Design and engineering innovations over the last two decades have had a dramatic impact on our ability to create beautiful, environmentally sensitive structures that help contribute to a more sustainable future. A dramatic example of the confluence of design, technology and environmental sustainability can be seen in the proliferation of innovative bridge designs around the world. We’ve put together a list of five of our favorites. Check them out and let us know what you think!

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According to the Forest Products Laboratory, a whole, unmilled tree can support 50 percent more weight than the largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. Putting this principle into practice, Whole Tree Architecture is dedicated to building with materials that lumber companies consider scrap – weed trees, also know as ‘managed forest thinnings.’ The resulting projects are beautiful displays of locally sourced and sustainably managed materials.

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Clothes hangers are clogging our landfills at a rate of nearly 8 billion per year. We’ve recently brought you designers who have been developing brilliant ways to tackle the problem through eco-friendly materials and innovative new designs. Now industrial designers Alex Witko and Courtney Hunt at Organelle Design have hit upon another great idea — Hangeliers, wonderful chandeliers made from off-the-shelf plastic and wood hangers.

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There are reportedly over 750,000 abandoned concrete bunkers scattered throughout Albania, remnants of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha and his policies of paranoid xenophobia. Now graduate students Gyler Mydyti & Elian Stefa have developed a plan called Concrete Mushrooms that would ‘invert the meaning’ of these structures by turning them into a network of habitable eco-hostels, cafés, gift shops and more.

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Today is Blog Action Day, and this year’s theme is Climate Change – a topic near and dear to our hearts here at Inhabitat. To kick things off, we took a look back over last the past year’s posts and pulled together a list of our top 5 favorite climate change stories to hit the pages of Inhabitat. The following [completely biased] list is in no particular order. It does, however, attempt to focus on solutions to the problem – because we believe that there is hope for our planet if we act now. Check it out and please, comment copiously. We love a good debate!

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Now that it’s clear that the flying cars we were promised as youngsters are not going to appear anytime soon, we can perhaps take comfort in the arrival of the brilliant HEPAV 1.1, a human-electric powered amphibious vehicle from the creative mind of Czech designer and inventor David Buchwaldek. Like an eco-superhero’s signature ride, the HEPAV 1.1 can travel the streets in style and drive straight into the water without missing a beat. Sustainable, human-powered locomotion never looked so good.

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Pedal power is clearly on the rise. Bike sharing programs are spreading throughout the world, David Byrne’s new book Bicycle Diaries is flying off the shelves, and brilliant new designs like this, this and this, are appearing all over the globe. A wonderfully quirky addition to the scene is the Hopworksfiets party bike, a brilliant mash-up of human-powered pizza delivery, brew pub, and portable entertainment system. Created by Portland, OR-based bike builders Metrofiets, the Hopworksfiets is designed to deliver everything you need to get your pedal-powered party rolling.

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Magically appearing from the trees along Great Ocean Road, Australia is Cocoon, an incredible weekend getaway by the terrific design duo Bellemo & Cat. One part zeppelin, one part finely-crafted yacht, Cocoon was conceived as a “a matchbox inside an egg, a rectangle within an oval.”

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Buildings account for thirty-eight percent of the CO2 emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Green Building Council, and demand for carbon neutral and/or zero footprint buildings is at an all-time high. Now there is a new building material that is not just carbon neutral, but is actually carbon negative. Developed by U.K.-based Lhoist Group, Tradical® Hemcrete® is a bio-composite, thermal walling material made from hemp, lime and water. What makes it carbon negative? There is more CO2 locked-up in the process of growing and harvesting of the hemp than is released in the production of the lime binder. Of course the equation is more complicated than that, but Hemcrete® is still an amazing new technology that could change the building industry.

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At Inhabitat we’ve brought you some terrific examples of recycled aircraft here, here, here and here. But Dave Drimmer’s Cosmic Muffin, the iconic ‘plane-boat’ made from Howard Hughes’ prized Boeing B-307, has to be the quintessential example. Deemed un-flyable in 1969, Hughes’ former ‘flying office’ was rescued from the landfill by Fort Lauderdale Realtor and pilot Kenneth W. London who then spent the next four years transforming it into an exotic houseboat that has been featured everywhere from CNN to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! to Jimmy Buffet’s 1996 song “Desdemona’s Building A Rocketship”!

