Archinect - News

Your next job could be designing off-grid homes in Hawaii

2022-08-17T11:55:00-04:00

Last month, we used our Job Highlights series to profile an opportunity to design rural getaways at the full-service Brooklyn studio HUTS. The role offered an example of architectural careers intersecting with popular culture; in this case, the alluring cliché of leaving a bustling city to find peace in nature.

Our editorial frequently sees examples of residential typologies that have captured the mainstream imagination. These include the tiny house movement, minimalist living, and DIY homes; architecturally themed movements capable of sustaining popular Netflix shows, YouTube channels, and Instagram profiles.

For this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series, we are continuing this theme by exploring open opportunities to design off-grid homes in Hawaii. The roles, advertised by Haiku-based Hawaii Off-Grid, offers interested applicants the opportunity to engage with...

Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood has a plan to become energy independent

2022-05-30T10:30:00-04:00

The Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago is the site of a proposed new microgrid project set to improve its resiliency as the historic and predominantly Black community pushes towards energy independence.

The microgrid will purportedly be the first of its scale found anywhere in the United States, and offers a major upgrade of a much smaller Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) run system, as well as a reduction in the phenomena known as Corona discharge.

According to the website Reasons to Be Cheerful, the project, which is being developed in unison with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and funded (in part) by a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy, passed efficacy tests but still faces a number of engineering and permitting hurdles. After those tests have been passed, the report states, the Bronzeville microgrid will power more than 1,000 homes, businesses, and even public institutions like the local Provident Hospital.

Model of the ITT campus utilizing different colors to ...

Could San Francisco become a city of "micro-hoods"?

2020-07-23T16:49:00-04:00

San Francisco based architects Kuth Ranieri Architects have unveiled a speculative proposal that aims to retrofit existing and underutilized office building clusters into mini-neighborhoods containing many of the daily necessities for residents of a post-pandemic city.

The firm's Post-Pandemic, Live + Work Micro-Hoods project envisions that the "rethinking the future of downtown will happen incrementally, on a block-by-block basis, through public-private partnerships, in parallel with policy and zoning changes." These changes, coupled with shifts in mobility as well as the rising phenomenon of more people working in their homes, will both make cities less auto-dominated as well as ripe for physical reconsideration, the architects explain.

Particularly, the architects envision underutilized downtown office complexes as sites of reappropriation and redesign, and point to recently announced plans by California energy giant PG&E to vacate its downtown San Francisco headquarters as perh...

How solar battery storage will affect microgrids and off-grid living

2017-08-14T17:32:00-04:00

In March, Tesla cut the ribbon on this groundbreaking grid-scale battery installation, a key test of the viability of energy storage in making renewable energy a more reliable part of the grid. With 50,000 solar panels and 272 batteries, the combined solar-and-storage plant provides enough energy to power 4,500 homes for four hours. If Tesla can help keep Kauai solar-powered around the clock with its batteries, then it can apply what it has learned elsewhere in the country, and around the world

In her Longreads/Grist piece, author Amelia Urry explains the changing nature of solar power challenges that off-grid dwellers as well as smaller, geographically isolated microgrids face now that battery storage on an industrial scale is becoming more lucrative.

The article tells the story of a young couple struggling to live off the grid on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, when at the same time, the local utility cooperative switches on its brand-new bank of Tesla batteries to store the abundant solar power it generates during daytime but couldn't offer during peak times in the early morning and late evening hours: "It’s not about getting off the grid. It’s about building a better one."

Just add a cabin: Gapahuk, a readymade cabin from Snøhetta, is designed to fit in almost anywhere

2017-05-04T13:10:00-04:00

While the gapahuk (which in Norwegian means "a simple wooden structure with two or three walls and a roof") is not new, Snohetta's conceptualization of it as a multi-terrain, potentially solar-panelled off-the-grid insta-cabin is.

The gapahuk has a purposefully tight layout to make it easy to heat and large windows to make it easy to gawk at any available scenery, and also features three bedrooms and an adaptable exterior patio to make it easy to socialize.

The twisted roof bears up equally well under punishing winds and sun, while the design calls for low maintenance materials that can usually be locally sourced. As entries in the sustainably chic category go, this rates highly (provided you have some extra land lying around on which to place it).

Woman's dream tiny home clashes with Canadian law

2015-08-28T18:43:00-04:00

Cheryl Smith planned to move "off the grid" and into a small house near Clark's Harbour, N.S., a year ago. But thanks to Canadian building regulations, the four-by-six metre structure remains half-built and empty. [...] Canadian laws require living spaces to have access to power to run smoke detectors and air exchange systems. But Smith said the point of moving into her tiny home was to disconnect from the power grid.