It makes sense to weatherize homes. Beefing up insulation and sealing leaks means less energy gets used to heat a house and less of that heat escapes. That translates to lower energy bills and a smaller environmental impact for homes.

But weatherization doesn’t always look good from the consumer’s perspective. Dave Leonhardt tried to get his home weatherized and wrote about the experience in his New York Times column this week:

For $400, an auditor spent hours scouring our…

It’s tax policy time! The Homebuyer Tax Credit (official site here here) gives $8,000 of taxpayers’ money to people buying new homes. It was about to expire, but Congress just signed off on an extension through April. Everyone seems to think this was a big mistake.

Ezra Klein (speaking in the third person) says it’s pointless because most people who are buying homes aren’t moved to do it by a paltry $8,000:

Like a lot of renters, Klein took…

Buildings are actually responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than cars. But simply weatherizing houses and businesses can reduce their environmental impact and lower energy bills—while creating new jobs in the process. Everyone wins.

Created in partnership with Green for All, a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty. For more information on programs near you, visit www.greenforall.org.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it became obvious that America was frustratingly ill-prepared to house people displaced by a natural disaster. Michael McDaniel took this as a design challenge. His Exo housing system—inspired by the humble styrofoam cup—could be deployed quickly and cheaply to help us when we need it most.

Get Off the Grass

The lush green lawn has long been a symbol of the American suburban ideal. But water resources are stretched thin these days, especially in the West. California, for example, averages just over 17 inches of rainfall each year, and turf lawns require about an inch of water per week. With reservoirs drying up, using water to keep lawns green just doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider the competing uses: agriculture, sanitation, and…

Follow or Get out of the Way: The household name in green construction needs to innovate in order to keep up with the competition.

Imagine if teachers gave out grades on the first day of school based on students’ promises of how hard they each plan to study. Oddly, we use this backward system to grade green buildings in the United States.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the certification system created by the U.S.…

With humanity heading to the cities, we’re going to have to get creative with our uses of urban space. Here’s one idea from an Australian architect named Lara Calder: a “parasitic” house that can be attached to any vertical structure that’s strong enough to support it. This design would probably run into some building code and zoning issues, but it’s nothing if not creative. There are more pictures at Inhabitat.

In my first two entries on affordable housing, we looked at how the size of your house dramatically affects its cost. In this entry, we’ll go a step further and take a look at the role quality plays in the affordability equation.

“Quality” is one of those words, like “moist” or “lotion,” that make me cringe a bit. I don’t like the way it looks on the page, and I don’t like the way it feels coming out…

Guest writer Dan Maginn is a principal with el dorado inc, an architecture firm in Kansas City, Missouri. This four part series, “Square Feat,” will explore the myths and realities surrounding affordable housing.

I’m a relatively smart guy. I have read the opening pages of numerous Thomas Pynchon books, and have a working vocabulary of over 60 words—nearly half of them polysyllabic. As an architect and a citizen of these United States, “affordable” and “housing”…

It’s tax policy time! The Homebuyer Tax Credit (official site here here) gives $8,000 of taxpayers’ money to people buying new homes. It was about to expire, but Congress just signed off on an extension through April. Everyone seems to think this was a big mistake.

Ezra Klein (speaking in the third person) says it’s pointless because most people who are buying homes aren’t moved to do it by a paltry $8,000:

Like a lot of renters, Klein took…

Buildings are actually responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than cars. But simply weatherizing houses and businesses can reduce their environmental impact and lower energy bills—while creating new jobs in the process. Everyone wins.

Created in partnership with Green for All, a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty. For more information on programs near you, visit www.greenforall.org.

With humanity heading to the cities, we’re going to have to get creative with our uses of urban space. Here’s one idea from an Australian architect named Lara Calder: a “parasitic” house that can be attached to any vertical structure that’s strong enough to support it. This design would probably run into some building code and zoning issues, but it’s nothing if not creative. There are more pictures at Inhabitat.

In my first two entries on affordable housing, we looked at how the size of your house dramatically affects its cost. In this entry, we’ll go a step further and take a look at the role quality plays in the affordability equation.

“Quality” is one of those words, like “moist” or “lotion,” that make me cringe a bit. I don’t like the way it looks on the page, and I don’t like the way it feels coming out…

Guest writer Dan Maginn is a principal with el dorado inc, an architecture firm in Kansas City, Missouri. This four part series, “Square Feat,” will explore the myths and realities surrounding affordable housing.

I’m a relatively smart guy. I have read the opening pages of numerous Thomas Pynchon books, and have a working vocabulary of over 60 words—nearly half of them polysyllabic. As an architect and a citizen of these United States, “affordable” and “housing”…

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it became obvious that America was frustratingly ill-prepared to house people displaced by a natural disaster. Michael McDaniel took this as a design challenge. His Exo housing system—inspired by the humble styrofoam cup—could be deployed quickly and cheaply to help us when we need it most.

Get Off the Grass

The lush green lawn has long been a symbol of the American suburban ideal. But water resources are stretched thin these days, especially in the West. California, for example, averages just over 17 inches of rainfall each year, and turf lawns require about an inch of water per week. With reservoirs drying up, using water to keep lawns green just doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider the competing uses: agriculture, sanitation, and…

Follow or Get out of the Way: The household name in green construction needs to innovate in order to keep up with the competition.

Imagine if teachers gave out grades on the first day of school based on students’ promises of how hard they each plan to study. Oddly, we use this backward system to grade green buildings in the United States.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the certification system created by the U.S.…

Buildings are actually responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than cars. But simply weatherizing houses and businesses can reduce their environmental impact and lower energy bills—while creating new jobs in the process. Everyone wins.

Created in partnership with Green for All, a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty. For more information on programs near you, visit www.greenforall.org.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it became obvious that America was frustratingly ill-prepared to house people displaced by a natural disaster. Michael McDaniel took this as a design challenge. His Exo housing system—inspired by the humble styrofoam cup—could be deployed quickly and cheaply to help us when we need it most.