Nisheisha lives in Jamaica, but there’s no chance you will find her home. I have learned from experience that you never trust directions given by children or by people who do not drive. I’ve also learned from experience that those are the people who will ask you for a ride. Oh, they may be able to show you where they live, but you’ll be past a turn before they tell you to turn “back there.” Go ahead, ask a child near you for directions to some nearby landmark! -via Cynical-C

How did this happen? Maybe when they decided to list the house for sale in a hurry, the only exterior picture they had was a dud from the wedding album. Or maybe it was a Photoshop Disaster. Either way, potential buyers are going to assume the house is haunted! Link

The Welcome Home Blog posts videos of military personnel coming home after a deployment. You are welcome to browse or even submit yours! This video is called Soldiers Surprising Their Loved Ones: PART ONE, a compilation of returning service members surprising their parents, spouses, children, siblings, or pets. There are several compilations listed under “best of” at the blog. The Welcome Home Blog is not limited to surprise videos, but that’s what most of them are. Link -via Breakfast Links

The man room or “man cave” can be defined as any place a man sets aside to pursue his interests, whether with friends, family, or by himself. It can be an office, a study, the basement, or a shed out back. For the purposes of this post, the man room is not a shop or workspace, but rather a place for a man to relax and enjoy himself.

To best fix it up, follow the advice of men who have gone before you and follow the three rules: quality, comfortable, and personal. The Art of Manliness has tips on all these plus pictures of the manly rooms of manly men. Pictured here is Mark Twain’s billiard room. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Inverted

With a little clever placement of elastic, Instructables user fungus amungus was able to create this simple, but seriously eye-catching inverted bookshelf.

Staircase

If you have a lot of books, you may have wished your home came with a set of bookcases built into the walls, but I’m willing to guess you never conceived of using your staircase to hold all of your novels. Architect Tim Sloan did though, and the result is perhaps one of the most functional staircases I’ve ever seen.

The Twins

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always running out of space in my bookcases, which is why I simply love this expanding Twin Bookshelf by Zeynep Cinisli. Essentially, you get two sets of cupboard shelves and when those fill up, you can just pull them apart for even more shelf space.

REK

Like the Twins, REK by Reiner de Jong is brilliant in that it can be consolidated or expanded as needed. As a bonus, the detailed linework in the design makes it look cool room no mater how extended it happens to be at any given time.

Equations

Here’s one I know you Neatonauts will just love, a bookshelf with an equation built right in to it. Not only does the design, by Estudio Breder, look cool, but it’s also a great way to sort your titles by importance using the parentheses.

The Infinite

While Job Koelewijn’s infinity-sign-shaped bookcase won’t actually hold an infinite number of books, it does hold a lot. Aside from looking cool, the design has a deeper meaning too, representing the infinite knowledge that can be gained from books.

MYDNA

When you’re looking for a bookcase that really reflects your scientific interest, Joel Escalona’s MYDNA bookcase is a perfect option. Aside from the fact that this bookcase has the undeniable look of your favorite twisted ladder structure, it also is unique in that you can access if from four different directions –meaning this case is certainly not intended to be shoved in the corner of a room somewhere.

The United States of America

For those patriotic few who revel in the thought of adorning their walls with pictures and likenesses of the USA, Ron Arad’s USA bookcase is a great way to store your books while keeping with your theme. Best of all, it provides you with a unique organizing system opportunity.

The Dolly

While this dolly bookshelf by Etsy seller StudioDZ might not hold the most books and at $850, it might be one of the more expensive options, but on the upside, it’s certainly the easiest to move.

Books To Go

Rose Cobb’s Books To Go design is another portable bookshelf on wheels, this one secured not by gravity but by a giant vice. Now that’s one way to make sure things don’t get shifted about. Best of all, if your shelf ever fills up, just attach another one to the top and keep on rolling.

The Dog

If you love to read, this NEL dog bookshelf could quickly become your best friend as he holds your favorite titles on his back and holds on to the book you’re currently reading in his mouth.

The City Skyline

Frederik Roije’s “Storylines” bookshelves look like a city skyline and once you add your titles, you can continue with the uneven  drops and peaks or arrange them in a way that will provide you with uneven bottoms that come together with a level top.

The Maze

Once you’re done getting lost in your favorite book, you can put it back in this beautiful maze bookcase by Woodloops, and hopefully not get lost trying to find it again.

The Bed

When it’s up against the wall, this bookcase by Karen Babel might look like a good waste of wall space, but once the bed is laid down on the ground and pushed together, it’s easy to see just how useful this bookcase is for those with smaller homes and apartments. Personally, I’d love to have one of these for when I have company staying over.

Movement

Samulnoli’s Movement Bookcase is a cute décor addition, featuring little arms and legs that actually hug your favorite books. What a great way to show your books some love!

Read & Roll

The Read & Roll Nils Holger Moormann combines all the functionality of a bookcase with the comfort of a chair. It even comes in two versions, the standard and the lounge chair. Best of all, they even come with a giant wheel so you can rearrange your book/chairs whenever you need to.

