Looking a little like a wedge of hard cheese, this modernistic Swedish passive house is perched on a rock and with a view of the sea in the southeastern Swedish hamlet of Trosa.

Passive house combines eco-techniques and "modern" design

Photo: Orca Yapı Sistemleri

In Turkish, the word for a slum is gecekondu, meaning "settled overnight." A prefabricated house doesn't go up quite that quickly, but mass production can make homes--of both the conventional and ecofriendly type--available to more people at varying income levels.

photo: Casey Lessard

Image source: KLTV

Warning! If you do not want to live in a straw bale house with a living roof and solar panels to power your satellite internet connectivity, DO NOT watch the video over the fold!

Photo by Alex Osterwalder

The New York Times covers 78 year old Hans Zwimpfer's Pile up housing. They call it a solution to sprawl, describing it as follows: "Take single-family houses, whose benefits — space, privacy, light, a yard — suburbanites are loath to give up. Then simply stack the houses, one on top of another. Voilà: The comforts of suburban living, with the convenience and ecological benefits of urban density."

Photo via SMUD

The "Home of the Future" is the goal of BP Solar and OCR Solar & Roofing. They’ve teamed up to create a home that is the most state-of-the-art in energy efficiency.

Solaleya makes highly efficient homes. They showed off their designs at West Coast Green last week. The thing is, they look a bit like landed UFOs. Not that dome houses are exactly new, but they also aren't the most common of house forms.