Inhabitat

MIRROR WEATHER STATION

For whatever reason, the more features a gadget has, the more people want it, even if all but one of those features are useless. Which isn’t to say we don’t all need a mirror that also has a graphic weather forecast, an atomic clock, and a vibrating alarm. It has a two-color display and shows indoor and outdoor temperatures through a remote sensor. You could just listen to the radio, use an alarm clock, and primp in an unobstructed looking glass, but that would be so 20th century…

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GIRARI

Recycled aluminum specialists Girari have been producing sustainable home furnishings from post-consumer aluminum for over ten years. Girari’s gorgeous line can be seen in-person at their brand new design showroom on Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California. We’ve taken a special interest in their Bamboo Vase, baring an amazing cast aluminum resemblance of one of our favorite renewable materials.

Girari’s organic design incorporates cast aluminum bases and frames with tempered glass, natural woods, marble and granite tops. Each piece is individually hand crafted. In a successful attempt to avoid sharp lines, Girari’s pieces are softened through a slight curve, while the cast aluminum legs and rails are seamlessly connected.

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Andrew Maynard

We just can’t get enough of Andrew Maynard, so we thought we’d say a few more words about him for our Prefab Friday roundup. In the diverse collection of projects in Maynard’s portfolio, we get a picture of an architect whose ideals run as deeply as his talent for good design. His protest treehouses emerged as a direct action in defense of the Tasmanian forest; his unfolding homes spoke even more strongly for sustainability, underscoring the importance of considering time in design. Rounding out the portrait of a visionary designer, Maynard’s prefabs embody not only sustainability, but affordability.

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ANDREW MAYNARD’S ACTIVIST ARCHITECTURE

Abandon your preconceptions of the architect as a quiet, bespeckled intellectual who cares more about sharp Italian suits and clean concrete lines than about saving trees. Here comes a new breed of architectural environmental activism in rising star Andrew Maynard, who has designed these awesome treehouses in order to protest logging.

The vigilant protection of endangered forests represents an enduring legacy of environmental activism, from the Chipko movement in India in the early 70s to Julia Butterfly Hill’s long sit in the redwoods. Few things deter a logger from felling a tree more effectively than a protester clinging fiercely to its trunk. Except maybe a protest structure that clings to three trunks at once.

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CATCH JILL ON THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST

Best known as the founder and CEO of Vivavi, Josh Dorfman also wears the hat of a radio host with his show, The Lazy Environmentalist, where he regularly features some of our favorite cohorts and leaders in the burgeoning movement towards making sustainability sexy and cool.

On this week’s show, Green Goes Mainstream, you can hear our fearless founder, Jill Fehrenbacher, discussing Inhabitat’s inception and growth, and the coming trends in green media and …

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THE HOME HOUSE PROJECT: the future of affordable housing

Good Design. Sustainability. Affordability?

Rarely could these ever describe the same project, much less a single attitude towards housing. In 2003, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, launched an open competition with these objectives in mind, and the results proved to be contrary. 440 entrants took house plans from Habitat for Humanity and turned them into environmentally friendly designs for low and moderate-income families.

Currently showing at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota are some of the results of the HOME House Project competition. Projects ranged from traditional vocabularies to the futuristic, all of them integrating building ideas such as prefabricated and recycled materials, passive heating and cooling, and rain water recycling.

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RUBBERSIDEWALKS

Across the country, cities constantly struggle with public safety and ongoing financial burdens caused by tree roots lifting cracked concrete sidewalks. Rubbersidewalks offer a convenient solution to this problem. The modular sidewalk system allows air and water to reach the soil below, and can be pulled apart for easy tree and root maintenance, decreasing the need for urban tree removal.

Rubbersidewalks are made of 100% recycled tire rubber. The waste rubber from one passenger tire creates one-square-foot of Rubbersidewalk, helping to recycle the more than 34 million passenger tires disposed in California alone. At the end of their lifecycle (at least 14 years), Rubbersidewalk pavers can be recollected and recycled back into the manufacturing process.

