Why do we feature the WIRED LivingHome on Club of Pioneers?Well, it's constructed in a sustainable way but also of some sort a mobile concept - meaning that since it is prefabricated it can be built in a couple of days almost anywhere. When you first arrive at the WIRED LivingHome in Brentwood, California, the house's exterior seems interesting from the word GO. But once you ascend the stairs to the first floor, you get the feeling that even though the structure itself is quite simple and clear cut, the interior must also reveal some playful highlights - and it certainly does on the technical site making it...yep, the first green AND sexy Prefab you certainly want to live in. Only some gadgets: the home features a 4-kilowatt SunPower® solar power system, including high efficiency, all-black SunPower solar panels that generate up to 50 percent more power than conventional panels. Forced hot air radiant heating and cooling systems makes you feel all comfy no matter what time of the year.But green conscience doesn't stop here. The design also stands up to environmental standards:
recycled glass bathroom countertops, heath ceramic tiles, low-maintenance high-design ecological kitchen cabinetry...The rumour goes that the design has been influenced by the seventies - but check out for yourself.
Here are some exclusive pictures from the WIRED LivingHome Interior.
All pictures taken by Club of Pioneers user Edward Santizo.

It was a premier and a kick off at the same time – the first Club of Pioneers ‘The Editors invite’ event took place in Frankfurt, Germany during the IAA. Thanks to our pioneers and experts from the automobile industry, the night was a great success and we had so much fun that....it won’t be long until the next event and you can be part of it. An event-series worldwide is already in the planning process.Watch our first community clip....

All together 25 pioneers attended at rather short notice to meet and mingle with the Club of Pioneers’ editorial team, the experts from BMW and Loremo in the small restaurant “Blumen” (Flowers) at night.

The pioneers at the restaurant "Blumen"
The program was rather short on purpose: just 7 minutes was all Anton Reisinger, Clean Energy BMW, and Gerhard Heilmaier, CEO of Loremo, got to present their company’s core vision of future mobility and kick off the discussion among the pioneers. Both did a great job, which was proved by the fact that hands-on pioneering took place during the event. Together with Heilmaier, our pioneers developed a design for the new Loremo prototype – all on a piece of paper and drawn by hand!

Anton Reisinger, BMW, explaining the Hydrogen 7Life size and no longer just a vision, two Hydrogen 7 cars were parked in front of the restaurant - ready to take the pioneers for a test drive. And yes, when taking a closer look there is nothing else than water vapour coming out of the exhaust….

Pioneer Boris who just can't believe it...During the day the pioneers also had the chance to visit the Frankfurt Motor Show, IAA, together with the Club of Pioneers team. The team set up dates for presentations, for example with Honda explaining their fuel cell vehicle being released on to the market (US and Japan) by the end of 2008.

Pioneers on stage with the Honda fuel cell vehicle

During our community day during the Frankfurt Motor Show I talked to some of our visiting pioneers about their impressions from the fair, sustainability and green car engineering.

Frank Hessler
Martin Fieber
Andreas Freijs

Econic Design may not sound familiar, yet, but it is a pioneering direction for architecture and design of the future. It takes the point of view of “Ecology + Icon = Econic” and aims to construct buildings that are not only environmentally friendly, but actually contribute to the city experience and quality of life. Inspired by Brazilian tribes, Econic Design goes further than just energy efficiency and sustainability, and explores energy generating materials!

Econic Design is still in the experimental stage and being work-shopped at University of Pennsylvania School of Design and in Rio. Club Of Pioneers will be following it's evolution and host a discussion where pioneers and students can exchange ideas.

