adams, in a recent green building newsletter, quoted Ken Simonsen, chief economist at the trade group Associated General Contractors of America, as forecasting that nonresidential construction spending this year will shrink by 3-7 percent and possibly remain flat or grow by as much as 5 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, total U.S. construction next year is expected to range anywhere from a 4 percent contraction to a 2 percent expansion, according to Simonsen . The good news for ZETA: the chief economist for the professional association American Institute of Architects says energy efficiency will remain a priority in home design due to rising energy costs, according to Canaccord.

But even green prefab hasn’t been immune to the downturn in the market. Oakland, Calif.-based mkDesigns closed this May after having built 51 prefab buildings since 2004. Two of mkDesigns’ factory partners went out of business and several clients lost financing for projects, forcing founder Michelle Kaufmann to sell the assets of the company (she soon launched a new green prefab firm, this time targeting larger community developments).

ZETA, like Kaufmann in her newest venture, believes that prefab can only be successful by achieving scale. Porat told us that the firm is mostly focused on large multifamily developments of between 30 and 300 units a piece. As part of the effort to scale, ZETA opened its own factory last month in Sacramento, a 91,000-square-foot facility that will be able to crank out 400-500 units per year.  And the startup’s business plan, Porat said, calls for establishing similar factories elsewhere in the country, at around $2 million apiece, that would serve communities within a 200-300 mile radius.

Image courtesy ZETA Communities

Fab Pre-Fab

Killing time is proving to bring great finds!  Once again, was I was taking a few minutes to myself between AutoCAD and picking out fixtures for ADA plumbing to regroup my troops and tea it up I came upon an subject that has always fascinated me.  Pre-fab homes.

Really?  Pre-fab homes Hanna?  Most definitely!  I have always wondered profusely about why prefabricated homes had to look the way they did/do.  Why do they HAVE to look like they are pre-fabs?  Why do they HAVE to look like they cost less than the stick built homes just down the street?  I always wanted to see a modern take on the pre-fab, something to give the fab a new look, rather something FABulous.  Getting back to my first and foremost principle in design, simplicity, I was puzzled why they did not make a “box concept” that you could purchase, finish them (as your budget would allow) from a choice of, oh say five options, choose which sides you wanted to remain on the box, then place them side by side and create a simple and elegant prefab’ed home, or at least create a home that was distinct enough that it did not need to over-mimic stick built details in order to prove it was a house.  Why not celebrate the uniqueness of a prefabricated versus a stick built home?  Author, Allison Arieff, seemingly thought along the same lines, wrote a book about it and also took her position at dwell magazine to her advantage and created a challenge to get the fab-prefab accomplished.

In 2003 dwell magazine hosted a challenge to 16 architects to design a modern prefabricated home for $200,000 or less.  Looking back in history this is a feat that has been attempted by some of the most creative minds design and architecture have ever seen (at least in my opinion!) such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Philippe Starck.  Unfortunately their ideas and efforts were never brought to fruition (Prefab, Allison Arieff).  There we bumps along the way as well as celebrationS but the overall product is stunning to look at and something that I would be overjoyed to call my home.  For the full story click any of the photos for a link to the Dwell article…



http://slurl.com/secondlife/Xeniversity/208/231/81

Among my dreams is to have a backyard shed.  The best way to describe my ideal shed is as an adult playhouse.  My shed would have concrete floors, an expansive desk, power tools, art supplies, a high-end sound system and windows with coverings that allow the space to be drenched in light or choked with blackness, even on the sunniest day.  I might throw in some central heat and A/C for comfort.

Considering my fondness for sheds, I was pleased to find Shedsploitation, the blog of SF Bay Arean Seth Boor.

Shedsploitation

Modern Cabana (10 x 12)

While precious, at 10′ x 12′ their smallest shed is just large enough to require a city permit to build.  I’m a good citizen and will stay within code.  I’m also averse to city intervention, so I’ll stay small.   So the shed search continues.