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BAUMRAUM TREEHOUSES

When designing a treehouse, it’s almost always a good idea to add a little childhood nostalgia and rustic charm to the mix, even if the end result has modern leanings. We’ve talked about treehouses big, small, and uber-futuristic, and each has had its own special flavor; but no matter how you distinguish yours from the rest, once you put a house in a tree, you join the ranks of the make-believe revivalists.

German cooperative baumraum knows how to keep imagination alive in their homes. Combining architecture, landscape design and “arboriculture,” they create treetop dwellings which integrate beautifully into their forested surroundings, and preserve the integrity of the trees that support them. With the breezy playfulness of a hammock and the trusted stability of an old oak tree, baumraum won’t make you grow up to enjoy a sophisticated house.

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BERLIN, COPENHAGEN, & GOTHENBURG

Winter is not, perhaps, the most temperate time of year to head off to Germany and Scandinavia, but the airfare sure is reasonable! I’m excited to report that from February 23 to March 13 I’ll be bundling up and traveling through Berlin, Copenhagen, and Gothenburg (Sweden) — and I’d love to get some travel advice from you!

In addition to visiting my brother and generally taking in the sights (such as the Reichstag Dome pictured above), I’m looking …

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FREEDOM OF CREATION Rapid Prototype Designs

Design company Freedom Of Creation (FOC), straddles the cusp between cutting edge engineering and haute-design. The future-forward company is pushing the boundaries of manufacturing production with their research and experimentation in new methods of rapid prototyping. The fruits of their research manifest in stunningly beautiful geometric designs – shaped into lamps, furniture and even textiles. The Venus lamp (above), made from laser-sintered PA would make Bucky proud with its pure geodesic structure, whereas the On the Rocks tables and chairs (below) look like scientific diagrams of molecular crystalline structure come to life. FOC is also exploring textiles (see below), and while their creations don’t necessarily look very comfortable to wear, they are quite fetching on plastic mannequins.

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SUPER SMART PRIVACY GLASS

Imagine a high-tech glass that you could change from transparent to frosted with the flick of a switch… You could use it for home windows (eliminating the need for blinds), for store fronts (at night), and even for bathrooms (requiring users to stretch for a new level of trust in technology). Although Privacy Glass is not in common use yet – the technology has actually been around for quite a few years, and there are many stunning examples of this smart material in use all over the world. French company Saint-Gobain produces an “intelligent” glass called Privalite, which can be switched from an ordinary-looking clear glass to a foggy-looking frosted glass by running an electrical current over a polymer liquid-crystal film sandwiched between two plates of glass.

Apparently the Koolhaus-designed Prada flagship store in SoHo, New York, utilizes privacy glass in the dressing rooms. I’ve been to the store on several occasions, but I’ve never quite made it as far as the dressing rooms (bloggers can’t afford Prada), so I have yet to see this in the flesh. Fortunately New Yorkers don’t need to be well-heeled to see Privacy Glass in action. Inhabitat reader John tells us that there is a more accessible (and fun) implementation of privacy glass, right around the corner from the Prada store, at Bar 89 (89 Mercer Street in NYC) “The bathroom doors do the trick and are tripped by an infrared censor. The bar is ok, but the bathrooms on the mezzanine are worth a stop.” {Thanks John!}

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Studio Force4

We’ve talked a few times about urban bioremediation projects, in which trees and plants are used as tools to clean contaminated land. This kind of renewal not only spares the use of invasive reconstruction, it makes the process of cleaning as beautiful and enjoyable as the final outcome.

Danish firm Studio Force4 has a development plan that brings bioremediation, compact living and prefab construction together to create a forested urban oasis. The Boase Concept will establish a forest in the city, choosing trees specifically for their ability to clean polluted soil. With residential units positioned above the trees, residents will have the benefit of dense green space situated in the middle of the city.