As an introduction, here is an interview with Econic Design facilitator and Club of Pioneers member Matthias Hollwich.
What is your personal background and work?
I am an architect - born, raised, and educated in Munich.
I call the basis of everything I do in my architectural praxis “concept engineering and space shaping”. It's a way to affect architecture in a more substantial way than to just design according to a client brief. Most recently I have worked with the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau and started my own company that recently moved from Amsterdam to New York – HollwichKushner.
Can you talk more about the Econic Design course ?The University of Pennsylvania is a hot breeding grounds for new direction and talents in architectural design. I call it an Ivy League underdog (maybe because of it being in Philadelphia) - the university does not have the “star power” of Harvard or Columbia – but has a unique diverse faculty, cross departmental collaborations (biology meets structural engineering and architectural design) and a progressive open minded and curious group of students. It has the perfect DNA for inventiveness. The class I am teaching is a “classic” 3rd year design studio with a “non classic” syllabus. The studio task is the design of an Econic Building located in Rio de Janeiro.
Ecology + Icon = Econic.
What was your incentive and what do you hope to achieve?
Architecture is mainly developed from a program with specific dimensions packaged into an experience and a good looking envelope. A contemporary and responsible architect will infuse sustainable ideas and try to minimize the impact of the building on our environment. When I was in Rio this spring I heard about Brazilian tribes, living in the rainforest. They settled in areas of weak vegetation and started to plant new flora, and nurtured the grounds. Once the plants prospered they moved on, looking for the next weak spot. The whole attitude was about an active responsibility to nature. Whether it was a fairytale or real it inspired me to ask the question How can we, as architects, design buildings that have a positive effect on the surroundings?” In the same way rainforests are being used as equity for CO2 trading, architecture might also become valuable and equity in itself. In the Econic Studio I aim to develop with my students
buildings that are initiators for a new consciousness in society where the design is based on ecological findings that turn into an attractor and infrastructure for ecological knowledge generation and communication. A building that is in tune with its urban and natural context generating clean air and providing its surrounding with energy rather than abusing the context and poisoning it by burning fuel and wasting material.
Explain the relationship between theory and practice? I call myself an “Experimentalist” and this is also how the studio is structured. Very often you can see in architecture a lot of theories being developed but than the translation into spatial artefacts is lacking. In the studio the students are already developing spatial concept models. Parallel to this they are researching aspects of sustainability, references and inspiration in nature, key ecological projects from the last years etc. Over time the experimental models, the research and site-specific aspects will merge into one consistent entity that we will retroactively theorize at the end.
What will happen in Rio?In Rio we will visit the site, which is located in the heart of Rio de Janeiro at the location of the former art academy and embedded in a dense urban context. The urban location requires an integrated response to renew its urban environment and therefore site presence
and analyses is crucial. We will also visit the rainforest and buildings from Oscar Niemeyer. On two days we will have “white room workshops” where we invite guests for a workshop in which everybody infuses knowledge, critique, and suggestions into the concepts. Rio is also the moment where the students need to commit to one specific concept direction and bring all the different parts together into one cohesive entity. Of course we will also embed ourselves into local culture and hopefully participate in a samba event!

Why is it important for designers to think about sustainability and follow through with it after the “green” trend has passed?I think it is not a question of thinking about sustainability or not. It is pure math that if we do not apply sustainable ideas, humanity will have a very tough time in the future. The world will recover in one way or another and reinvent itself – but we humans are the ones who are truly in danger. To me it is interesting that during my education as an architect in Germany 16 years ago sustainability was key and all our designs had be ecological enhanced. It was state of the art – but in the US and many other countries that sentiment awoke just a few years ago and many applied methods and technologies are still lacking. With adding formal language to ecology I hope to raise awareness – but also allow the design discipline to expand its vocabulary with a reason-based output. We can almost repeat Mies van der Rohe's message of
“Form follows function” but the term function has vastly expanded including providing “sustainable performance” and a “green marketing message”. In the future I wish that sustainability – or even better, regenerative ideas - are part of any architectural project globally
and new progressive spatial configurations, programmatic fusions and formalistic expressions evolve.
What are your personal thoughts on Econic Design?To me Econic Design is a vision that sets goals but also triggers curiosity and creativity. I told my students that the studio is not calling for a building that is ecological in every sense, but for ways of thinking that show a range of potential. Ideas and solutions are to establish a speculative vision for the future. I can imagine Simulated Ecosystems, Adapted nature, Living technologies, Added eco-machines, Growing structure, Pollinating energy, Materials as nutrients, and many more directions that are initiated by the Econic idea.Can you mention other projects that are pioneering in their design?The exciting aspect of today is that many creative people work with sustainable ideas in one way or another. In architecture where we had Modernism, Postmodernism, and Deconstructivism I can see an "Ecologicalism" unfolding.
People or works of creativity I like for one
or another reason are:
Sir Norman Foster for the Hearst Tower and others, Marcel Kalberer and the Arena Salix, Oppenheimer Architecture and Cormiami building, Cloud 9 and Morphorest, Herzog & de Meuron - their Beijing Stadium, Janine Benyus for Biomimicry, Rem Koolhaas - A Creative power head), Toyota (Prius), Mayor Bloomberg and his Green City Plan, MVRDV(Expo 2000 Pavillion), Al Gore and Live earth, Germany
(has had an ecological drive for years), Books by J Scott Turner (How design emerges from life itself)
and Kenny Ausubel (Natures Operating Instructions ) and many others including Mother Earth.all images courtesy of M Hollwich

Never had the chance to meet your Club of Pioneers buddies yet? For some of them this wish came true. Last week in Munich at the occasion of a presentation of the Hydrogen 7 Club of Pioneers invited eight "locals" of them to join the party.The Pioneers are: Thomas Heinrich, Denis Witham, Heidi Eireiner, Corinna Thiel, Alex Goerlach, Leonore Heßler und Christian Mangold. Missing in the picture are Marc Girard and Sebastian Schultze who were still working when the party started
In the pouring rain however we had a hydrogen feeling of a special kind. During the event I had the occasion to do an interview with former environmental minister and executive director of the United Nations environmental program, Professor Klaus Töpfer and the German actress Christiane Paul. Once the film material is send to me from Munich to Berlin (this happens if you send that stuff offline...) I will post the clips of the event.

Klaus Töpfer and myself in the interviewWe Pioneers all had a hell of a party and learned a lot about the Hydrogen 7 and I look forward to repeat such a meeting - we will be during a similar event in October in Berlin so we will meet a few of the Pioneers living in Berlin then in person.You guys take care, let's pioneer!Alex