Meme Meadows, in Japan. CreditKengo Kuma & Associates

“How much does your house weigh?” Buckminster Fuller asked in the 1920s, showing off his three-ton hexagonal Dymaxion House. He believed the technology used to mass-produce cars may as well be applied to houses, driving prices down and increasing mobility. Since then, many designers have wrestled with the size, cost, manufacturing and, indeed, heft of homes. In “Superlight: Rethinking How Our Homes Impact the Earth” (Metropolis Books, $35), Phyllis Richardson offers a global, contemporary perspective, highlighting recent projects from Chile to Vietnam. She also reconsiders what makes a project “light,” expanding the definition from pounds or kilograms to impact on the site, energy consumption (or generation) and the ability to cope with climate change. She spoke from London, where she lives in a Victorian house — with a polycarbonate and aluminum addition. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)

Q. What inspired you to write this book?

A. It’s been a continuum for me. I started off writing about small buildings, then small houses, and I got very interested in energy-efficient materials and methods and technologies. That led me to thinking about low impact on surroundings, how the houses interact with the site. Could they be in some way more lightweight? But you can fetishize something like that, and it can be a gimmick. If what you are after is having a lower impact on the environment and not being wasteful, nit-picking about whether it weighs a few pounds more or less is not the idea.....Continue Reading

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