Category Archives: Property spotlight

Property Spotlight – Affordable Green Home

Posted on January 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

Lakiya Culley’s home started off as an idea by a couple of academics who didn’t want to play by the rules.

Four years later, after enlisting 200 students, a nonprofit organization and a government agency, as well as community leaders and countless sponsors, the concept has gone from an academic exercise to reality.

Have a green or energy efficient property and want to know the value? Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com for your value questions.

Earlier this month, Parsons the New School for Design, Stevens Institute of Technology, Habitat for Humanity and the District’s Department of Housing and Community Development celebrated the completion of Empowerhouse. Located in the Deanwood neighborhood of Ward 7, the home is not only the District’s first “passive house” — a dwelling built to use substantially less energy — but also one of the few houses constructed in the United States that is both sustainable and affordable.

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Possible Reprieve for Frank Lloyd Wright Home

Posted on November 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

PHOENIX — The coiled concrete-and-steel house built by Frank Lloyd Wright here, which had been under threat of demolition since its sale in June to a pair of luxury home developers, may have found its savior in an anonymous buyer who has agreed to pay the asking price of $2.379 million, all of it in cash.

Have a historic or custom home? Contact the appraisers at www.scappraisals.com for your value questions.

The agreement, struck late on Wednesday, offers exactly what preservationists, elected officials and the Wright family have fought so diligently to accomplish: It keeps the house from being razed. It is, however, only the first step in a transaction that needs to withstand the scrutiny of a home inspection and the volatile relationship between the city and the current owners, who have vociferously opposed the city’s efforts to give the house landmark status.

On Thursday, Mayor Greg Stanton pledged to stay the course, saying, “We’re going to ensure the house is designated historic, as it should be.”

Take a Video Tour of an Earthship

Posted on October 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Video: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/11/earthship_biotecture_renegade_new_mexico_architects

Earthship creator Michael Reynolds, interviewed by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. What’s amazing is how jungle-like it is indoors, with bananas growing, a pond for tilapia and much more. Reynolds shares his view that everyone lived in houses that supplied all their needs, there would be no reasons for war. He also said he’s working on Earthship townhouses to prove that the same techniques can work in an urban setting.

Have a unique property? Contact the appraisers at http://www.scappraisals.com for your value questions.

Reynolds calls himself a “biotect,” as he lost his license as an architect for breaking rules — mainly involving the handling of sewage, he says. Here’s how he explains the sewage design in Earthships:

“We get the water from the sky — rain and snowfall — and we use it four times: We use the water for taking a shower; and then we use the water for running through the botanical cells growing plants; and then we collect it again at the end of the botanical cell and flush the toilet with that same water; and then that water gets treated in a septic or anaerobic system, and then it overflows into more botanical cells that are used for landscaping. So, in the end, no water ever leaves the premises that came from the sky.”