spreading the word, HGTV edition

Much thanks to Kara Franker for her very kind article about the house in HGTV's Frontdoor.

spreading the word

This morning, our local NBC affiliate began running a story about sustainable building practices as part of their Earth Day coverage of environmental issues. The story might include footage of tin box shot Thursday by a reporter/cameraman - and FIU grad - named Joe. The story is also meant to publicize tomorrow's tour of five area homes chosen for their sustainability, in which we are really honored to participate. Both the tour and the TV appearance were organized by Carlos Ruiz, a local architect and realtor who is building the first two spec green homes in Dade County.

cotton anniversary

It's been two years (and 50,000 page views) since we inaugurated the blog that accidentally gave the house a name, and six months since we moved in. We have not been good about updating the blog since moving in (blah, blah, day job, blah, blah), but we hope to start offering some real data on photovoltaic electric generation, water consumption and gardening, soon. For now, things seem to be working well, our utility bills appear very low, and our tomato vines are prolific. Here are some photos...

[Ed. - Here's a link to much better professional photos of the house.]

audience

Last night, tin box recorded its 15,000th page view. The blog started as a way to keep friends and family up to date on our progress, and so social media sites (like Facebook) and email servers remain the major sources of traffic for the blog since its inception. However, two-thirds of our visitors now come via Google and other search engines. This is probably a good thing, since it means a broader audience has access to the record of our experiences. We're happy to help make design and sustainability more accessible to a larger audience.

thinking about Apple

Macintosh 128K Home Computer,
designed by Steve Jobs and  Jerry Manock, 1984.
Museum of Modern Art, via ARTstor.

It is touching to see the volume of tributes to Steve Jobs coming from people like us – not journalists or public figures, but regular folks addressing second-person messages to a man they’d never met, delivered via social media, and typed out on devices that didn’t exist just ten years ago. Since tin box was designed, blogged and filmed on Macs and iPhones, we thought we should share some of the lessons (for architecture and culture) we learned from our computers:

landmarks and leftovers

At some point last night, tin box recorded its 10,000th page view. A lot of our traffic comes through postings on Facebook, where we entertain a fair number of good questions from our friends and family. We wanted to share some of that correspondence.