Birds Island
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| Birds Island sustainable homes feature a 'transparent' wall.
Photo: graftlab.com |
Birds Island is a dwelling designed by Graft architects that addresses an age-old quandary—how do you enjoy the great outdoors and sit in your house at the same time? Located in Kuala Lumpur, the home has a silicone glass exterior “skin” that makes this very thing possible. It changes the transparency of the walls, allowing residents to drink in the views in all their splendor, get a canopy of shade, or shut everything out entirely.
Birds Island is also a sustainable dwelling, and its outer skin collects rain water, and harnesses solar energy and wind power. The structure’s placement on a pier is another nod to energy efficiency. It allows the natural cooling of the water underneath and permits energy collection and distribution from nearby lotuses.
Airdrop House
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| Airdrop is a rendering of a disaster relief shelter concept.
Photo: maynardarchitects.com |
The Airdrop House is so futuristic and forward-thinking that it has yet to get past the artistic rendering stage, so anyone who wants one will have to wait until some distant tomorrow. However, they are being designed to provide emergency shelter to disaster survivors, so hopefully the need for them won’t come up too often.
The home is designed by Andrew Maynard Architects in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The home is intended to be air-dropped into disaster areas and used as a temporary shelter. Its design also permits the growing of plants on its surface, to provide both food and shade.
Dupli Casa
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| This house in Germany has been dubbed 'the most futuristic' in the world.
Photo: davidfranck.de |
Many dwellings have been built with what its creators call a “futuristic design.” However, Dupli Casa, from Germany’s J. Mayer H. Architects, truly lives up to the description. In fact, the website Digsdigs.com covered it in a 2009 article titled, “The Most Futuristic House Design in the World.”
Dupli Casa is a three-story dwelling near Ludwigsburg, Germany. On the top floor, bedrooms jut out dramatically from the structure’s core, each with a window strategically angled to provide optimum views of the surrounding area. One such view is of David Chipperfield’s Museum of Modern Literature, which sits across the valley in the town of Marbach am Neckar.
Komb House
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| Komb House, which somewhat resembles a comb, is an environmentally efficient design.
Photo: designboom.com |
Karim Rashid is the architect behind the striking-looking Komb House. Rashid was born in Egypt and studied in Canada and Italy, and according to his own website, he has more than 3,000 designs currently in production.
Komb House uses state-of-the-art technology to minimize its environmental impact. The water is heated by solar panels, and the structure reuses grey and pluvial water. It’s composed entirely of reusable materials, such as wood and glass, and it can be taken apart and put back together again...should the need to do so ever arise.
Shell House
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| Shell House in Japan is a departure from a typical home design.
Photo: trendir.com |
If one were flying over Karuizawa, Japan, and saw the roof of the Shell House, it’s possible that one could entirely miss the fact that it’s a house. The dwelling was created by the Japanese architecture firm ARTechnic, and its unusual exterior design resembles nothing so much as a cannoli transforming into a spaceship.
Described as “out of this world” on the website Trendir, the structure’s curves and ellipses give it a look like nothing before or since. It has sound design principles behind it, however, and takes advantage of natural light and interior textures, so you can feel at home once you’re actually inside of it.
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