The Bookwave

The soft fabric used in the ilio’s Bookwave allow it to stretch and shrink as needed so it can expand for your heaviest volumes or shrink to hide itself when not in use. The design is brilliant because it can be hung from any ceiling and used as a room divider or a curtain.

Folded

These slatted bookshelves from Picked By Hand not only look cool, they’re also super functional, allowing the user to bend their shelves up or down as needed to make more space.

I know most people, myself included, tend to stick with the tried and true classic bookshelves, but there are all kinds of models out there for the fashionable bibliophile. Do any of you guys have cool bookcases that are worth talking about?

Before I get started, I want to give a special thank you to WebEcoist and WebUrbanist, who provided a wealth of inspiration and research to this article.

Buildings

Starting on the big scale uses for leftover books, you can build entire structures with them. While Slovakian artist Matej Krén’s building inside The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (above) may not be structurally sound enough to exist outside another building, the Yellow Pages building (below) might be able to hold its own in a storm. Students from the Dalhousie University Department of Architecture in Nova Scotia built the house using a few wooden and metal beams to hold the thick books in place.

Of course, even if a book building could survive the elements, it would soon become subject to destruction via mold and insects.

Home Insulation

Just because your home can’t be made completely from books doesn’t mean they can’t improve your home though. According to Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine, books are an excellent form of insulation, so even if you don’t want to read certain titles any more, they still can be useful for filling up bookshelves that line the exterior-facing walls of your home.

Bookshelves

Artist Jim Rosenau specializes in making bookshelves and book cases from old books. Why bother chopping down trees to make wood for these book holders when you already have all the materials you need in your pile of books to get rid of?

Desks

If you have a lot of books and need a desk, you’re in luck. All it takes to turn a bunch of books into desk is a nice heavy slab of wood or glass in order to press down on the volumes and give you a smooth writing surface. Both the Brunswick Bound bookstore of Melbourne (above) and the library at the Delft University of Technology (below) are equipped with these stylish and incredibly inexpensive desks.

A Couch

If you need a couch more than a desk, a lot of unwanted books and some tape can be used to make a couch that’s certain to get attention. While the idea comes from “Paper Man,” a Jeff Bridges movie where a frustrated writer uses unsold copies of his first book to create a new couch, the idea is entirely possible –the set designers used real books and packing tape to design the furniture.

A Chair

For something with a substantially smaller book investment, these paperback chairs by artist David Karoff are always a good option. He designed them for a Rhode Island bookstore called Myopic Books, so since they were made to be used by customers on a regular basis, they’re probably quite a bit more comfortable than the book couch.

Lights

“Light up your life with books” sounds like something you’d see on a cheesy library poster from the eighties, but in this case, it’s actually a decorating tip. While you can always buy a beautiful $550 book chandelier from artist Lucy Norman (above), it’s surprisingly easy to make your own less sophisticated model, like the one below, at home. All you need is a lamp shade, a lamp kit, a few hardcover books, a clamp and a drill. Shauna Smith Duty teaches you how in this article on Thrift Fun.

Ceiling Décor

While these books hanging from the ceiling may not provide any useful function, they do look really cool and will certainly make a home with really high ceilings feel a lot more personal and cozy. The original art installation is by Richard Wentworth, but if you wanted to adapt this to your own home, I’m sure some fishing line and a drill would be all you would need.

Christmas Tree

Why chop down a tree when you can make your own out of the same basic material? To be fair, most people couldn’t find enough green books to create a whole tree and even if they did, they might be disappointed with the lack of lighting and ornament options, but for the Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco, the tree was a perfect holiday decoration.

Image via Shawn Calhoun [Flickr]

Planters

One of the coolest things about using a book as a planter is the fact that you’re using something that was once a living plant to provide care for another plant. I wish I could tell you more about these cool planters, but the company that makes them, Gartenkultur, is Italian and their website doesn’t have an English language version. Using the Google translator though, I was able to discern that they use some kind of insulating materials to ensure the plant can be watered without ruining the book.

Vases

Similarly, these book vases by designer Laura Cahill can be filled with water because hidden inside each papery base is a test tube for water collection. Miss Cahill also makes a great lamp out of book pages and a fun stool out of hard covers.

Clothes

If you’re not interested in decorating your home with books, what about your body? This stunning ball gown by Ryan Novelline is comprised of the covers of discarded Golden Books.

Jewelry

If you need some jewelry to go along with your new Golden Books dress, Little Fly has just the thing –rings, necklaces and more made from the laminated pages of discarded books.

Kindle Case

Are you afraid people will make fun of you for owning a Kindle? Do you hang out in bad neighborhoods where it’s best to hide your valuable possessions? Either way, Etsy seller BustedTypewriter’s carved out book that works as a Kindle case might be just the solution you’ve been hoping for.

3D Artworks

These days, most people are willing to acknowledge that the best part of a Pulp Fiction novel is the cover. Artist Thomas Allen took this idea to a whole new level by cutting and folding these covers and then shooting the images with a shallow depth of field. The result is a fascinating narrative that is even more artistic and vivid than the original artists could have ever hoped for.