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WE HATE SPAMMERS / comments are disabled

Dear readers-
A bunch of you have written in to ask about why our comments aren’t working. We have had to shut them down because some spawn of satan has set up an automated spam-bot to send us comment spam about online blackjack every 5 minutes. Naturally we delete all comments like this immediately, but the spam was coming in such a deluge that we have found it impossible to sit at the computer constantly deleting it. So we have had to shut comments …

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NOMADIC MUSEUM (Ashes & Snow)

Designed by well-known Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, the Nomadic Museum is the permanent home for the art exhibition “Ashes and Snow,” by Gregory Colbert. Built from 152 stacked shipping containers, the building forms a central walkway for viewing the artwork, suspended on either side.

Through May 14th, the exhibit will be located on the Santa Monica Pier, having previously opened in Venice, and then in the first Nomadic Museum at Pier 54 on the Hudson River. Truly “nomadic,” the museum was designed to be disassembled and reconfigured to house the traveling exhibit. The shipping containers not only make up the building module, but evoke the voyage of “Ashes and Snow” as it moves from location to location (the exhibit has no final destination.)

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MANGO LEAF

Uniquely modern, wonderfully colorful and one hundred percent natural (including the dyes), Mango Leaf’s line of handspun bamboo products put an elegant eco spin on standard wooden dishware. Whether you like dark, rich colors, or bright, energetic shades, Mango Leaf can suit your style. Scrupulous attention to detail and a commitment to using only natural materials are the trademarks of Mango Leaf’s design. Not only is each product put through vigorous durability and ergonomic testing to ensure it lasts for years, but the pieces are surprisingly affordable, starting at $38.00.

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FLOATING MOBILE HOME

We’ve talked about mobile homes and we’ve talked about floating homes, and now a conceptual convergence brings us a floating mobile home. Designer Hallstein Guthu calls his concept a “mobile eco-home for the contemporary techno-nomad.” Might be something you’d find at Burning Man if it weren’t waterborne. And Norwegian.

In fact, this is the result of a highly elaborate and imaginitive architectural Masters thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Guthu emphasizes the use of technologically advanced design as a means of achieving a greener, more sustainable structure. With an outer membrane comprised of solar cells, a wind turbine, and a recycled aluminum structure, the highly efficient home is designed with awareness of its eventual disposal (you can recycle it!).

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TONFISK WARM TEA SET

We’re not sure why the folks behind Tonfisk named themselves after the so-called “chicken of the sea” (the word means “tuna” in Finnish) but nonetheless we think they’re a great catch. Among their many novel designs, we especially love the Warm tea set.

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JORIS LAARMAN’S HEAT WAVE RADIATOR

When it comes to the essentials at home, sanity trumps vanity. In old apartments and houses, big clunky radiators seem like a necessary annoyance, but do they really have to be?

Dutch designer Joris Laarman specializes in “reinventing functionality.” With his gorgeous new Heat Wave radiator, he has managed to transform what was once a bulky necessary evil into a stunning piece of sculpture that functions just as well as wall art, as it does in heat radiation. Luckily for all of us, Droog Design has recognized the genius of this design and has put the Heat Wave Radiator into mass production, so now we can all bask in its warmth.

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WHILE THE LIGHT’S STILL GREEN

We’re feeling extremely fortunate this week to have Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG and Archinect providing another illuminating guest post. Thanks Geoff!

There have been some extraordinary claims in the newpapers lately. James Lovelock, of Gaia hypothesis fame, has said we’re too late, the show’s over: Earth’s climate is already in a runaway feedback loop, “and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” This is a planetary “fever” that could last 100,000 years.

Even the Pentagon has not missed out on the speculative action, arguing in an apparently J.G. Ballard-inspired internal report from 2004 that mass rioting and nuclear war will be the inevitable outcome of climate change. With barely concealed relish, the Pentagon predicts that disruption, conflict, and warfare “would define human life.”

