Cable railing expand the view in your favorite spaces

When you picture your dream home, what comes to mind? Lots of open, connected spaces, tons of natural light, a gorgeous view from your deck? If so, then you should think about incorporating cable railing into your exterior and interior spaces. Not only is cable railing an excellent sustainable product option – it’s made with eco-friendly stainless steel – but it also has a minimalist vibe that makes any space feel welcoming and more expansive.

Seeing Between the Lines

Traditional railings can make a room feel closed and separate from adjacent spaces, creating a visual barrier. That’s not the case with cable railings. For outdoor applications, cable railing is perfect for framing an eye-catching panoramic view or stunning landscape. It’s a popular choice for decks, terraces and backyard settings because it optimizes the view – especially important for homeowners, since their families and guests are frequently seated on the patio or deck. Cable railings use slender horizontal (or vertical) stainless steel cables in place of bulky spindles and pickets for infill to create nearly unimpeded views and a very open, clean-lined aesthetic that preserves the intrinsic beauty of a space. In fact, the cables “trick the eye” and virtually disappear as your field of vision focuses beyond the cable rail toward the view.

Natural Connections

Because of its sleek, streamlined appearance, cable railing enables spaces to seamlessly flow into one another for a sense of continuity that is difficult to achieve with other types of railing infill. For outdoor applications, cable railing is perfect for framing an eye-catching panoramic view or stunning landscape. It’s a popular choice for decks, terraces and backyard settings because it optimizes the view – especially important for homeowners, since their families and guests are frequently seated on the patio or deck.

When used indoors, rather than visually breaking up spaces, cable railing helps to subtly connect them and make them appear larger. And, in the case of stair railings, it beautifully showcases the different levels within a home without calling too much attention to itself. The ultimate effect is a look that is at once understated and modern with just the right touch of elegance.

Durable, Low-Maintenance Beauty

In addition to being an aesthetically-appealing design option, cable railing has lots of other things going for it. In the case of exterior applications, it’s rugged enough to stand up to corrosive coastal environments and other harsh conditions. Its minimal footprint allows full airflow across a deck or balcony area, minimizing wind exposure and the stress it can inflict on an outdoor railing system, and maintenance requirements are minimal. Only a periodic treatment with a stainless steel cleaner and protectant is recommended along with occasional cable tightening.

Unmatched Versatility

Compatible with most architectural styles – from rustic to transitional to contemporary, to name just a few – cable railing is easy to install and can be used with existing wood, metal or composite railings to achieve the desired look. In addition to these options, Oakland, California-based cable railing provider Feeney, Inc., offers its CableRail stainless cable rail infill in both standard and low profile options for maximum design flexibility. The brand also offers convenient kits that make it easy to install its CableRail products – even for newly minted weekend warriors and DIYers.

Sustainable Style

Thanks to its durable steel construction, cable railing can last a lifetime – making it a sustainable option, too. It’s reusable and can be recycled at the end of its useful life, reducing the use of non-renewable resources and helping to limit the waste stream. Companies like Feeney take sustainability one step further, producing their cable railing products out of post- and pre-consumer waste. Feeney also powers its California production facility using a 5,000-square-foot solar array.

When it’s time to build or remodel, check out cable railing for its longevity, versatility, sustainability, and ability to open up the view – both indoors and out. No matter what size or style your home is, cable railing has the power to transform your spaces from bland to breathtaking.

+ Feeney, Inc.

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Earthship pioneer Michael Reynolds is building the first sustainable school in Argentina

Architect Michael Reynolds is known for his sustainable “Earthship” buildings – and how he’s taking his radical work one step further by instilling the principles of green architecture in the next generation. Reynolds’ latest project is an ultra-green public elementary school made out of repurposed materials. The building is set in a remote Buenos Aires town, where Reynolds will teach students from around the world the basics of self-sustaining architecture.

Working in collaboration with Una Escuela Sustentable – whose objective is to build a sustainable public school in every Latin American country – Reynolds will construct a sustainable elementary school in Mar Chiquita, a remote area outside of Buenos Aires. He will work with students from around the world to build the school, focusing on green design principles, construction methods, and philosophy.

