GreenStyle

A new system for building houses, designed for a world beset by global warming, is being introduced at the Burning Man art festival in Nevada. A full-size demonstration house structure is being built by volunteers in a few days, demonstrating the amazingly easy, inexpensive process construction. The design replaces traditional wood framing with snap-together assemblies of mass-produced wooden beams made from Kyoto carbon-sequestration plantation-grown trees. The resulting structure is not only ecologically advanced, but can be made into any shape and size house, requires no foundation, and is extremely resistant to floods and other bad weather.

Black Rock, Nevada (PRWEB) August 30, 2006 — The Black Rock Desert, site of the annual Burning Man art festival, is a cracked, burning waste, unable to support human life. Perhaps appropriate for the introduction of the first house designed specifically for a world afflicted by global warming.

The SugarCube House, brainchild of Berkeley, California engineer David Wilson and architect Michael Kozel, is the a house structure specifically designed to sequester carbon dioxide (the main culprit in global warming) and to withstand extreme weather of all kinds, using standard commonly-available construction materials. As a bonus, it’s enormously easier and cheaper to build compared to traditional house designs.

To demonstrate the design, Wilson knew he needed something dramatic. So his team will build an actual 2-story house frame from the ground up with a team of volunteers at the Nevada festival. Photos and Video showing the project can be seen at www.sugarcube2006.com

Not strictly a house but a house framing system, the Cube system completely replaces framing, walls, and ceilings, and requires no traditional foundation. It uses commonly-available, 100% recyclable manufactured wood beams that “snap together” and can be varied in size produce almost any floorplan.

What is “Global Warming Friendly?”

The Cube house beams are made of farm-grown trees–-trees which are being planted in very large numbers in tree plantations that are part of the Kyoto Treaty carbon sequestration (carbon absorbing) projects. Thus the Cube design would provide a ready market for this plantation wood, which at the same time avoiding the cutting of wild or old-growth wood (currently used for old-fashioned “solid” wood beams).

The resulting structure is so strong and light, it requires almost no foundation, thus reducing use of concrete, another large producer of carbon dioxide. The Cube house sits on simple pads, one on each corner, or on stilts to avoid flood waters. “This would be the ideal structure to use for re-building New Orleans” says Wilson “because you could raise all the houses 10 feet or more off the ground”.

Finally this house structure is 1/3 the cost and 1/3 the time to build compared to traditional framing — benefits that were a surprise to the inventors. “We were optimizing for global warming benefits” said Wilson “and we assumed it would be more expensive. So it was a shock to find out it was so much easier and faster to build.”

To assemble a Cube, a truckload of mass-produced beams is delivered to the site. The beams are then stacked up like Lincoln logs and bolted together with long metal rods. Standard sheets of plywood (also based on plantation wood) are screwed to the exterior. Windows and doors cut, paint and shingles applied. The result: an entire house with no complex carpentry required.

Wilson says: “This is such a good example how, if you re-design for a new, greener, more ecologically aware world, you actually get a more efficient product. These houses will be as good or better-looking than current framed designs. They work for almost any layout, they are cheaper to build, and they and should have lower insurance rates too. It’s a win-win for the economy.”

The SugarCube house will be on display through the end of the Burning Man Festival. Wilson expects to begin construction of the first houses, for ecologically-advanced owners, in the next year.