As if that were not bad enough, we then learn that the oceans may soon become “marine deserts” due to the extinction of phytoplankton and other “microscopic plants” at the base of the aquatic food chain. Creeping death, if I may be allowed to quote Metallica, seems to be all around us. But all is not gloom and apocalypse.

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GEOTHERMAL MANHATTAN TOWNHOUSE

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/Old-Heating-Idea.htm

I’ve been hearing rumors about a geothermally heated townhouse in lower Manhattan for awhile now, and have been meaning to go check it out for almost a year. Now it appears the moment has finally arrived – the geothermal house has just gone on sale. Asking price? A whopping 7.8 million. But just think of all the money you’d save in utilities!

From the Wall Street Journal:
“The five-story town house stands in TriBeCa, a few blocks north of the World Trade Center site, and uses an unusual geothermal energy system to provide heating, cooling and hot water. Pipes extend about 1,400 feet into the earth, where the temperature is always about 52 degrees. The pipes transfer energy to the house, where two-layer-thick concrete exterior walls, filled with thermal materials, trap the energy and distribute it. (All floors also have radiant heating systems.) The late New York architect and developer John Petrarca designed the property and lived there with his wife, business-journalism professor Sarah Bartlett, until his death from lung cancer in 2003. The project was completed in 2002.”

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BAMBOO SLIDE TABLE

Bamboo continues to be an Inhabitat favorite, and we especially love bamboo furniture that unfolds to provide variety in tight spaces. The Bamboo Slide Table was specially designed for those with space-challenged kitchens, but those with ample space will love it too. The Bamboo Slide Table expands – providing multiple cutting surfaces (including a hidden cutting board), a variety of hidden storage options, and even a wine rack. Made of toasted vertical grain bamboo finished in an organic food-grade herbal oil and polished aluminum legs with non-skid feet, the Bamboo Slide Table makes a wonderful addition to any kitchen, large or small.

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PREFABULOUS LONDON: the A to Z of Prefab

Going on now through March 18 is the New London Architecture’s “Prefabulous London” exhibition. The show is organized around the guiding principles that have made prefab such a crucial component of modern architecture in London: A is for affordable. B is for (lack of) bricklayers. C is for Container, as in the Container City project in the Docklands. The exhibit illustrates how designers have embraced offsite construction and modular components, as the stigma of somewhat brutal post-war apartment blocks fade and more creative, flexible solutions flourish.

But debate is stirring as to whether or not prefab is really going to break open the housing market as we know it.

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PREFAB FRIDAY: miniHome

We’ve waited a long time to talk about this little eco-friendly gem, and now we’re glad we did, because the Sustain Design Studio team has recently added many fantastic images to their website. With a new color scheme and a bunch of interior shots, we can now get a sense of the whole package, and we like what we see.

Sustain Design’s miniHome distinguishes itself from its peers in terms of ecological responsibility. Unlike some “eco-friendly” prefabs, which tout their greenness as a selling point while barely superceding traditional standards, the miniHome emerges from a design strategy that holds sustainability as its central tenet. If LEED granted rankings to mobile homes, the miniHome would be Platinum and then some.

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P’KOLINO

Derived from the Italian word Piccolino meaning “Little One”, the creators of P’kolino’s Play Table and Play Tower have created innovative furniture for children that encourages them to learn and grow through play. Creators J.B. Schneider and Antonio Turco-Rivas were classmates in a full-time MBA program when they discovered their shared desire to create furniture specifically for children that can fit into an adult world. Research and development with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) resulted in their first product, the P’kolino Play Table. The P’kolino Play Tower followed in vibrant colors, providing ample storage space in the form of a stackable ottoman.

P’Konlino’s mission is: To improve the play experience at home for both children and parents by designing innovative home play furnishings and accessories that are functionally smart and playfully stylish.

