The Green House-New Directions In Sustainable Architecture

Princeton Architectural Press The National Building Museum
New York Washington, D.C.

thhe goAlannaStangandChristopherHawthorne

rueseenNewDirections in Sustainable Architecture

0UBLISHED

For András,
Rachel, and Willa;
and for architects,
writers, and
environmentalists
to come

Dedication 5

contents

18

112

acknowledgments

7E

foreword

4HIS

camera-ready green design

ONE AFTERNOON SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, we found ourselves waiting
in the quiet, impossibly picturesque Swiss town of Domat/Ems to
meet an architect named Dietrich Schwarz. Though still in his thir-
ties, Schwarz has already earned a reputation as one of Switzerland’s
leading practitioners of the environmentally friendly approach to
architecture known as sustainable, or “green,” design. Using a com-
bination of new, high-tech materials—some of his own invention—
and old-fashioned architectural wisdom, he creates houses and other
buildings that are snugly energy-efficient and sit lightly on the land.

7E

2

MUCH

.AKED

0RATT



CELEBRITY

#HARLOTTE

city

Cities have been around for more

than six thousand years, drawing successive waves of new
residents with their blend of commerce, culture, energy, and
opportunity. The first city to surpass a population of one
million was Baghdad, thirteen centuries ago. London topped
five million in 1825; New York exceeded ten million a hundred
years later. The metropolitan area around Tokyo surpassed
twenty million in 1965 and is now closing in on thirty.

!T

MATERIALS

20 City

P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. project LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

TO

Urban 23

24 City

<

30 City

Colorado Court LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

32 City

9

34 City

Viikki LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

:

;

38 City

1310 East Union Street LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

40 City

:

42 City

sea train house DESIGNER LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

<

Green Features

ADAPTIVE RE-USE NATURAL LIGHT RECLAIMED WOOD NATURAL MICROCLIMATE
With a glass curtain-wall The massive Douglas fir The lush front garden, which
OF MATERIALS facade and strategically crossbeams, which support includes a stream fed by
The house’s structural placed exposures on the the cantilevered roof, were recycled water, generates
elements are old sea-going side and rear elevations, reclaimed from a nearby cool breezes and fresh air,
storage containers, some the house uses nothing but construction site. both of which are lacking in
of which had been on site natural light during the day. Sea Train’s asphalt-covered
before the project began. neighborhood.

Sea Train House 45

46 City

::

48 City

The Solaire DESIGNER LOCATION

ARCHITECTURAL

:

<

suburb

Suburbs are everywhere,

everywhere cities are found. Conceived as a kind of utopia that
would allow city workers to live in pastoral surroundings, the
suburb, with its voracious appetite for open space and low-
rise, low-density development, has turned out to be one of
mankind’s more harmful intrusions on the environment.

)NDEED

OR