He’s travelled the
globe exploring some of the most fascinating and eco-friendly dwellings, and John Bell is showing them to the
world via the second season of World’s Greenest Homes, which he hosts.
Found in diverse countries such as Switzerland, Hong Kong, the United States and our own Canadian backyard,
the houses ranged from tiny, hip urban abodes to spacious country retreats. Bell — who is also a project
manager and professional carpenter — sat down with Lifestyle and broke down the design,
infrastructure and greenness of two of the homes that will be featured on his show: the Dome Home in New
Paltz, New York and Villa Berkel in Veenendaal, The Netherlands.
Dome
Home
Shiva Vencat first saw a rotating, spherical home in Paris 20 years ago. Fifteen years later, he and his
wife, Veronique had one built for themselves, on a secluded piece of land in New Paltz, New York — about 130
km north of their home in New York City. Bell timed his visit to the Dome Home in order to see the structure
revolve. “The dome house was crazy. It was like ET had landed. It was a UFO,” says Bell. The 40-ton house
rotates twice a year, once in summer and once in winter, to maximize the solar gain from the positioning of
its windows.
The dome is supported on steel-ball bearings atop a pedestal foundation, and helping the owners move the
house was quite an experience. “That was kind of fun,” says Bell. “Shiva was down in the mechanical room and
I was up top. You can’t overshoot a certain point because then you’ll start hitting the fence.” It was Bell’s
job to yell “Stop!” when the house reached the appropriate position, because Shiva, down below, couldn’t see.
“It takes like three minutes to do; it’s not like whipping around,” says Bell. “So he pushes a button and I
was like ‘Shiva!, when do I say stop?’ and he was like ‘Remember I told you that plank, make sure you stop at
that plank!’”
Despite house-moving
stress, Bell admires the architectural ambitiousness of the home. “The neat architecture about it is
everything’s curved,” says Bell. “Everything has to be custom. There’s no right angles in the house… You
can’t go to IKEA and buy an IKEA cabinet because it’s not going to fit anywhere. In all their design they
went with a curvature flow to keep with the style.”
In terms of green, it’s all about the windows. They’re positioned to let in natural light, which allows them
to use less electricity. The windows are also double-paned and low-emissive glass, which tempers the effects
of hot and cold. The house rotates so that it has full sun in winter (Vencat has said that even in winter
when it’s 0 C outside, they often don’t have to turn on the heat), and some shade in the summer.
The Dome Home is also
built so that it doesn’t sit directly on the ground, thereby reducing humidity inside.
The Vencats, along with
son Rohan, now have an eco-friendly weekend home that fits their green-centric life philosophy. “They’re in
the woods and around nobody, so for them it was a peaceful way to live and it’s a low-carbon footprint,” says
Bell.
