Eco-Home is for the Birds

Environmentally friendly Malaysian home sways with the trees, welcomes birds, and kills the need for canned air fresheners

After years of spraying air fresheners in my home, that canned 'fresh-breeze' scent seems to smell more and more like just another under-the-sink chemical rather than the real thing.

Architects in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia had a better idea: Instead of just trying to make a home smell like nature's fresh breeze, they've designed an entire home that can actually move and sway (and most likely smell) like the outside breeze.

Bird Island is a private, gated residential park in the center of Kuala Lumpur, and it shares space with several types of local and migratory birds. These birds may soon find themselves soaring around a new building in town--a fully sustainable, eco-friendly home that, "sways organically with the treetops."

Because of the house's location above a small waterway, the lightness and flexibility of the fabric-like silicone glass  material, and the fact that slots are cut into that fabric, the home can "give visitors a unique view of the sky as the wind ebbs and flows."

The Bird Island Green Homes Competition challenged eight of the world's architects to create eco-friendly homes for the neighborhood. Global firm Graft Lab submitted the plans for their 'eco-windy-city' on Bird Island.

According to Graft, the home consists of "a lightweight bamboo frame wrapped in a tensile, an environmentally-friendly fabric. The material reflects sunlight, keeping the interior cool and reducing the need for AC."

No word yet on construction plans or whether or not our avian friends will be able to drop in now and then to share a few breadcrumbs.


 

Click here for more pictures of Bird Island.

--Matt Draper