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Innovative Green Builders – Blu Homes
This month we salute innovative green builder Blu Homes. Blu Homes states it is able to reduce the cost of building a home by up to 50 percent by using cutting-edge technology with operational innovations to build homes in their factories. Customers choose from seven different designs and then work with Blu Homes to custom tailor the home for a pre-chosen property. This video from the their youtube channel shares one home owners Blu Home experience Another exciting element about Blu Homes is their support of using innovative web technology...
read moreInnovative Green Builders – EarthCo Megablock
We are always looking to promote other green building innovators and at a recent Clean Tech Open event in San Jose, we came across Clean Tech Open Semifinalist EarthCo Megablock. This Texas based company provides architects and builders with an all natural product, the EarthCo Megablock. These blocks are high thermal mass earthen walls (18″ thick and up) and can be built at twice the speed and 1/2 the cost of conventional construction systems. EarthCo Megablock states, “our process produces healthy, affordable, high thermal mass...
read moreClean Tech Open 2011 Semifinalist!
IDEAbuilder is both honored and excited excited to have been selected as a semifinalist in the world’s largest cleantech business competition. We look forward to connecting with other cleantech innovators and supporting organizations. We believe this will provide us with an ideal opportunity to partner with other companies interested in working together to create jobs, make green building affordable, and build a better planet. Thank you from the team!
read moreEnergy Smart Prefab Design
This home was designed in connection with collaboration between one of our architecture partners PQL Studio within the field of prefab construction. PQL Studio is a Denmark-based architectural firm that focuses on creating great design results for energy-optimized buildings. With the philosophy, that “doing good” never should be at the cost of looking good, the aim is to assist in constructing a future with renewable energy systems as an integrated and harmonic part of the building environment. PQL Studio’s...
read moreTruckee Home
Case Study: Residential project in Lake Tahoe. Design – We worked with the architect and builder to develop an extremely detailed and accurate model of the building including tens of thousands of individual wood pieces and an integrated, plasma-cut, steel frame to support the heavy very snow loads in the Lake Tahoe region. The models are machine-readable (defined in the standards required by the CNC robotic lines) for both steel and wood. Fabrication – Processing of the materials was done in Portland, Oregon using...
read morePanelized Residential Project
We recently completed the installation a panelized residential project for Vancouver, Canada. The main residence has three floors, 6 bedrooms and five bathrooms. The project included wall, floor and roof panels. We also panelized a backyard cottage – these are referred to as Laneway Cottages in Vancovuer – that will likely be a rental unit for nearby University of British Columbia. This was an especially interesting project because it was designed by the home owner, Kenneth Chooi, an architect and instructor at the...
read moreDesign Open Mic: Building Homes with Web3D and Robotics
IDEAbuilder’s Damon Hernandez presented at the June 8th session of Design Open Mic at the Architecture For Humanity office in San Francisco, California. The following is taken from the Design Open Mic site. “Starting things off, Damon Hernandez got plenty of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the audience over his presentation of the IDEAbuilder system, which uses Web3D technologies to create virtual models of architectural projects, and which can then be used to facilitate communication and collaboration among...
read moreInteractive Green Education
One way we use interactive 3D is to educate home owners, builders, designers, and AEC students to new green building products. The screenshot above demonstrates how information about environmentally friendly denim insulation is displayed after the user clicks on the option to learn more and explore the wall’s internal systems.
read morePassive House
We are have experience with passive house design and fabrication as well as the less known Swiss Minergie building standards. These two performance-based standards are some of the most rigorous in the world and are also some of the most popular and proven with over 30,000 buildings constructed to passive house criteria and 20,000 conforming to minergie standards. We are currently part of a team of collaborators designing a 7,000 square foot passive house residence for British Columbia. We have a number of other potential passive house...
read moreAugmented Reality for the Building Industry
IDEAbuilder CEO Greg Howes presented at the Augmented Reality Event 2011 in Santa Clara on ‘AR in the Building Industry‘. “Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” – Wikipedia Greg showed examples of how IDEAbuilder and others focused on the AEC industry are using augmented reality technologies to improve multiple stages of the...
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