House

Say you were the third generation of a farming family in the southwest of Scotland, and you intended to build a new farmhouse that made a statement about resource consumption. Building an environmentally conscious house in this climate requires insulation up to the ears. Now let's say this was a sheep farm you were running … well, you would, wouldn't you?  Read More

The JF-Kit House, by Spanish-based Elii Architecture, is an off-grid home concept which envisions occupants using exercise to offset their energy needs. To its credit, Elii Architecture makes it clear right off the bat that the JF-Kit House isn’t intended to be considered as suitable for human habitation yet. Rather, the architects did some brainstorming and imagined how our homes may evolve in a future of rapidly decreasing fossil-fuel resources. This was then used this as a jumping-off point to let imaginations run wild.  Read More

With Klik, Australian companies Elenberg Fraser and Unitised Building have come up with a prefabricated modular building system they claim is equally suited to knocking up a quick skyscraper as it is a modern, designer house. It makes sense, then, that the product is pitched at developers, architects and would-be homeowners, and that the multiple choice procurement procedure is identical for each. If you can tick a box, you can design a Klik building, more or less.  Read More

Though a large imposing house may draw admiring glances, it’s also generally expensive, and a waste of resources for a smaller family. Los Angeles-based Big & Small House by Anonymous Architects bucks the trend of sizable LA residences, and instead offers an example of small living at its most practical and appealing.  Read More

Skylights are a nice way of letting daylight into your house, and if they can be opened, they’re also effective at letting out the hot, stuffy air that rises to the ceiling. Depending on their location, however, they can be difficult to open without running electrical wiring up to them. That’s why Velux has introduced its no-wiring-required Solar Powered Fresh Air Skylight.  Read More

A self-assembled spherical house may sound like a simple idea, but the founders of the Ekinoid Project are extraordinarily ambitious. It's thought that the global population could reach 9 billion by 2050, and to house some of those 2 billion extra people, the Ekinoid Project would see pop-up off-grid towns comprised entirely of spheroid pods accommodate 10,000 people at a time in some of Earth's least hospitable places.  Read More

Architects are increasingly designing houses which produce as much energy as they consume, which has led to a plethora of innovative sustainable homes, some conventional in design and some decidedly not. The Mo Ventus luxury house concept from Todd Theodore Fix of FIXd Architecture/Design falls squarely in the latter category, with plans that call for retractable screens that regulate heat and light, along with a curved design to harness wind power more efficiently.  Read More

At Gizmag, we're suckers for interesting looking houses. We've covered the world's narrowest house, houses made from a shipping containers, and so many other interesting abodes. One thing we've not seen before is a house with a profile that mimics the shape of a dinosaur's head, that is until we encountered the OLS House.  Read More

Last year, we saw an interesting concept for the OdMEx, an enormous mobile home with a billboard on the side, on which occupants could sell advertising space for some extra income. Mexican paper company Scribe recently funded a similarly-styled house, but with a much different goal. The Billboard House is a simple home built onto the back of a billboard in Mexico City to temporarily house an artist while she works on a new hand-painted advertisement.  Read More