Related: Michael Reynolds Lands One of His Self-Sufficient Earthships at the End of the World

Reynolds has worked with the program before, most notably in Jaureguiberry, Uruguay where he built an incredible school out of reclaimed materials with a team of students. Slated to begin construction in March 2018, the Mar Chiquita building will measure just under 3,000 square feet and it will be built in just seven weeks. The project will utilize Reynolds’ six core Earthship building principles – including recycled and repurposed materials, thermal/solar heating and cooling, water harvesting and contained sewage treatment. The school will also have an onsite food production area. You can help support the project by donating to the Mar Chiquita funding campaign on Indiegogo

+ Michael Reynolds

Via Platforma Arquitectura

Images via Una Escuela Sustentable

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Amazons incredible plant-filled biospheres open in Seattle

Amazon has finally opened its stunning new downtown Seattle office and it’s unlike any workspace we’ve seen before. Amazon Spheres, which celebrated its grand opening yesterday, is part greenhouse and part office housed within three glass geodesic domes. Designed by NBBJ, the $4 billion “mini-rainforest” campus will house over 800 Amazon employees in addition to more than 40,000 plants in an ecosystem built to emulate a verdant cloud forest.

Located at the corner of Lenora Street and 6th Avenue, Amazon’s giant geodesic domes are made with a steel frame holding 2,643 laminated glass panels made up of four-layered low-iron glass to minimize heat loss. The largest of the three domes measures 90 feet tall and 130 feet in diameter with five floors (and a four-story-tall living plant wall that grows 200 plant species). Retail space occupies the ground floor and part of the first floor.

Over 400 species of plants from more than 30 countries are represented in the domes and are cared for by a full-time horticulturalist. Nearly all of the plants were grown in a suburban greenhouse for the Spheres project. The flora centerpiece is a 55-foot-tall Ficus tree (nicknamed Rubi) that weighs almost 36,000 pounds and was craned into the space through the roof. The plantings are mostly organized in either the Old World garden that features African and Asian plants, or in the New World garden with a focus on the Americas. An architectural highlight is undoubtedly the “bird’s nest,” a timber treehouse suspended 30 feet in the air that serves as an intimate meeting space.

Related: Amazon’s biospheres spring to life with first planting in Seattle

The interior temperature will be stabilized at 69 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit with 60 percent humidity, and the climate will vary throughout the space. Recycled heat from the nearby data center is used to heat the Spheres. The project is on track for LEED Gold certification. The public is welcome to take a free tour of the facilities but must first book with Spheres Discovery at Understory.

+ NBBJ

Via Bloomberg

Renderings via NBBJ, photos via Amazon

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IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad dies at the age of 91

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad died over the weekend at the age of 91. Kamprad founded the global behemoth in 1943, when he was just 18 years old. Though he became one of the richest people on the planet, he lived frugally, buying used clothes, eating lunch at his own stores and even moving from country to country in order to pay lower taxes. Kamprad stepped down from the company in 2013, after helping to build IKEA into a $44 billion company.

The founder of IKEA and one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, has passed away at the age of 91.

A post shared by IKEA Today (@ikeatoday) on Jan 28, 2018 at 2:26am PST

IKEA is arguably one of the most important design companies in the world, providing contemporary furnishings at an affordable price point to homes across the planet and changing the way we shop for furniture. Kamprad founded IKEA as a small mail order company and then moved to retail in the 40s. IKEA’s first store opened in Almhult, Sweden in 1958. Today, there are 411 IKEA stores in countries ranging from Saudia Arabia to Slovakia and beyond.

Related: IKEA’s billionaire founder only buys used clothes – because they’re cheaper

Kamprad was obsessed with innovation and affordability, which helped him build IKEA into the furniture giant that it is today. That frugality seeped into his personal life, as well. He was known to pocket salt and pepper packets from restaurants, bought his clothing at flea markets and recycled his tea bags. Kamprad’s life hasn’t been without controversy. He has received criticism for dodging Swedish taxes, and was a Nazi sympathizer in his youth, a decision that he called the “greatest mistake of his life”.

Via Dezeen

images via Wikimedia and Deposit Photos

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Y-shaped German hostel looks at sustainability from all angles

A newly opened youth hostel in Bayreuth, Germany offers much more than just a clean bed and shower—the 180-bed Y-shaped building embraces community, holistic sustainability, and a passion for sports. Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) designed the hostel as an extension of the landscape with natural materials and a curvaceous form that’s organic and contemporary.

