An Australian company called ArchiBlox recently unveiled the first first carbon-positive prefab home – it generates more energy than it consumes, helps reduce carbon emission, and looks simply gorgeous.

Contemporary and cozy, the house is topped with solar panels, and is designed to keep cool air in – something very important for the Australian environment. However, I couldn’t find a price tag for this house… and I assume it could go pretty high. But I like the fact that you can pretty much place it anywhere – it’s not often that you find a house design that fits in the country side as well as in an urban centre.

Another thing which I liked about it is that it maximized solar exposure, as well as passive design strategies – for example, it doesn’t rely on mechanical cooling or heating, it simply uses in-ground tubes to pull in cool air from the south side. It’s also insulated with a green roof and a set of sliding vertical garden walls that shade and cool the building in the summer.

“Archi+ Carbon Positive Houses will make significant contributions within society by addressing the increasing levels of carbon emissions and the high levels of embodied energy that come with the construction of a standard home,” said the company.

I haven’t been able to get hold of any figures for this house, so you just have to take the company’s word for it, I guess, but I really feel that smart homes will become a reality in the near future – I mean, smart phones are already pretty common, we have smart cars, smart energy grids… smart homes seem like the next logical step.

“These homes will give our clients the opportunity to rid themselves of modern day lifelines in a house that has been developed through a collaboration of design sensitivities and new technologies with like-minded companies,” the architects said.

I really hope these are not just big words – I hope they have the materials to back it up as well.

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