green roof

A house with a grass roof

September 18, 2012

A house with a grass roof

Above: Farm house in Keldur, Iceland. These are “earth sheltered” houses, an ancient form of passive solar, sustainable architecture. It’s the practice of “packing earth against building walls for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss and maintain steady indoor temperature.”

From Wikipedia: “A sod roof or turf roof is a traditional Scandinavian type of green roof covered with sod on top of several layers of birch bark on gently sloping wooden roof boards.

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Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland

June 20, 2009

Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland

Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, built between 1937 and 1939 as a rural retreat, is considered one of the greatest houses of the 20th century. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who curated a major retrospective of Aalto’s work at the Barbican in London in 2007, says photographs give no real sense of Aalto’s buildings.

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