Linked here is an Inman article about designing homes with the sun in mind. It's true, our 4-wall boxed home subdivisions didn't have to be and are a discredit to centuries of knowledge about designing homes and orienting them on the lot to maximize energy efficiencies. Even today few build homes with the sun's orientation in mind, the shape of the lot, the elevation and the use of existing trees on the lot. The truth is, smart design costs slightly more because you need smarter people to design them...and paying for smart people isn't a line item expense most builders (custom, spec and especially production) are willing to budget for. Neither is it an expense that lender require.
And it's not all about saving money on electric bills, even though that's one of the main goals of building sustainable green homes in Austin. Building with the sun's orientation in mind is about putting rooms, windows, eaves and outdoor living spaces in places that make sense for the way we live our lives, and to conserving energy. And it's also about using sustainable materials. Ask a builder why he's putting a 20 year shingle roof on your house that the insurance company will replace after the first hail storm, and the likely answer will be "that's how we build homes". That's a pathetic answer. There are SO MANY SO MANY SO MANY energy poor chooses from design to materials in today's homes that it would spin your head to know about them all (and we'll touch on them in the future). And I "get it" for supply and demand reasons at the production home building level...but at the custom and higher end spec level, well, I just expect more...especially for "modern" designed homes.
To truly build a smart house, not one that just been outfitted and accredited by Energy Wise, you have to hire a builder or an architect who believes in smart design. As the linked article above points out, not all "modern" design is smart design, some of it (if not most of it in Austin at least) is meant to look pretty and fit the modern visual vernacular. Dwell Magazine is great, but to get your project on the cover of Dwell you need a sharp looking model, and, hey, to be fair, not all super-models are rocket-scientists! And I'm not saying you can't both look sharp and be smart, but 99% of the new construction modern homes I walk through these days are pathetically build in terms of energy efficiencies and sun orientation.
And yes, there are some 100% smart modern homes and even small subdivisions being built in Austin, which is a great start. In the future I may do a QA panel with some local Austin modern smart home designers and builders like Eric Brown and Russ Becker.
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