Green design is much more than a catchphrase bandied about by eager-to-please politicians and hopeful hippies—it’s become a necessity. Sustainable building technologies are now part of the design guidelines for everyone from the federal government to private industry. To help push home design in the same direction, Dwell invited five of Los Angeles’s top firms to create a sustainable single-family home in Los Angeles. We hope it will help establish a progressive model for future housing.
One really cannot talk of sustainability without thinking of current regional, national, and global eco-political problems. This project, in a small way, can show how an individual house is connected to these larger problems, and that green design and good design are not mutually exclusive.” Those words from Frank Escher, of Escher GuneWardena Architecture, succinctly sum up the intentions of the firm’s winning entry for the Dwell Home II Design Invitational. With its green roof inhabited by photovoltaic panels and low-water-consuming native plants, trellises on the sides of the building that double as sun screens, and a modular system of air channels embedded in the concrete floors that will both heat and cool, the aesthetically stunning house bears out Escher’s claim.
The design is slightly skewed to the north in order to capture all the advantages of views and light the topography has to offer, as well as to help reduce the excavation and site disturbance that comes with any new home construction. The open plan enclosed by high-thermal-performance glass places the struture firmly in its environment. Roof overhangs, the green roof, the plant trellises, and a movable climate-controlling aluminum-and-polyester screen normally seen in greenhouses team up to control the Southern California sun—and offer insulation as the temperatures drop. A solar water-heating system consisting of “collector panels” on the roof delivers hot water to an insulated water tank where all water for the house will be heated. This same water will circulate through air coils to heat the floor slabs. Looking at the design and Escher GuneWardena’s enthusiastic and optimistic approach to single-family homes in the 21st century, it seems that green design really can be good design.
