A House for 8,054 US-$

As reported by the BBC, a 52-year-old software engineer in Scotland has built a wood and straw-bale house for a total of UK£ 4,000 (equals 8,054 US-$). Talk about affordable housing. You can see a break-down of all costs on the BBC website. Somehow reminds me of another guy from Massachusetts. He got it done […] Read more..

Wood Design Photo Series: Lynn Canyon Café and Ranger Station

I like visiting the Lynn Valley suspension bridge in North Vancouver. It is not as commercial as its big sister – the Capilano bridge – yet it gives you the same thrill walking over it. It was even safe for the kids – apparently the deck got an overhaul last year. What I hadn’t seen […] Read more..

Autodesk Polishes its Green Thumb

It seems like this is the year for industry consolidations in the technology field. After Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and their purchase of Caligari it is now time for Green Building Studio to be acquired by a much larger company, Autodesk in this case. In an announcement that just fluttered into my inbox, GBS acknowledges […] Read more..

Nice match: Carbon neutral design with Revit and GBS!

Greenbuildingstudio.com, the green-design web-extension for your cad software online service has just announced their third overhaul (i.e. v. 3.0). With more and more architecture and engineering offices embracing parametric building design (catchword: BIM = “Building Information Modeling”), this is a great tool to run a quick industry-standard (DOE-2) energy check on a virtual building and […] Read more..

Green Design Using SketchUp

Apparently today is blog action day. I didn’t know that myself… Oh, well… The official SketchUp blog just published an environmental design feature with examples of green building design using SketchUp. It is always good to learn from how others are using a design tool like SketchUp – particularly in a commercial environment.

I build with wood, don’t you?

If you are interested in learning more about innovative wood structures, environmental aspects of building with wood and general wood design, come to our symposium at UMass in November (1st-2nd). We at BMATWT are organizing this annual conference for the first time and are excited about a great international lineup of speakers. AIA/CES credits will […] Read more..