This week Inhabitat shined a light on the future of high-tech architecture as we brought you 20 stunning sun-powered homes that are getting ready to battle it out in this year's Solar Decathlon - including Team New York's prefab Roof Pod, Canada's TRTL solar shell house, and China's Y Container home.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: sun-powered homes, retro robots and a solar laptop chipset

While the foundations were being dug, a steel-and-timber-framed shell of the house was built off-site.

WSJ: Striking Gold in the Backyard

The shell of the house was a grim reminder of what happened to Lorraine, Caroline, Sean, 7, Bellina, 4, Clodagh, 19 months and James, who was nine months old.

BBC: McElhill fire murder house in Omagh is demolished

The colors provide a stark contrast to the dark burned-out shell of a house that sits in the distance -- and offer a painful reminder of the tragedy that befell the people who lived within.

CNN: Kentucky house fire kills 2 adults, 5 children

At about five in the afternoon, they spotted the shell of a ranch house on the horizon.

NEWYORKER: The Insufferable Gaucho

While the Senate passed a bill in March in a bipartisan 72-24 vote, the House has only a shell bill to offer, plus its "non-negotiable" insistence on mandatory approval of Keystone XL. The Senate majority has its own bazooka: a presidential veto if Keystone XL is in the bill.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

He returned to the States in the late '60s, and he was shell-shocked and stayed in his house for a long time, couldn't handle looking at the bright colors and seeing the cars moving so fast on the freeway and things that he thought he was going to - looking forward to seeing, he couldn't handle them when he got back.

NPR: Singer and Songwriter Neil Young

The beautiful old palace which used to house the district government is almost completely destroyed - a shell surrounded by rubble.

BBC: Maoists strive to win hearts and minds

The Parque das Ruinas contains the burned out shell of the mansion belonging to Brazilian heiress Laurinda Santos Lobo, whose house was a salon for Rio's artists and intellectuals in the 1920s and '30s.

BBC: Bohemian Santa Teresa