YakShaving

Today, Swapnil, Matt and I visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Hyde Park.

I’ve already seen the museum before (I’m not a huge fan to tell you the truth), but we went specifically this week with the intent to see the Green + Wired home exhibit.

Michelle Kaufmann, a well known prefab/modular architect designed the mkSolaire for an urban infill environment.

I thought some parts of the home were particularly awesome:
The waste-water catchment system, the folding accordion doors that allow you to open almost the entire wall to the outdoor deck, and the faux wood on the outside that’s made of sawdust and recyclable plastic bags.

It had a subfloor-heating system using aluminum pipes (no central heating system with vents). This seemed good in theory, but I was curious as to if it really worked on a cold Chicago morning.

The house would work particularly well in a warmer climate, not so much here in Chicago. Out of the 2500 sq ft, we estimated that 800 sq ft was essentially outdoors (deck space). There were only two tiny bedrooms, so the house wasn’t very conducive to a family beyond 3 people.

In general, I thought the house was very thoughtful in how “green” it was constructed but I wasn’t amazed by the level of home automation. Of course, maybe it just wasn’t demonstrated on the tour.

The trip was a good event to cap of a semester of working on the “Reconstructing Prefab” project in design analysis and synthesis. If you’re in Chicago, you should definitely make the trip out.