Tag: Materials
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Guest Post: Fungus As Building Material?
The lifespan sees practical application of Mycoform blocks used for housing in third-world countries. Planetary ONE has sought out grants to send its building materials and development plan to emerging economies to encourage startup manufacturing of the Mycoform bricks. Initially potential manufacturers spend $150 on a hydraulic press and $50 for the steel mold used…
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Former WWII Military Base is Now a Sustainable Farmhouse
Allies Farmhouse is a renovation of structures on a former military base that was used by the United States Air Force 381st Bombardment Group during World War II when it was known as airbase RAF Ridgewell. Farmers James and Claudia Grey enlisted Cameron Scott from Timber Design to transform the single-story public building and the…
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Battery Made Of Wood Could Be Much Greener
There’s a lot of research going on in the realm of batteries these days. It seems like there’s a “battery breakthrough” announced almost every day. Clearly, all these battery breakthroughs won’t make it to commercialization, and it’s hard to identify which will. This new battery made of wood one could be promising… but would the…
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A Battery Made of Wood?
But don’t try it at home yet– the components in the battery tested by scientists at the University of Maryland are a thousand times thinner than a piece of paper. Using sodium instead of lithium, as many rechargeable batteries do, makes the battery environmentally benign. Sodium doesn’t store energy as efficiently as lithium, so you…
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1960s Maine Ranch Renovation is LEED Platinum Candidate
Renovating this 1960s ranch-style house in Maine is a “rags to riches” story that may achieve LEED Platinum. Jesse Thompson, AIA, partner at Kaplan Thompson Architects, and his wife Betsy Scheintaub, a fiber textile artist, collaborated on the Ranch Revival project while living in the run-down house with their two children. The resulting plan expanded…