Cutout Arts

Brian Dettmer uses a similar medium as Thomas Allen. Only instead of photographing the covers of books that he has moved into position, he instead cuts away at pictures inside of books until the many layers of pages form an all new image. The results are amazingly detailed and strikingly beautiful.

Art Canvases

When most people see a book, they see a series of pages that form a story. Mike Stilkey sees a blank canvas. While he doesn’t exclusively paint on book covers, some of his most eye-catching artworks take advantage of the unique canvases. The only problem I see with the art is how you would take it down if it needed to go to a new museum or to a buyer’s home?

Of course, you can always give your books away to Good Will if you don’t have the motivation to tackle any of these projects yourself.

Have any of you ever used your books for non-literary purposes? If so, please share your stories in the comments.

In 1973, architect Ricardo Bofill bought an abandoned cement factory in Barcelona and converted it to use as his business offices, creative studio, and home. He spent two years remodeling: tearing down some buildings, converting others, and leaving some of the original equipment in place for its charm. The result is an inspiring and overwhelmingly spacious headquarters. See more pictures at yatzer. Link -via b3ta

Officials with the South Carolina Education Lottery say the man, who moved to South Carolina from New Jersey six years ago, was unemployed and about to lose his home before his ticket matched the winning numbers.

Link

Isn’t this an adorable house? You almost expect to see Frodo coming out of it! Owen Geiger built this earthen dome in Thailand in 2007. The main component is bags of soil. You can build your own with his tutorial at Instructables. Link -via The Daily What

Because pumpkins are one of the most critical elements of Halloween decorations and because there are about a billion pumpkin galleries online, the first half of our decoration ideas focus exclusively on Jack-O-lanterns. If you’ve already got your carving planned or are sick of looking at orange sculptures, then feel free to skip further down.

LED Lights:

Video link

When you want to do something more techy, try making your own LED pumpkin with an artificial pumpkin wired with lights and controlled externally so you can change the expression at will.

Dark detecting:

To take LED lights to a new level, you can always try installing circuitry that will tell your pumpkin to turn on when it is dark. While I haven’t seen this done, I think a motion detecting light would also be pretty awesome. Any readers want to give it a shot?

Snap-o-lantern:

Video link

When you want to go a step beyond LED lights, try buying a mini-pumpkin and engineering it to snap its mouth at passers by. This is also a good decoration for your cubicle since it doesn’t take up much space but is sure to get a lot of attention.

Robo:

Video link

While there are plenty of pumpkins that look like robots, this is the only one I have seen so far that actually is a robot.

Steampunk:

I know you Neatonauts are torn on the whole steampunk thing, but those who do like the art form are sure to appreciate this awesome steampunk pumpkin.

Angler fish:

For those of you who like to carve your pumpkins to look like animals, this angler fish pumpkin is not only a favorite animal of geeks everywhere, but it also makes an impressive looking pumpkin.

Dalek:

I have to admit, this Dalek pumpkin just might be my favorite carving of all time. I’m sure other dalekmaniacs will agree.

Pac Man:

While these are technically not pumpkins, the hard-shells of gourds make an excellent jack-o-lantern and the shapes of these two lent themselves perfectly to the artist’s concept.

Star Wars:

As you probably know, there are a ton of awesome Star Wars pumpkins out there. Rather than try to post a whole bunch of them, let me share this gallery of them instead.

Video Games:

Similarly, there are a ton of video game pumpkins, so here’s a link to another gallery filled with them. The picture here is my personal favorite, but yours will probably vary based on your favorite game.

Simpsons:

If you prefer geeking out with the Simpsons, don’t miss the chance to check out these awesome pumpkin artworks.

Geeky Pumpkins:

While this gallery has a few pictures seen in the other three above, the browser and operating system pumpkins are something every geek can appreciate.

Templates Gallery:

If you want to make your own geeky pumpkin but can’t freestyle a design, then be sure to take advantage of this excellent collection courtesy of Think Geek.

Extreme Pumpkins:

While I don’t condone the idea of paying someone else to carve pumpkins for you, professional carver Tom Nardone’s Extreme Pumpkins website has some great tips for carving your own pumpkins, as well as some really amazing examples of his past work. He even has a great selection of free pumpkin templates. If you really like his work, you can buy his excellent how-to book, “Extreme Pumpkins” on Amazon.

Now, as promised, here are some geeky non-pumpkin decorating tips.

Skelevision:

By using a two-way mirror, a motion detector, a light and a skeleton, you can easily create a creepy surprise for trick or treaters.

Ghost Projections:

Another cool, creepy geektastic project are these awesome projections that instantly fill your home with spooky ghosts.

Charred Corpse:

If you really want a fake skeleton to look scary, you need to go a step beyond. By using some paint and a few other basic products, you can convert a plain skeleton into a truly creepy charred corpse.

Papercraft Skulls:

For a truly geeky skeleton though, try making this awesome papercraft skull project.

Origami skeleton:

For another paper project, you can also try making a full skeleton with nothing more than folded paper if you follow these exceptionally complex directions.

Tree Faces:

When you’re looking for cool Halloween decorations that aren’t too creepy for youngsters, these tree faces can cheer up your yard with a surprising twist.

