In southern Spain, among the extensive Terracotta roof villas that line the Costa del Sol, plans for Villa Noon in Sotogrand are a symbol of the future. The work of the architect Fran Silvestre consists of five large, marbor-related cylinders that are connected like a Jenga puzzle and offer living space of 2,000 square meters. The villa for sale outside of the plan for € 11.4 million with a projected two-year building is the first luxury house in Spain in zero emission luxury house, with the Bisol sun collectors solely reducing energy consumption by a fifth. It has everything that high-end buyers expect: a calm luxurious footprint that is carved into the slope with six bedroom suites, an expansive spa and a wellness center with inner elevators as well as a cinema, wine cellar and swimming pools.
Water is efficiently collected behind the scenes to serve the household. In addition to the Greywater irrigation and atmospheric water production, rainwater, which are generated by excess electricity, which is generated by solar modules on site and provides high-quality water for cooking and drinking. The latter is a system that, according to Silvestre, has never been used in real estate before. The Villa Noon fulfills a large part of the “strict criteria of a passive house”, says Silvestre and fulfills the five principles of high-quality insulation, superior windows, airtight construction, heat cover ventilation and thermal-bridging-free design and eliminates vulnerabilities in a building in which heat can easily escape.
“With these systems, we can collect over 300,000 liters of water a year and remove the need to take it from the net,” continues Silvestre. “Heat pumps offer geothermal energy to heat, hot water and cooling using soil heat at 19 ° C and achieve an efficiency rate of over 500 percent. This revolutionary design, the combination of geotherized, solar and sun battery storage, is noticeable that it is fully sufficient regardless of conventional power grids.
Market shifts support the desire for mindful luxury life. In the latest luxury real estate report by the American Commercial Real Estate services and the investment company CBRE it was found that the significant growth of the global luxury housing market was partially “stimulated by an increasing basis of HNWIS and wealthy millennial”. In this report, the report was described with “a strong trend … towards Öko-Luxury houses that combine sustainability and luxury”.
Hillary Flur from Vermont in the USA is an early adopter. When she lived in LA and directly from College in 2016, she paid an entry point to the Mojave desert for 2.5 acres for 2.5 acres in Twentynine Palms, and worked with the architect Malek Alqadi to build Folly Joshua Tree. Alqadi designed a striking and completely unable to network: two cabins that are covered with corten steel that appear like hardy, weathered dandruff and are open to tempting, comfortable and minimal interiors.
“When we started, it was relatively early for many of the non-network-independent systems, so there were many tests and adjustments,” says Flur. “After a year, we found that the AC did not work well enough and that was important in the desert, so we added more batteries and solar collectors, and we had a back-up generator for emergency use. First we had water, but about two years ago we dug a fountain. Our neighbors had many trees in their country. The first was 700 feet.”
The desire to be sustainable was an important driver for hallway, but she also saw this lifestyle as an inspiring way to experience the isolation and natural beauty of the desert. “I traveled to work and found it depressing that hotels were sustainable by asking you to recycle your towel or not change your leaves. I had the feeling that we could do much better that we can redefine how sustainability looks,” she says. “Now, from the property, the star's sharpness of this world is no longer.
Folly Mojave is her second most ambitious project with Alqadi: 200 Tomorrow in Twentynine Palms, which cross both the Mojave National Preserve and the Joshua Tree National Park. Four years in the production and still still five buildings, four suites with two bedrooms and one are separated from the property with backup-enphase IQ batteries.
“Imagine you save 1,000 US dollars a month by using the power of the sun,” says Allan O'Neil, owner of Solar Power Palm Desert, who has equipped both projects. “In the scale of the desert, the air conditioning costs can increase the energy costs through the roof. With a highly efficient solar system, you can transform the relentless sun into free, renewable strength. Let the desert work for you, not against you.”
In Spain, the Swedish architect, based in Great Britain, connects Magnus Ström's approach, wellness, health and nature. The result is shown in Ströms Barcelona House, which was completed in 2023, a contemporary hybrid-off-grid property of 30 km from the Catalan capital. Photovoltaic roof collectors expose electricity consumption, whereby systems are often oversized to export excess energy into the network in summer. Large batteries store energy for nighttime use, lowers the CO2 footprints and lower the annual CO₂ emissions by “several tons”.
Expansive glass, a stream license plate, is important to ensure a connection with nature, while a 6 -m -stuffed overhang supported by a single pillar, which is supported by the interior, without affecting the broad sea view. An inner olive tree adds a biophile silver gray use. “A new idea of luxury develops based on rooms and not on objects,” says Ström. “It is time, connection with nature that increases the most important thing.”
For an hour east of Helsinki, the construction is on Ström's latest design, a completely extraordinary house for an American client with Finnish heritage. The location appears irreconcilable, a remote peninsula that is covered with dense blueberry bushes and several oversized boulders, relics from the ice age. As in the Barcelona house, its design begins with a fabric-first approach to ensure a high degree of insulation. “It is easy to put on solar collectors, but if they don't areolate, it is basically greenish,” he says. Then he makes the house airtight. The ventilation is controlled with the heat exchange and the residual heating requirement is very low and is supplied by ground heat pumps driven by photovoltaic panels.
“We use both Air source” air sources are easier to install, but less efficient, while the soil source in Finland require a lot of norm, require more work through horizontal collectors or boreholes, but provide better efficiency. Transfer heat pumps instead of producing heat, and generate three to four times more energy and the household own Reduce conventional gas or oil heating. “
But where can you buy? In the eastern Algarve near the Spanish border, S+A Architects designed a collection of apartments and villas for rent and purchase, of which they believe that they determine a “new standard for environmentally friendly hospitality”. It is constructed using a concept based on the old principle of Portuguese Tunel is used in the compressed earth to create solid walls with excellent thermal insulation. Real estate starts at € 660,000 for apartments with a bedroom and € 980,000 for townhouses with two bedrooms.
“Verdelago is technically not networked, but is independently equipped and equipped with a photovoltaic system that generates more energy than it consumes,” says Miguel Saraiva from S+A Architects. “There is a comprehensive water management system that includes rainwater recovery and sewage recycling. In combination with energy -efficient design and high -quality materials, these measures ensure low ecological footprint.”
For self-sufficiency and partially off-grid life, a traditional Mallorquin Finca over Engel & Völkers for EUR 4.6 million is for sale. The owners plan to replace the solar collectors with a photovoltaic system with lithium batteries. You say that installation and saving between € 350 and € 650 per month would cost € 40,000 for electricity bills. The property already has its own, which deliver all water needs, a vineyard and 600 olive trees.
Be slim, clean, be green. Use less energy, make sure that the energy you use is delivered efficiently and use technologies for renewable energies. It is an effective credo that is increasingly used for the best large -scale architectural designs in the most remote locations.