Modern minimal design architecture prefab
- Prims: 61
- Size: 20*20*15
- Floors: 2
- Exclusive textures: white wood for the floor and white concrete for the walls and roof
- Type: skybox
- Windows: grouped windows gradualy tintable on touch, either by owner, group, everyone or avatar list
- Use: home, office, store, bar, club, anything you wish really
- Permissions: copy and modify

Available at ** Miyoko Magic ** in-world store, or online at Xstreet SL

Other views:

Michelle Kaufmann has been called the high priestess of green “prefab” design. The architect, who worked for Frank Gehry early in her career, was one of the first to make a persuasive case that prefabricated design — which saves time and reduces waste compared with conventional home building, among other benefits — could be green and chic. Her old firm, Oakland, Calif.-based mkDesigns, designed and built 51 prefab homes since 2004, more than any other architectural firm, according to Kaufmann. Each structure was built as a series of boxes in a factory that were then shipped and assembled out in the field.

In May, amid the economic downturn, Kaufmann closed mkDesigns after two factory partners went under and several clients lost financing for projects. The experience was “devastating,” Kaufmann said, but after some soul searching she committed to pursuing her passion for making “thoughtful, sustainable design accessible.” Kaufmann launched a new firm, Sausalito, Calif.-based Michelle Kaufmann Studio, and sold the assets of mkDesigns to Waltham, Mass.-based Blu Homes. Her new firm will design prefab homes, but now Kaufmann is focusing more on larger community developments, which she says will benefit from economies of scale. We sat down with Kaufmann during last week’s West Coast Green conference in San Francisco to discuss the prefab industry.

What opportunities do you see for startups in the prefab space?

It is the perfect time to be starting a business. You have to be smart about it, surgically focused and hard working. I think there are more opportunities now than ever before because the playing field has been leveled. I think the prefab home market, in general, is ripe for innovation. Builders and developers are looking for alternative methods of construction. They want it to be green, and they are looking for prepackaged solutions. It helps them with risk management and inventory control.

How much does technology play in prefab, or is it just a new way of doing architecture?

There is so much broken with the standard architecture and construction process for single family homes. Only 3 percent of homes are designed by architects. We as builders and architects can complain about it or do something about it, and technology is a critical part of that.  We’ve been using innovation and technology in every other industry to bring good design to the masses, yet we’re still building the way we’ve been doing it for a hundred years. The model is broken and wasteful. Have you ever heard of someone saying that I just finished a house and it was done on time and on budget?  You never hear that. That is wrong. Imagine if we said that about our phones. That product would not last. There is just so much we can improve because it is so broken.

What were the main lessons you learned from mkDesigns?

You need to be smart about prefabricated green building, to make it easier for people to have a green home. Not just for the families living in them but for the builders and developers. It isn’t a question if they want a green home. They want healthy homes, but we have to make it easy. We can’t make them cost more or take more time than a non-green home. Those are the right elements to target. That is what makes it all happen. Scale is the key issue I think for any company approaching the idea of prefab green homes. It’s tough to do it with one-offs, which is why I’m now focusing on communities. I don’t see how you could make it accessible without scale. If companies are going to be successful, they have to figure out how they will address scale.

What would you have done differently in the way you executed with mkDesigns?

I don’t know that I would have done anything differently. We had a lot of successes. It was the timing and the lending crashing as well as the factories going out of business. Maybe in hindsight it may have been better to build everything in our factory and not trust factory partners. But that would have been impossible to tell at the time. We thought they were healthy enough to stay in business, but in one case their backers backed out and in another they didn’t share the true story of what was happening.

What will it take for prefab homes to become a significant portion of our built environment?

Financing is a key part. I was fortunate enough to spend the day with the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard. It was interesting to hear him talk about the work he’s doing with Walmart (s WMT). He’s trying to get them to do all organic food. If Walmart does all organic food, that changes the world’s production of food. I realized that it is important to have a grassroots movement to do proof of concept, but the thing that pulls it off is working with seemingly unlikely characters who have the scale capacity. It will be the bigger home builders embracing offsite technology, which they’re starting to do, that will change this industry. I think that’s why it is a really interesting time now. The big builders are now concerned about what they’re building — they need differentiation — and rethinking their models to figure out how to do more with less.