Cobweb Shooter:

Video link

While spider webs are a pretty traditional Halloween decoration, there’s never been a cooler way to spread them out than to use a cool cobweb shooter like this one.

Thumb thumb drive:

If you want to decorate your cubicle and snapping pumpkins and spider webs aren’t enough, try investing in this dismembered thumb thumb drive. It’s not only eerie, it’s also punny.

Web Master:

If you really think your cubicle is a gateway into hell, then this silly webmaster set up is a perfect way to show everyone just how terrifying life in the office really is.

Helicopter and Plane Crashes:

If you’ve got a pretty large budget, decking out your front yard to look like either a helicopter or plane crash is a pretty cool way to go, but it might be a good idea to ask your neighbors about putting a real broken aircraft in your yard first.

Flying Saucer:

Video link

For a really geeky twist though, try going for a flying saucer instead. This one even rises and falls and has a special visitor pop in and out vehicle.

Toxic Waste Drum:

Even if you happen to work in a power plant or other area where you could take home toxic waste drums to decorate, it’s best to avoid breaking the law and risking the health of everyone in the immediate area and make a fake one instead.

If you decorate your house for Halloween, you may have some of your own cool geeky tips, so please share.

Habitat for Humanity’s 27th annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project is a World Habitat Day  event  this year.  It will be held Oct. 4 – 8 in six cities in the United States.  Held in a different location each year, Habitat’s Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project is an annual, internationally-recognized week of building that brings attention to the need for simple, decent and affordable housing.  This year, the Carters will work alongside volunteers in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore and Annapolis, Md.; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.; and Birmingham, Ala. to build, rehabilitate and improve 86 homes.

Habitat for Humanity has a schedule of events, and suggestions for ways you can become involved with providing housing to those who need it in your community and around the world. Link -Thanks, Liza!

In 1991, star trend tracker Faith Popcorn wrote The Popcorn Report. The book was a best seller that offered a catchy list of future trends she foresaw. Included in her list was a trend she named “cocooning” which reflected “…the need to protect oneself from the unpredictable, the stressful and often hostile, outside environment.” In the Glossary she added an extreme form of cocooning, “burrowing”.  Burrowing would be “..the ultimate expression of Cocooning in which consumers dig in, ever deeper, with a bunker mentality.”

While Faith was writing The Popcorn Report, I was burrowing at home in Sacramento, California, creating Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century. The book was published the same year as The Popcorn Report. I was essentially tracking the same trend.

I depicted a future product called the Television Life Support System:

Cautious Americans, sensing danger at every turn, may seek the passive, indrawn personal life of the television spectator, or “couch potato.” Superchairs are sold that can be customized to meet almost every need.

In the same chapter I showed the TV Sleeping Chambers, a cocoon-shaped piece of furniture specially suited to the needs of selfish teenage boys and juvenile males in general. I wrote:

Addiction to television, a disease, can lead individuals to buy bullet-proofed, sound-deadening television-watching cocoons.

In the 1990s I continued to think up home furnishings that incorporated aspects of cocooning. The Potato Couch Room Group allowed one to get comfortable inside a snuggly, split-open baked potato while at home watching TV.

This past week I created a new drawing on the subject because my earlier drawings appear dated. The Personal Cave would be a room that one might find inside a melted-fudge-looking home as depicted in the post If I Were an Architect. Inside such homes there would be cave-like rooms, perfect for cocooning and burrowing. This lady can curl up in her cave in a fetal position and forget the world. When the mood suits her, she can check the news on the Internet, look in on her son on the Child Care Cam, watch for garden pests on the Garden Cam, or check the temperature of her roast on the Oven Cam. She can Skype, iChat, or socialize on Facebook. Knowing all is well with her world, she can again curl up!

As Faith Popcorn noted in The Popcorn Report, Americans were becoming not only more interested in appreciating the warmth and privacy of their home, but were generally becoming more worried and fearful. An industry was growing up – perhaps in part because of Popcorn’s trend tips — that offered personal pepper spray canisters, motel room door jamming and locking gadgets, and even an alarm that simulated the sound of a barking dog.

In August 1992, I drew a Fear Furniture showroom for The Sacramento Bee in which I showcased furniture that addressed as many kinds of fears as I could think of.

Around the same time, I drew a California-style Earthquake Canopy Bed. If the ceiling collapsed while you slept, your sleep would hardly be disturbed!

For this drawing, Furniture to Hide Inside, I noted:

Furniture designers create furniture a person can climb inside at night. Fearing forced home entry, people are willing to sit as if invisible inside oversized recliners to watch favorite television programs.  Beds are built hidden within larger, apparently empty beds or inside walls as pull-out bed drawers.

The feeling of being unsafe inside one’s own home was not entirely without basis. After all, especially in California, modern suburban dwelling styles had increasingly favored a relaxed, outdoor living style. The idea was promoted by magazines like Sunset, which had offices on the San Francisco peninsula. Sliding glass patio doors offered a way to melt the difference between enclosed home and inviting garden. Meandering paths, accessible to the public, were included within common green areas in a community in Davis, California, a development that featured lots lacking private fences. While this architectural trend toward trusting and openness was occurring, crimes of breaking and entering, home invasion and serial rape were on the rise.

