The architecture firm Min | Day has designed a energy conscious home designed for fluid indoor-outdoor living for purchase through Hometta, a online blueprint database of progressive and sustainable modern houses available for purchase by the masses. Additional images of Min | Day’s design and a description of the home after the jump.
DESCRIPTION: With the garage at one side and the entry in the corner, a walled courtyard at the front of the house is the first of several outdoor rooms in the 2,500 square foot house that foster indoor-outdoor living. The house is composed of three primary volumes on the main level: 1. living/dining/kitchen, 2. master bedroom suite and 3. second bedroom, bathroom, laundry and garage. These three “boxes” surround a semi-enclosed deck that is a true outdoor living room. Behind the deck, a three-story tower connects all elements of the house and provides access to a roof deck and a vegetated roof. The tower creates a vertical core for passive stack-effect cooling that is a central element of our low-energy strategy. Heat can be exhausted from the tower in summer and recovered and re-circulated in winter.
The house combines refined, minimal aesthetics and site integration with ecologically sound construction, natural day lighting and extremely high-performance (passive & active) energy systems. Once the photovoltaic power generation system is installed the house may achieve net-zero energy performance. The low profile of the house responds directly to the topography and expansive river-valley views of the site and offers an alternative to the typical exurban house.
Originally designed for a property on the Platte River in eastern Nebraska, house plans are now available for purchase on Hometta.com.
CONSTRUCTION: Thermomass insulated exposed concrete walls with smooth form finish (3” EPS foam core), polished CMU courtyard walls, 6” SIP wall construction, 8” SIP roof over exposed Parallam beams, tapered insulation above roof SIPs with single-ply membrane roof an Live Roof modular vegetated roof, thermally-broken aluminum windows and doors, FSC cedar T&G vertical siding, fiber cement panels, aluminum composite panels, xeriscape landscaping, pervious paving.
ENERGY SYSTEMS: Passive solar orientation and built-in shading, super-insulated walls, vegetated roof, high performance glass; hydronic radiant heated floors with geothermal heat pump, passive/active stack-effect cooling, electrical switch to be installed for future PV generation system.
