Alex Schreyer's Blog, Projects, Books, and More
If your mental image of a Swiss mountain hut consists of a small, weathered log hut with gable roof encircled by flowing meadows and grazing cows, think again. Or rather look up! All the way to an altitude of 2883 meters (9,500 ft) near Zermatt in Switzerland. That’s where in September 2009 you’ll find the […] Read more..
A team from the TU Vienna in Austria was one of the three winners of a European architectural design competition under the title “A Minimum House for Leisure in the XXI century.” Their winning entry was a house made entirely of shipping pallets. Similar to the recycling of metal shipping containers, this is a great […] Read more..
Now Autodesk has two green thumbs! In a press release published earlier today, Autodesk has announced that it has acquired ECOTECT. Let’s see how they weave Revit, Green Building Studio and Ecotect together. FYI, here is a description of ECOTECT from the Square 1 website: Ecotect is a comprehensive environmental design tool that covers a […] Read more..
Sustainability is everywhere these days. Just browse through the ads in Architectural Record and you’ll be amazed how every single building materials producer finds something green in their product – no matter how energy intensive it was to produce. There is also an onslaught of “sustainability” events around us. Earth Day had just passed when […] Read more..
If you liked Demeter, then you’ll like this one. The Department of Energy has just released a plugin for SketchUp (works with both the free and full version) that allows for an EnergyPlus analysis to be run on a SketchUp building model from within the familiar SketchUp interface. The geometry of a building can be […] Read more..
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..
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..