Thus, in early 1990 – note the telescoping TV antenna and stack of VHS tapes which date the drawing – I was raising the alarm about the danger of getting too relaxed inside one’s home or apartment. I offered a line of Hide Inside furnishings

Yet even in my earlier book, What the World Needs Now (1984), I suggested that hide-inside furniture like the Bed-Room might add to one’s feeling of security at night. An obvious weakness in the concept would be if the lady or her spouse were snoring at the time a stranger snuck into the bedroom.

That there are still no commercial furniture products that one can hide inside does not necessarily prove that my idea is flawed. My prediction may simply require more decades before it is fulfilled.

Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website.

When Nikki of WhiMSy Love had a friend staying over for a short bit, she wanted to make her living area more inviting than just the standard airbed. As you can see, the solution was not only cute and clever, but darn right cheery.

Link via Craftzine

For a time in the late 1950s while I was an undergraduate in college, I studied architecture. I wanted badly to be an architect. Yet the world is a better place than it might have been had I taken up the field!  The field of architecture is no place for persons like me who run too easily after strange ideas.

Take my Punk Roofs for example. Please, someone, take them! It is not all that difficult to conceive of a neighborhood where “keeping up with the Joneses” means having a weirder roof than one’s neighbor. Yet can you imagine the upkeep and maintenance issues? How does one clean such a roof? How much insurance would roofers need before they climbed up a ladder to re-shingle a roof, or re-sharpen a roof’s spines? What would happen if a balloon full of tourists, operated by a nearby hot air balloon concession, lost power and sank into this neighborhood?

America is a strange place. It is a great and wonderful place that allows odd fads, cults, communes and crazy Utopian villages to thrive. It is a place where adults live basically without supervision much of the time. Since Americans are so into their cars – the rest of the world will never be able to compete with the U.S. in automobile fanaticism – I reasoned that an entire village could be built that would simulate the experience of being in one’s car or motorhome every day of the year. The concept above shows a happy couple inside their Auitohome, waking up to the recorded sounds of cars at rush hour. A mist-spraying device emits a non-toxic perfume that mimics the smell of exhaust fumes and motor oil. The village that I imagine is on a pleasant, sunny hillside. The occupants do not actually need to go anywhere. One of their rooms, fitted out like the interior of an automobile, would provide a Naugahyde-lined office space with computer and Internet, perfect for fulltime telecommuting.

I have always believed that no dumb concept is worth leaving unexplored. Here, I tried turning useless attic space into an upper-floor garage. It could be argued that this concept, which requires steel girder construction to support the attic garage and ramped driveways, simply creates new, and even more useless, spaces. It could be argued that the entire house would vibrate when the breadwinner pulled into the garage after coming home from work. It could be argued that this idea has few virtues.

If anyone were to ask me to draw the sort of house I would like to live in, I would reply by asking “Do you want my honest answer?” Truthfully, I would love to live in a home that that had no – or very few – straight lines or flat, rectilinear surfaces. There would be no right angles. To enter a room, one might roll or fall along a cushioned, soft corridor and climb in through a hole. The experience would be the near opposite of opening a door and entering a squared-off room. Call me a hippie, go ahead.

A neighborhood – an entire suburb – of such homes would be quite original looking. The only requirements of future homebuyers would be a) that they actually intend to live in the home and b) that they are willing to be emotionally “honest”. The idea of emotional honesty is tricky, of course. But a new buyer of one of these homes would be required to meet with an Architect-Psychologist at a sales office and play with modeling clay. The Architect-Psychologist would say: “Tell me what you are feeling right now.” “What does it feel like to push your finger into the clay?” “Are you sure you loved your mother?” “Would you ever feel like hiding and curling up on the floor, as for instance in a dark hole that has no other purpose than for hiding?”  Once the client and the Architect-Psychologist had agreed on a design after several sessions, the home would be built along the lines of the clay model. In later meetings, paint samples would be reviewed and discussed: “What are your feelings about purple?”

It is hard to imagine perfectly what it would be like to live in a community where all the homes were organic-looking piles, clumps and lumps – shapes that had been determined on a whim at the Architect-Psychologist’s clay sculpting table. The community might feel disorienting. At least, one would not have the problem of cookie-cutter sameness in home design! A staple of cartoonists for The New Yorker magazine in the 1950s and 60s was the image of a man – understood to be the primary Breadwinner – coming home drunk and trying to unlock the front door of a home, identical in appearance to his own, but several houses down the block. The jury is out on my idea – the jury being my own imagination as it tries to place a small version of myself down inside this drawing, with its little cars and creepy-plastic-looking homes.