Will the scale-up require big investors?

Different businesses have different business plans. Some will take on investment money, some might be self-financed. What needs to be rethought is the lending practice. When we come out of this [economic crisis], we will have a totally different lending model. I think we’ll see more private companies rather than the big banks lending to individuals. Maybe a builder might look to take on investors to build a project rather than going to the banks. The most successful companies in the building world will be the ones who figure out how to do it without being dependent on the banks.

Photo: Sunset Breezehouse in Marin County, Calif., by mkDesigns. Credit: John Swain.

The Loft announces their latest prefab home release – The Wisteria. The first
of its size to be released from The Loft, the Wisteria is large in scale, yet still
cozy enough for your friends and family.
Options include the following rooms:

• Den or office space
• Full kitchen and dining room
• Living room
• Master bedroom
• Spare bedroom
• Luxury sized bathroom
• Two outdoor patios
• Attic
• Optional kids room/third bedroom in the attic with a skylight
• Full sized garage

The Wisteria Prefab is available in both furnished and unfurnished versions.
The furnished option uses a holodeck system for easy rezzing and takes only 3
minutes or less to set up. With a flick of a lightswitch, the owner can go from
a completely empty room to a fully-furnished one, helping manage a limited prim
allowance. All furniture in the furnished option is also COPIABLE .

SPECIFICATIONS: 38m x 28m in size. The Wisteria fits into a land area of just
1120 square meters. We now offer a DEMO of the house footprint available on
the vendor display. Prims: 504 (Unfurnished) 2.994 (Furnished)

Just for visting the Wisteria there is free gift for you on the second floor, a pair of sconces with candles.

Tp to the store here .

The Loft announces their latest prefab home release – The Wisteria.  The first
of its size to be released from The Loft, the Wisteria is large in scale, yet still
cozy enough for your friends and family.
Options include the following rooms:

•  Den or office space
•  Full kitchen and dining room
•  Living room
•  Master bedroom
•  Spare bedroom
•  Luxury sized bathroom
•  Two outdoor patios
•  Attic
• Optional kids room/third bedroom in the attic with a skylight
•  Full sized garage

The Wisteria Prefab is available in  both furnished and unfurnished versions.
The furnished option uses a holodeck system for easy rezzing and takes only 3
minutes or less to set up.  With a flick of a lightswitch, the owner can go from
a completely empty room to a fully-furnished one, helping manage a limited prim
allowance.  All furniture in the furnished option is also COPIABLE .

SPECIFICATIONS: 38m x 28m in size. The Wisteria fits into a land area of just
1120 square meters. We now offer a DEMO of the house footprint available on
the vendor display. Prims: 504 (Unfurnished) 2.994 (Furnished)

Just for visting the Wisteria there is  free gift for you on the second floor, a pair of sconces with candles.

Tp to the store here .

This article was written by Chad Ludeman, President of Philadelphia-based postgreen and developer of the 100k House.

Prefab homes seem to be showing up more and more in the media these days, especially with two large exhibits in Philadelphia showcasing their history this year.  Like many, I hoped that prefab would be the answer to bringing modern architecture to the masses in the US and beyond.  I thought that finally, modern home design would be attainable by those of us who aren’t pulling in lofty six figure incomes. That was until I conducted extensive research into the possibility of starting a development company in Philadelphia using only prefab homes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love prefab and many of the firms out there with cutting edge designs in the prefab realm.  There are also a variety of building lessons that can be learned from the prefab methodology.  I just don’t believe it is the best way of delivering modern design to the average new home buyer.