Commissioned by DJH Bayern, the eye-catching youth hostel takes on a distinctive Y shape chosen “because it cleverly generates a connective central space and interweaves the interior and exterior spaces, offering expansive views and multiple accessible openings to the sports fields and gardens.” Sports are a major focus of the design and the hostel is equipped with sports fields, adventure playgrounds and volleyball terraces. The building’s universal design makes it accessible to all kinds of users for optimum use of the facility.

Related: Nha Trang’s first hostel built from recycled shipping containers pops up in Vietnam

A central atrium at the heart of the hostel serves as the social hub with a light-filled amphitheater that branches out to the reception, seminar rooms, bistro, kitchen, sport facilities, and bedrooms spread out across two floors. Natural, locally sourced materials are used throughout and were built with local techniques. Renewable energy powers the hostel and pollution reduction is integrated in the design.

A highly flexible modular wooden wall system with modular custom built-in furniture was used for the hostel’s 45 rooms. The use of modular, replaceable walls also allows for future reuse of the building as a kindergarten, school or retirement home.

+ Laboratory for Visionary Architecture

Images by HÑfele Huber

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DIY: Sweet plantable valentines made from recycled paper

Share your love this Valentine’s Day by gifting tiny plantable paper hearts made with recycled materials! Come springtime, the paper can be planted indoors or in a garden, and the embedded seeds will sprout up. Read on for instructions on how to create this simple eco-friendly craft.

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

• Recycled paper (any plain white paper, magazine inserts, junk mail, or used copy paper is fine, but do not use glossy coated or magazine paper. Use a sheet of colored paper or scraps of similar hues to add pigment to your valentines.)
• Window screen
• Blender or food processor
• Heart shaped cookie cutter
• Seeds (wildflowers or veggies)
• Rags or old towels
• Cards, glue, paper, markers, scissors, and string

Step Two: Prepare Recycled Paper

Shred your pile of recycled paper into a bowl. Cover with boiled water—use enough to just cover the paper scraps. Let the mixture sit for 10-15 minutes, and give it a stir to make sure all the paper gets soaked. We used a few pieces of green and blue scrap paper to tint our batch of recycled paper. If you don’t have any colored paper scraps, you can add a few drops of food coloring.

Step Three: Blend Paper

Pour the mixture into a food processor or blender and give it a whirl. Stir in any un-blended chunks of paper and blend until fairly smooth. You do want some flecks of texture so don’t over-blend. Pour off any excess water from the top of the blender.

Read More:  Green Ideas For Valentines Day

Step Four: Add Seeds

Transfer the paper pulp into a bowl, and stir in a few tablespoons of your preferred seeds. We used radish seeds for a tasty, edible spring treat (the sprouts are edible too!). Other great options include wildflowers, daisies, carrots, dill, or other seeds that are quite small.

Step Five: Mold Hearts

Place an old towel or rag underneath the screen to catch excess water (make sure its old since it might get dye on it—if you used colored paper or food coloring it will bleed.) Place a heart shaped cookie cutter on the screen, then fill it with a tablespoon full of paper pulp. Using your fingers, press the pulp into all the corners of the cookie cutter.

Then, use a towel wrapped around your finger to gently dab and press the top of the pulp inside the cookie cutter, which will press excess water out the bottom of the screen and into the towel you’re holding. Gently remove the cookie cutter, using one or two fingers to push the paper shape out and onto the screen.

Step Six: Dry Paper

If you have any excess paper pulp and don’t want to mold it all into heart shapes, you can spread it out and flatten it onto the screen to create a sheet of paper, which you can later cut into the shape you want.

When you’re finished shaping the paper pulp and pressing out excess water, lay the screens out to dry in a well-ventilated area. You can lay them on a clothing drying rack, or near a heat source (prop the screen up on all four corners if you don’t put it on a rack so that air can circulate underneath).

Read More: Seedballs – Marble Sized Balls Packed With Wildflower Seeds For Guerilla Gardening

Step Seven: Create Valentines

Create valentines by gluing the plantable paper hearts to a card, or using a needle and thread to create a loop of string to hang them by.