I was at one time seriously interested in the concept of living in a baked home. There is a tradition in Iran of firing ceramic homes by building a hot fire inside – making the home into a kiln – and sealing off all windows and doors until the clay turns to a stone-like hardness. Such homes are quite resistant to earthquakes, even in an earthquake-prone region like Iran. I have long liked the idea of owning a home that cost almost nothing to construct. If you don’t believe me about the possibilities with ceramic homes, look up the work of architect Nader Khalili (1936-2008), who worked professionally as an architect in Tehran and other major cities designing office buildings until he grew tired of the rat race and dropped out. Preferring to spend much of the day reading the mystical poems of Rumi, he built his own community in the desert city of Hesperia in southern California. There, he experimented with his Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire system for making ceramic houses and his Superadobe construction method. His work is promoted and furthered by a loose-knit community that he founded. The group can be contacted at CalEarth.org.

In my drawing, I envisioned an entire community of baked homes. I see myself living in one of these homes.

Visit Steven M. Johnson at his website..

Every time I read of a home invasion robbery, or an in-the-window abduction of a sleeping child, I feel angry and also frustrated. Why should we be so vulnerable in our homes? I’m annoyed with architects. Why aren’t they designing homes in which we can at least relax and feel safe?

If architects won’t do their job, I’ll volunteer to step in and do it for them. Here’s an inverted, upside down single-family home. Do you see a problem with this? Do we really need windows on the first floor? Burglars, rapists and child abductors will not find it easy to get in! The tapered walls on the building shown on the left could even be coated with grease. Not shown are support pillars, embedded deep into the subsoil, that support the building and also afford space for a small basement. In case of fire, occupants either exit from the front door or jump from second-story windows into soft, deeply-tilled soil covered with ice plant or similar soft bedding plants. Note how bushes, potential hiding places, are few and kept trimmed small.

If living in an upside down home seems restricting or strange, there are other design solutions that can at least minimize one’s interaction with strangers, especially ones who might have criminal intent. Just as gas stations and mini-marts provide slide-out trays and bullet-proof glass to protect their employee-attendants at night, so can a Home Solicitor Interrogation Room be added to a single-family residence. A plus feature, not shown in the illustration, is the electronically-lockable front door. The resident, safe inside the home, is able to lock a criminal or criminals inside the tiny entry room, creating a holding cell until police arrive.

Another type of holding cell can be located underground directly in front of a fake front door.  The real front door is located elsewhere, its location known only to friends and family. If the resident doesn’t like the looks of a person, he or she presses a button causing the porch to collapse into the cell below. Not shown is the ample padding that lines in the floor and wall of the brick-lined holding cell.

A deceptively simple yet effective design is the Home Perimeter Dog Run. Rather than setting an alarm when leaving the home for the day, or when retiring to sleep at night, the resident unlocks an interior gate, giving the dog full run of the entire balcony. Dogs are very sensitive to sounds and vibrations, especially those made by strangers. Should a criminally-inclined stranger step anywhere on the metal walkway, a large dog would leap out of its house and attack.

I worked on the problem of home invasion over several decades. The solutions that are shown above, drawn in the mid-1980s, seem silly today, but that was before there existed sophisticated  home security systems with night-vision cameras, body heat detectors, and web cams.

A Swimming Moat would offer an opportunity for residents to relax in their pool, do laps or invite friends and neighbors over for a pool party. But at night, or when homeowners are away from home, the pool becomes a moat. Drawbridges are raised. Unauthorized entry is effectively discouraged, since burglars do not wish to contemplate climbing slippery walls in wet running shoes, balancing delicate electronic appliances overhead. Posted signs suggest the added possibility of serious electric shock.  The sign would be false. If it were not, cats, dogs and squirrels – or drunk revelers who climbed the fence – would be electrocuted.

My favorite solution is the Underground Bedroom. The bedroom, located anywhere on the property, is approached through a secret passageway.  In this example, residents enter at night through the door of a stacked washer-dryer machine (fake) and crawl down a sloped ramp. The bedroom is stocked with food, television, computer, VCR, phone and a very small toilet. This room is the quietest in the house.

This dust bunny is one of the many household creatures that bedevil Christoph Niemann in this funny photo essay. You’ve probably seen some of them in your home, too! Link -via Boing Boing

The home gained its notoriety when Ronald DeFeos killed six family members while they were sleeping in 1974 and subsequent owners George and Kathleen Lutz claimed to be haunted for 28 days, which were detailed in the book “The Amityville Horror” (on the cover: “This book will scare the hell out of you”—Kansas City Star). However, James Cromarty, who lived in the house after the Lutzes were foreclosed upon, “Nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming by because of the book and the movie.”

Link to story. Link to listing. -via YesButNoButYes

Looking at the pictures, I would definitely live in this church in Kyloe, North Cumberland, England, which was converted into a home. Look at the beautiful stained glass! But, based on all the comments, there are certainly some other strong opinions. For example, you have to consider the graveyard just outside your windows.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ninigoat.

A few months ago, photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his non-profit organization GoodPlanet released the movie HOME, a documentary about life on Earth and the current environmental challenges of our planet (Arthus-Bertrand is famous for his aerial photography, and the movie is quite wonderfully shot - if you haven't seen it before, it's worth a look: HOME is available in full, free on YouTube).

As a companion to the movie, Arthus-Bertrand released a companion book HOME: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity. The book is composed of nearly 200 short segments on the various environmental, political, and sociological aspects of the problems facing the world. From poverty to pollution, coal to carbon dioxide, the book is full of (alarming) facts that Arthus-Bertrand hope will inspire people to act.