Below we will look at this issue from two points of view.  First, we will look at the prefab industry and try to dispel some of the myths that have arisen around it.  Second, we will take a quick look at how the housing industry may be able to learn from both prefab and site-built homes to create a hybrid approach that will provide a better, more accessible solution to the home buyer and hopefully reduce the barrier of entry to modern, green, and unique residences.

For the entire article HERE

Written by Lee Schneider

Is it possible to construct a village of new homes in a day, providing much needed housing for the homeless in Ventura County, California?  The answer is yes if you have a few hundred volunteers, two battalions of Navy Sea-Bees,  an innovative design for geodesic domes and some vision.

The innovative dome design comes from an American original named R. Buckminster Fuller.  The vision comes from Bruce LeBel of World Shelters and Clyde Reynolds of the Turning Point Foundation.  Clyde, the foundation’s executive director, heads up a program serving more than 500 clients in Ventura County each year through its shelter rehabilitation programs. Clyde hired Bruce’s company, World Shelters, to do something amazing: create housing for the homeless in just one day. Bruce, once a student of Buckminster Fuller, was ready for the challenge.  Why?  Not only did Buckminster Fuller advance the concept of a dome as a multi-use building, but Fuller also believed in a passionate and committed form of architecture that would help citizens of Earth survive and prosper.  He saw his life as an experiment into “what, if anything,” an individual could do “on behalf of all humanity.”

“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.  Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980

Bucky, as he was known, inspired Bruce LeBel to use the dome design to provide emergency housing all over the world.  We’re making a film about pre-fab architecture for the very poor and the very rich called SHELTER.  One of Bruce’s projects we’re following happened over the weekend, at an encampment for the homeless called River Haven, in Ventura.  Winter is coming, and that means heavy rains and some heavy weather.  The homeless people who lived here were camped in tents that were showing their age over the four years this settlement has been in existence. Domes would provide warmth, strength, and security.

The domes at River Haven, called U-Domes, are the result of years of research at World Shelters. Bruce was once an engineer at The North Face, the outdoor equipment company whose tents utilized Fuller’s principle of tensegrity.  Tensegrity is a synergy of materials achieved by a balance of tension and compression in their components.  U-Domes are designed to ship easily and go up fast.

Putting one of World Shelter’s U-Domes together looks complicated – it’s something like wrestling with really big origami – but it can be done by volunteers with little or no training.   It’s one way you can get a village standing in a day. The domes that went up this weekend are strong, light and portable – built to withstand 80 mph winds and last for ten years.  Those who contributed to the project included members of two battalions of  Navy Sea-Bees, some of whom had just returned from deployment in Afghanistan.  They put down sixteen wooden pads on gravel that provide steady grounding and support for the domes.  Allegra Fuller Snyder, Buckminster Fuller’s daughter, stopped by to support the effort and fill us in on her father.  She gave us an interview connecting the vision of her dad with the applications Bruce has been seeking for his domes.  We hope Bucky Fuller will be the spiritual father of our film.

Cheryl Deay of the United Way was heading up some of of the volunteers on site. She told us that 70% of the homeless population are working and struggling to get out of homelessness.  For the most part they keep a low profile.  “For every homeless person you see there are eight more that you don’t see.”  She explained that you may see the men on the street, but the women and children and families are hidden away.

SHELTER will follow this and some other projects Bruce has going and will also track pre-fab housing projects for the very rich.  We’ve completed interviews with Jennifer Siegal of the Office of Mobile Design and have met with two more pre-fab architecture powerhouses, Shigeru Ban and Dean Maltz, to speak with them about being in the film.

___________________________

This is the ongoing production blog of SHELTER.  The film examines everyone’s right to a roof over their head and focuses on pre-fab methods of building as advanced by such architects as Jennifer Siegal, Whitney Sander, Shigeru Ban and Dean Maltz, design innovators like Buckminster Fuller and activists like Bruce LeBel of World Shelters.  SHELTER is a production of DocuCinema and Adventure Pictures.  Its executive producers are Lee Schneider and Richard Neill.

download E Cube 2244 here