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GRASSLAND

It’s no secret that we love green roofs, green tables, green sinks – we even love green parking spaces! Of course, we know we’re not alone, but until now, we’d never found anyone who had grassified as many surfaces as Grassland. Using nothing but steel, water and air, Grassland’s interior objects grow grass from seed, which covers the frame it’s planted in, and forms an interlocking root structure. When the grass eventually browns and dies, you’re left with a tightly woven structure of naturally dried grass.

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OOOMS TWIG USB DRIVE

These Oooms Twig USB sticks have been around the blog block a lot in the past week, and frankly, I’m not surprised. Seriously, who amongst us can resist a USB drive disguised as a twig? Available now from our favorite clever Dutch designer Guido Oooms, you can break these off in storage capacities ranging from 128MB to 1GB.

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STEW DESIGN WORKSHOP’S MUON LAMP

Everyone likes an element of surprise: a twist at the end of a movie, a photo inside a locket, a jelly donut…this is why the unsuspecting block of plywood that is Stew Design Workshop’s Muon Lamp happens to be so delightful. Not only are the lights a surprise when they illuminate the wooden block like a skyscraper at night, but the pattern of the lights themselves is a surprise with the production of each lamp. The brilliant …

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LIGHT POLLUTION – and the RETURN OF NIGHT

We are honored and delighted to have one of our favorite bloggers, Geoff Manaugh of the inimitable BLDGBLOG providing a guest post today for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! And if you aren’t already reading BLDG daily, now’s the time to start!

Who wants to look at stars? Who needs astronomy when there’s a “sports complex with a driving range and multi-purpose dome” nearby, burning with floodlights and halogens, incandescent in the American night? Who wants constellations when you can watch a “billboard on Route 22 in Wingdale, New York that is lit by a dedicated floodlight”? Who, after all, wants to put up with something called nighttime?

Human interference with visible astronomy is generally referred to as “light pollution,” or – my personal favorite – “light trespass,” light that has trespassed its terrestrial limits and now competes with the heavens above, blocking out the stars and forming a counter-astronomy. Photographer David Allee, however, has found a way to take advantage of light trespass and its aesthetic possibilities, documenting the “intrusive otherworldly effect of artificial light on man-made environments.” This is light pollution as a photographic resource.

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VENTO DOOR

The Vento Door by Akira Yoshimura combines the functionality of magazine rack with the utility of a door, creating something stylish out of the mundane. The inspiration for the Vento door started with the simple desire to create a door that allows a light breeze to flow through the house as if open; the need for additional privacy triggered the idea of a magazine rack.

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DESIGN EXHIBITION: LIVING IN MOTION

Its easy to think of flexible, and multi-functional design as a modern innovation; a product of our increasingly fast-paced and mobile lifestyles. Yet human societies the world over have been wrestling with many of the same needs for centuries. Such is the topic of Living in Motion: Design and Architecture for Flexible Dwelling. This traveling exhibition from Germany’s Vitra Design Museum will have its only U.S. showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston through May 7, 2006.

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INFLATABLE CONCRETE CANVAS

Take the Concrete Canvas, add air and water, wait twelve hours, and you have a portable building that offers more structural stability than a tent at half the cost of existing portable buildings. Creators William Crawford and Peter Brewin developed Concrete Canvas as an entry for the 2004 British Cement Association competition. While the idea only took second place in the competition, Concrete Canvas has already won three other awards including the British Standard Institute Sustainable Design Award. Applications of the Concrete Canvas include aid to the agencies in emergency situations requiring accommodations, field offices, and medical clinics. Current solutions offer inadequate protection and only last an average of three years. Concrete Canvas proves to be far more durable, designed to last a minimum of ten years can be delivered in and erected at the site creating a sterile environment, that’s more secure than the usual tent. Finally, added insulation can be gained by covering it in earth or snow.

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