It was hard to pick just a few segments from the book to excerpt - the whole book is interesting. And yes, undoubtedly there are many oversimplifications that is inherent in presenting complex problems in short vignettes - but Home: A Hymn to the Planet and Humanity is a good starting point for many of us in understanding the environmental problems of today.

Here are 5 short segments from the book, published on Neatorama with permission:

SIX BILLION SOULS

Blocks of flats on Seoul's south bank, South Korea

The world’s population quadrupled over the course of the 20th century and now stands at 6.7 billion. Since 2000 it has increased by 700 million, which is equivalent to the entire population rise in the 19th century. In the 18th century, it rose by a mere 200 million. As their numbers have grown, human beings have gravitated increasingly toward cities, which have also grown as a result. Since 2007, more than one in two of us live in a town or city.

There are more people in some of the bigger cities – such as Tokyo, with its population of 35 million – than in some countries as a whole. In developing countries, urban growth can occur at a rate that is simply mind-boggling. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, had a population of 300,000 in 1950, whereas today the figure stands at more than 15 million: a fiftyfold increase in fifty years. Boom towns such as Dhaka face immense problems in terms of infrastructure including electricity, drinking water, and waste disposal.

Nevertheless, this demographic explosion and the urbanization linked to it seem also to hold part of the solution. Birth rates have been shown to be decreasing over a great many parts of the globe, particularly in urban areas. The current average stands at 2.6, with significant regional disparities. In many Western countries, it has even fallen below 2.1, the threshold for population increase. The world population is shrinking and ageing. Whereas earlier projections for the coming decades envisaged a global population of 12 billion, the estimate has fallen and it is now thought that the population should stabilize at around 9 billion by 2050.

This seems to be due to the fact that city-dwellers generally have better access to education. For many women, in particular, this signifies access to information and to methods of contraception. It also means that these women are often able to work in addition to having a family. Having children becomes a choice, to be balanced against a career, for example. Urban life, moreover, changes people’s behavior and living requirements: couples have fewer children than those living in the country since they no longer need help in the fields. This reduction in the birth rate responds to one of the major challenges of the century: that of population control as a means of successfully feeding the world and saving the planet.

THE END OF OIL

Oil fields near Bakersfield, California, USA

Oil will not run out suddenly. It will be a slow, agonizing decline. As oil becomes scarcer its price will rise, and what used to be very cheap will become expensive. Society will be wholly transformed.

The reason for this is simple: a finite planet has finite resources. Once we have consumed all of our oil and other primary materials, there will be nothing left. Oil is not a renewable resource on any timescale comparable to its rate of consumption. The chemical reactions which led to its formation occurred over millions of years.

There are, undoubtedly, oil deposits that remain to be discovered. But the easiest have already been found and exploited. Each year, we consume more oil than we find. This is clearly going to cause problems.

It is not only a question of when oil will run out, but how society will change as it does. A world in which oil is much rarer – and therefore costlier – will be different from our own. The modern petrochemical industry will have to change dramatically: everything from lipsticks to fertilizers and plastics of all types will either be made differently or not at all. Transport will obviously become more expensive. This will spell the end of the West’s huge retail and supermarket networks, since these rely on road transportation and economies of scale. The price of imported products will rise, and international tourism will return to what it used to be in previous centuries: a luxury for the privileged few. Competition for access to the last remaining oil deposits will increase, and may lead to conflict.

These developments are inevitable, and will only be temporarily delayed by the current recession which is slowing down the global economy. Developing renewable forms of energy and reducing consumption are the two most basic measures we can take to prepare ourselves.

FISHERIES: AN OVEREXPLOITED RESOURCE

What is the current state of world fisheries?

How important is fish to the average diet?

WATER SCARCITY

Moshav (co-operative village) farm at Nahalal, Jezrael plain, Israel

Today a third of humanity is suffering from water scarcity. Specialists use the term “water stress” when the demand for water exceeds the available freshwater supply by 10%. Although 10% of renewable resource may not seem like much, we should not forget that before mankind’s invention, 100% of this water was used by ecosystems. This extra demand is enough to dry a water course, drain a spring, or prevent the replenishment of groundwater.

While the population of Canada and the Amazon or Congo basin have a plentiful water supply, the people of the Mediterranean basin, Central Asia and Mexico are at greater risk of scarcity. The particular problem with water is that it is difficult to transport in large quantities over great distances.

One solution is to use the same water several times. An increasing number of industries are reusing water, retreating it up to 30 times in some cases. Domestic washwater, known as “greywater,” can be reused to water a garden or flush a toilet, reserving drinkable water for human consumption, cooking, or washing. In countries where water is scarce, wastewater from cities is retreated for use in agriculture. In Israel, for example, where the average rainfall is 1 inch (25 mm) a year, 70% of wastewater is recycled, allowing 49,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of land to be watered.

