Wired Green

Inhabitat’s Prefab Friday points us to the Wired Home, a collaboration of Wired Magazine and Living Homes.

From the Wired Home website:

Break out the bamboo welcome mat. WIRED and LivingHomes – a pioneer in green, prefabricated development – will open the doors to the first ever WIRED Home, a showcase of the best in sustainability, technology and design.

This $4 million modernist home in an exclusive enclave of Los Angeles allows luxury and the environment to live together in harmony.

The WIRED Home is where green plugs in. LEED® certified and designed by Ray Kappe, FAIA, the house is prefab to reduce cost and waste. Installation takes only one day. Fully automated to allow for simplicity and control, it is filled with the latest in gadgets, gear and appliances, yet still keeps kilowatt usage low. Even the car is environmentally friendly. Emitting essentially nothing but water vapor, the BMW Hydrogen 7 is the first hydrogen-powered luxury performance sedan for everyday use.

The Hills of Tuscany

With the birth of our third child, I was reminiscing about our honeymoon in Italy…eleven years ago.

Wow, how does time fly?

Annmarie spent several months in Rome during her college years at RPI, so when we spent our three weeks she already spoke a little Italian and knew her way around a bit.

The trip was organized as an architectural tour commencing in Milan and ending in Naples, with short stops in many small hill towns (my favorite part). Along the way, we visited Como (WOW!…now that’s a lake!), Bolonia, Vinci (loved Tuscany and the Leonardo Museum), Florence, Venice and Rome. What could be better for two intern architects? We simply had the time of our lives.

The tour was a complete disaster.

Everything that could go wrond, did. It was a perfect example of incompetency, no planning and a total lack of organization.

It is interesting though, how the negative fades over time. We just went with it. We stayed focused on where we were and what we were doing (“honeymooning in Italy…how blessed are we?”). We absorbed every moment and in the end we only remember the great time we had (fresh baked bread and mozzerella in the rain on the steps of the Pantheon).

Italy is one of my favorite places.