As I was lying in bed tonight watching a recorded episode of 20/20 from this past Friday on “products that make big promises” a picture of something familiar flashed across the screen. It was an image from livinghomes. Since this is a fairly new blog you may not have noticed on the right hand side of my blog there is a column with lots of links to sites that I think are pretty cool. Under the residential column is livinghomes.

Some of you may know that I did my thesis on sustainable design my senior year at KCAD. In 2002-03 sustainable design was a fairly new concept. Yes, there have been groups of people for years “trying to get back to nature”. Note the toilet picture in the upper left corner of this blog.

Back to livinghomes. I found their site about a year and half ago. I completely love the site and concept. My ideal home would typically be a little less contemporary then what livinghomes offers but I still think what they are doing is amazing. They offer the ability to design a concept house and price it out right on their site. I think when I did a concept house for Craig and I a year and a half ago it was about 900K.

Of course livinghomes recognizes that their costs are currently expensive to the average home owner but also stated on 20/20 that as sustainable design becomes more common place prices will go down. Go figure — you can buy “green” products at Home Depot now.