A Magenta-Accented Sustainable Bathroom in Phoenix
With its glowing magenta ceiling, floor, and walls, the lavatory's shower looks more like a room meant for a Gaspar Noé film than a place to spruce up one's hygiene (the house it resides in is called Xeros). A small portrait painting replaces the usual bathroom suspect—the mirror—and sanded oriented strand board (OSB), a waste material typically used in framing, outfits the blocky, narrow quarter. See the rest of this sustainable steel mesh-clad live/work space in Phoenix, Arizona in our issue dedicated to green homes here.
Brick by Brick
Born as a horse stable, the Brick Weave House in Chicago is all about transportation and transparency. A clever renovation has made it the most compelling architecture on the block and home to a pair of urbanite gearheads and their bevy of cars and motorcycles.
Stainless Chef
Designer John Picard isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty in the kitchen, or washing the sand off his feet in the bathroom. This ecological pioneer’s half-lot home is designed for maximum efficiency—and comfort.
Way Out West
Leaving the bustle of Washington, D.C., architect Joe Day and his wife return to California and discover that life in a single-family dwelling isn't as isolated as they had feared.
Transforming TIjuana
In August of 2004, a weekend-long party took place at a new house in the Hacienda Agua Caliente neighborhood of Tijuana, Mexico. The house was raw and unfinished, with bare concrete floors and exposed nail heads, but the art that adorned the walls and the music that rocked into the wee hours was a culmination of years of pondering the urban state of this exploding city just south of San Diego, California.
iT House, Joshua Tree
The iT House brings together raw industrial aesthetics with the tactics of green design to forge a new home in the sunbaked wilds of California’s east.
Xeros Effect
Matthew Trzebiatowski matched an extreme aesthetic to an extreme climate, but his sustainable moves took a gentler approach.
Venetian Vicissitude
Shedding a past filled with farmhouses and ornamentation, Dawn Farmer and Pierre Kozely decided to embrace simplicity— and architect Michael Sant designed them a home to match.