Don’t forget to include instructions on what type of seeds you included and how to plant them! Here’s how: To grow a plantable valentine, rip it into several pieces and plant under about an inch of soil—either in a plant pot, or outdoors. Keep it well watered until sprouts appear!

All photos by the author

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redhouse studio is making a mobile machine that recycles old buildings

Did you know that buildings are responsible for 39 percent of the United States’ carbon emissions? Architect Chris Maurer of redhouse studio told Inhabitat he loves being an architect, but finds it difficult to reconcile that figure. To help lighten the construction industry’s footprint, Maurer is teaming up with NASA, MIT, and the University of Akron to create the Biocycler: a mobile machine that literally recycles old buildings. The machine will use living organisms, not glue, to bind construction waste into durable bricks that can be used to build brand new structures. Read on for a closer look at this groundbreaking project.

Maurer was inspired to create the Biocycler in part through his experience at demolition sites throughout Cleveland. “We do many projects that are adaptive reuse to preserve old buildings, but even then the demolition waste can be quite extensive,” he said. During a design/re-build project at Kent State University, the team was dismayed at how much waste their preservation project produced. “We dropped the material ourselves at the landfill,” Maurer said. “It was hard to do (it was hard to see it all go to waste) but there was no economically feasible way to use the materials.”

Related: New self-healing concrete uses fungus to fix cracks

The Biocycler could change all that. redhouse plans to experiment with fungal mycelium and calcite-producing microbes as building and binding materials in the Biocycler. Maurer explains that “A symbiosis of the microbes and fungi can be made to feed each other and [they] are working towards using the microbes as bio-signals to tell us things about the structure and air-quality within it.” The incorporation of fruiting fungus (i.e. mushrooms) could serve the additional purpose of food production. “Where food security is an issue, we are looking to make mushroom production the main activity and the bio-materials the secondary output,” he said.

redhouse studio is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the construction of a proof of concept. “Truth be told, we’re already recycling buildings, or at least materials,” said Maurer. “The kickstarter will lead to a mobile unit to put these processes on display and get closer to building entire structures out of the waste.” redhouse has already constructed and tested bricks and panels from recycled materials, as well as some model prototypes, and hopes to complete a full-size structure in 2018.

Related: Church built for $35k stays naturally cool in Malawi

Prior to starting the Cleveland-based studio in 2014, Maurer served as director for studioMDA in Malawi and MASS Design Group in Rwanda, where he came to more fully understand the value and potential of sustainable design. “[In Africa], we needed to innovate with limited resources,” said Maurer.

Related: This company wants to turn food waste into building materials — here’s how

redhouse has worked for commercial clients, such as the Hulett Hotel in Cleveland, while also developing humanitarian design projects, such as the Bioshelter, a prefabricated home that mitigates waste while providing food security and economic opportunity through crops grown on-site. As with much of the studio’s work, the Bioshelter was conceived to be as self-sustaining as possible. “We are constantly looking for new resource loops, finding benefits to waste streams,” he said.

Change can sometimes be uncomfortable for the mainstream consumer, particularly if it includes the words “fungus” and “microbe.” Nonetheless, Maurer believes the time has come for fresh, green solutions to global problems. “Think about the pro-biotic craze right now,” he said. “People are waking up to the fact that antibiotic medicines and sanitizers can be dangerous, and that you want the right kinds of microbes around.” Similarly, biological building materials can also be pro-biotic. “There are many organisms that can be used in bio-materials that naturally battle pathogens,” he said. “We want them on our team.”

Related: These amazing zero-waste buildings were grown from mushrooms

To complete a project as ambitious as the Biocycler, collaboration is key. “Architecture is by nature collaborative,” said Maurer. “Through our network in biomimicry, we’ve learned the advantages of working with biologists in addition to engineers.” redhouse is collaborating with scientists at NASA and MIT to create the Biocycler, which may only be the beginning of a revolution in smart, living building materials. “When you consider all the possibilities of the materials – bio-luminescence, radiation protection, self cleaning, pathogen protection, etc, it sounds sci-fi, but we’re not that far out from some of these features,” he said. With a Biocycler proof of concept in action, redhouse will have taken us another step further into this sustainable, bio-future.

+ The Biocycler on Kickstarter

+ redhouse studio

Images via Keith Hayes/redhouse studio

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