Sweet Pond

After our discussion of design in class today, I decided to look up eco-homes in Vermont and see what designs people had used that fit out landscape and environment. In southeastern Vermont there is a community under development called the Sweet Pond Eco-Community. This community is a group of nine eco-houses built in an apple orchard surrounding a beaver pond. Picturesque right?
The design is actually quite simple, using two simple shed form, using sheltering and the low-lying structure for passive solar.



It's basically two boxes stuck together with varying roof angles. They also plan to incorporate things such as shared parking structures, shared septic, and shared water to limit land use. While these are all fine and dandy, I am still waiting for a residential home that is 100% eco-friendly, or at least above the 75% range.

Taking into account the landscape, environmental challenges, and challenges of an eco-friendly home, the conventional ideas of a house or home may not be applicable. Say you were to incorporate a living machine into your home, it would need to be a proper size to support several people and the waste that they produce, and rather than have a room dedicated to your living machine, you would need to find a way to incorporate it aesthetically into your living spaces.
I met someone the other day who had decided to build a 100% eco friendly home using a slightly altered conventional farmhouse design to blend better in the Vermont community and architectural landscape. I wonder if conventional design and aesthetics and another system that will have to be completely remade to become sustainable.
We have said in class that this is an opportunity to rebuild every system. Does that apply to cultural aesthetics too?