There are many other ways of saving water, especially by being aware of how much of it we consume. Some of this water is invisible: it is used to make a product, but is not present in the product itself. This is called virtual water. One pound of grain means hundreds of gallons of irrigation water; a pair of cotton jeans require 2,860 gallons (10,850 liters) of water; a cup of coffee 9 gallons (35 liters); a sheet of paper 2.5 gallons (10 liters). A single tomato contains 3.5 gallons (13 liters) of virtual water, which is more than many people use in a day. Paradoxically, some countries that face water scarcity are actually exporting some of their limited water resources in the form of agricultural or manufactured products.

THE COLLAPSE OF SOCIETIES

Volcano of Rano Kau, Easter Island, Chile

Sooner or later, societies disappear and are replaced by new ones. As our own society enters a critical phase, what lessons can be learned from those that preceded us? One example that has been extensively studied is Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The island was once home to a flourishing civilization, which reached its peak in around 1500, but it subsequently experienced a rapid decline, losing four fifths of its population in just one century. According to the American expert Jared Diamond, the explanation lies principally in the fact that the people deforested their entire land. Without trees, they were no longer able to build fishing boats, and crucially the soil was eroded. As the situation worsened, the people began fighting among themselves, and developed bizarre religious practices. In an effort to erect increasingly gigantic statutes, they cut down more and more trees, accelerating their demise.

Diamond also studied a number of other civilizations that vanished largely as a result of environmental factors, such as the Maya and Babylonians, who exhausted their land, and the Greenland Vikings, who could not adapt to the cooler climate. While these societies did not vanish because of environmental damage alone, it certainly weakened their economic and social structures and created vicious cycles that ultimately proved fatal. The same pattern could easily be applied to modern society.

In Diamond’s analysis, the factors leading to a society’s collapse seem to be quite clearly set out every time. But for political, religious, or social reasons, the society is incapable of reacting and taking adequate measures to ensure its survival. What would the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree have been thinking? Another expert in the history of civilizations, the British historian Arnold Toynbee, wrote that “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder” – in other words, from their inability to resolve their internal crises.

Today most people agree that we are facing an environmental catastrophe. We need to change the course in which our society is heading, and remove the obstacles to that change. It is too late to bury our heads in the sand. It is also too late to be pessimistic.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand published more than 40 books, including the multimillion-copy international bestseller Earth from Above. Home, released in conjunction with a film of the same name, is a stunning visual odyssey across 50 countries combining Arthus-Bertrand's images and text by the editorial team of Good Planet.

Links: HOME official website | Watch the movie at YouTube | The book at Amazon

A well-insulated 20,000 square foot home complete with an airstrip and a Jacuzzi sounds really nice. This one is underground in an abandoned missile silo! It was once the home of an Atlas-F missile built for the Cold War, but it’s been converted into a luxury home. See seven such military installations now used as living spaces. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

If you’re like me, you have a major problem with cables taking over your home life. Here’s a great, visually interesting way to overkill the solution -a whole wall of outlets.

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Buildings are creatively converted or utterly demolished all the time to make room for highways and other large-scale civic problems, but the laws vary on what can be done when a single hold-out structure stands alone against a sea of fat-cat developers, builders and architects who all want nothing more but for them to move.

Sometimes they successfully force out residents or bribe them with offers that range up to 20 times the value of the home and real estate – but in many cases they simply have to give up and build around them, creating so-called ‘nail houses’ that stand apart from their surroundings.

In some cases, these incredible stand-alone structures have huge fan bases of individuals who applaud their willingness to stand up for their property.

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The home that once served as the set for Ferris’ friend Cameron’s home, in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is for sale. You can refresh your memory by watching this scene.

The Ben Rose Home in Highland Park, Illinois, was designed by architects A. James Speyer and David Haid, and constructed in 1953. It is being listed by Sotheby’s for $2.3 million. More images are available here.

Link – via triblocal

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Frau.

Well, the market has fallen out from under everyone but it is still nice to dream, right? And who knows, with housing prices plummeting maybe you too will be able to afford one of these awesomely luxurious modern house designs. Part of what makes them so great is the variety of ways in which they take the limitations of a given site and turn them into incredible design opportunities.

Many designers must content themselves with imagining and drawing things that may never be built – very few can realize ultramodern home visions in the real world. Like a blast from the future, these ten architects have brought to life incredible houses that most of us could not even dream of – let alone afford.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

Photographer Kevin Bauman took exquisite photographs of 100 abandoned houses in Detroit, Michigan. He has managed to turn the economic crisis, in form of crumbling houses in various stages of disrepair, into an artwork.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by algonkin.

Jay Shafer is the creator and resident of the smallest house in the world, which he has proudly named Tumbleweed. Jay is an artist and architect who lives in his home in San Francisco.  He sells plans for and builds tiny homes in sizes ranging from an extremely small 50 feet to a practically roomy 500 feet.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by larryfire.

Everyone loves a good secret passageway. The idea alone sparks curiosity and makes the brain buzz with thoughts of mystery and adventure.

Normally these hidden doors are relegated to ancient sites and historic buildings, but what if you could put one in your very own home?

Whether you have secrets to hide or just want to confuse guests, The Hidden Door Company specializes in creating practical secret doorways for the home.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.