design homes

what is home? home is what shapes our values. but, too often, energy awareness isoverlooked. and so we grow up believing that electricity is free, that water is unlimited, and that ouractions do not affect our environment. we forget

design homes, that the resources we use todayare the resources our children will never have. home is a portrait of the world inbalance. but how do we design homes that restore that balance?

it's not hard...we just have to go backto the start. well, as it turns out it's not always easybeing green, and a lot of that just has to do with the way that we design and buildhomes. people love having custom houses, sothe industry doesn't have a good way of handling energy efficiency up front. so, we thought, why not build a house morelike a car? but instead of an engine, take all the efficient mechanical, electrical andplumbing systems and put them in a box that you can still customize the housearound? meet the core. it comes complete with heatrecovery ventilation,

power distribution, plumbing and greywatersystems, along with fully furnished kitchen and bathroom. the core can be personalized for eachhousehold's individual needs. we designed the core to be built in a factoryusing assembly-line techniques of fabrication. once assembled, it's ready to ship on a standard flat bed truck, right to your plot of land, so that you can build the home of your dreams around it. to bring the home to life we built the start.home.

we designed the start.home around the needs of a young palo alto couple. they love the outdoors, and they're eager to live in a way that's as sustainable as possible, but like most of us, they have a hard time balancing a sustainable lifestyle with a fast-paced, productive one. luckily, that's something the start.home can help with. in our home the core is at the heart of a flexibleopen arrangement of spaces for living, dining, and creating. a bright studiospace offers all the amenities and customizations necessary for any kind of work at home. largesliding doors integrate the home's internal

living space with the outdoors. the pitched roof allows for optimum southernsolar exposure, and rests atop operable clerestory windows, which provide natural daylight and ventilation for passive heating andcooling. the house has just one bedroom for now, but to suit the needs of a growing family, the core framework makes it easy to addan additional bedroom in just a few years. outside, our home features an expansive back porch built from recycled red wood,

shaded by a majestic pergola, andsurrounded by a year round garden of native flowers ad edible vegitation. the start home empowers its residents,providing them with all the information they need to live more sustainable lives. we've redesigned all sorts ofinteraction points using the principles of behaviorally-informed design to help you become more aware and yourenergy production and consumption, and its causal environment. we designed the start.home to beintrinsically sustainable, but that

doesn't mean that we underestimated theimportance of the informed and motivated people who are going to live in it. in the end, it's not just about a sustainable house, but a sustainable lifestyle, and it's not a single decision but a combinationdecisions that you make over an entire lifetime. just imagine if you could begin with the house unlike any other, with a core that notonly powers the house, but empowers people to value energy andresources. now that, we think, is a really good start.

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