Five incredible eco-shelter designs

Housing is a huge source of carbon dioxide emissions, thanks both to its common dependence on high-polluting (to manufacture) materials like cement and to its all-too-often energy inefficiency. However, designers around the globe are continually creating new plans for green and sustainable residences.

Following are five of our recent favorites:

The PLUG (“for Portable Living on Uncommon Grounds”). Currently a prototype in Tanzania, the PLUG is designed to be a “portable, adaptable, low impact, laboratory infrastructure that can be built and deployed on an extremely limited budget.”

Solargon Structures. Assembled from structural insulated panels, Solargon’s yurt-like cabins can be assembled in hours, are made with renewable materials, reduce energy consumption by 30 to 70 percent and use passive solar design for optimal heating and cooling.

The paper house. It’s inexpensive. It’s easy to put up. It’s made from recycled paper and cardboard and it’s waterproof, earthquake-proof and well insulated. It’s also, as The Times article said, a much better place to live in than the lean-tos and corrugated-metal shacks used by so many of the world’s poor, especially refugees.

The Autotron. No, not a battlebot character from Transformers, but a storage structure built with recycled pallets from area casinos. (Who knew casinos were a rich source of pallets?)

The R house. Created by designer/artist Michael Jantzen, the pre-fabricated R-house is made from a sustainable, long-lasting wood product called Accoya. The structure gets all its power from solar cells and a vertical-axis wind turbine, and is encompassed by four semi-circular screens that can be moved to shade the interior space or open it to the sun.