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In one of the most ambitious examples of speculative architecture of the year, Paris-based OFF Architecture recently unveiled an incredible eco-bridge spanning the Bering Strait from Russia to the United States that would facilitate international trade, protect wildlife, mitigate global warming, and promote peace. Every bit as beautiful and eco-conscious as it is quixotic, the project stole the show at the Bering Strait International Ideas Competition.

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In answer to the ever-intensifying global water crisis, industrial designer Talia Radford has created the AquaIris, an elegant, portable water purifier for developing countries with tropical climates that is simple to use and requires no electricity! How does it work? Contaminated water enters the AquaIris, passes over a removable/re-usable filter, then travels under a layer of ‘converter crystals’ where germicidal UVC rays purify the water molecules as they pass by.

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A hot shower is relaxing, but is also a huge waste of energy: we heat our water with massive amounts of natural gas, oil or electricity, then transport the heated water to our tubs for a few seconds of sudsing, before washing it down the drain full of raw, wasted heat and energy! What if we could recapture this untapped source of wasted energy by transferring the heat from that shower waste-water to cold incoming water? The EcoDrain, a simple heat exchange unit, does just that, saving water heater use by up to 40%.

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After weeks of public outcry , the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to place a hold of at least one year upon the “Greenest Building on the West Coast”. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the 110 Embarcadero project is now under review to determine the historical significance of the site and the proposed 10-story height of the project. Just months ago, the architects had been given the go-ahead to construct the uber-green office building, which was set to become the first commercial building on the West Coast to receive a LEED Platinum rating.

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On the western outskirts of Shanghai, China, a dragon is coming to life. Constructed of concrete, steel and glass, the new corporate headquarters of Giant Pharmaceutical Corp looks for all the world like something between a sci-fi battleship landing on a highway, and a steampunk dragon frozen in time. L.A.-based architectural firm Morphosis is focusing on the building’s sustainability as much as its aesthetics, with a green roof, generous use of skylights, and advanced insulation materials like cement-fiberboard paneling and a double-layer, fritted-glass curtain wall.

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Typical “leather” footwear is nearly impossible to dispose of or recycle properly, is constructed using a combination of chromium-tanned leather and bonded, man-made materials and is usually manufactured in a developing country with substandard (or nonexistent) occupational health regulations. Cradle to Cradle authors and Inhabitat favorites William McDonough and Michael Braungart have even gone so far as to call mainstream footwear “hazardous waste” for the feet. Flying in the face of this perception is the Nike Zoom MVP Trash Talk All-Star Game Player Exclusive, a new shoe made from left-over Nike sneaker scraps – a.k.a. trash!

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Generally associated with plastic and wooden 55 gallon drums covered with slimy moss, rainwater harvesting just doesn’t seem to capture the imagination like an exotic green roof or a gleaming solar array — until now. The CISTA rainwater harvesting system (which we just spotted on Kohler’s new H2OVisions website) is a dramatic, elegant and space-saving solution for the urban environment that conserves water, increases green space and just might finally bring rainwater harvesting the kind of attention it deserves.

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Living ‘close to the earth’ can mean many things — living in harmony with nature, living in touch with natural processes, or in the case of Casa de los Pinos (House Among the Pines), living on the top of a mountain, smack in the middle of a stand of breathtaking pine. But that is just the beginning of this terrific project by architectural firm XPIRAL. The house showcases a host of sustainable features including the use of rocks from the site for stone-work, vegetation from the grounds remade into construction material, and timber on the site used in the pathways. And to top it all off, the architects replanted the same number of trees on the property that it took to clear the building site!

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Scholastic architecture doesn’t get much better than these stunning Mode-Gakuen Spiral Towers in Nagoya, Japan. The shimmering towers corkscrew 36 stories [170 m] above the busy streets of Nagoya, Japan, and house educational facilities for three different disciplines in three tapered ‘wings’ – fashion design, computer programming and a medical support. Architectural group Nikken Sekkei included a host of ecological features in the towers including a double-glassed air flow window system and a natural air ventilation system.

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This year’s Greener Gadgets Competition is loaded with brilliant ideas. One of our favories is the Tweet-a-watt, a fabulous open-source, power monitoring project from ladyada. One part off-the-shelf hardware, two-parts hackware and a dash of environmental consciousness and social networking, Tweet-a-watt monitors and “tweets ” (publish wirelessly) your home’s daily energy use to your Twitter account, all for less than fifty bucks!

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Waterworld this is not; Waterpod is the real deal! Concieved by artists Mary Mattingly and Mira Hunter, the Waterpod is a visionary, floating habitat set to launch—certainly not coincinentally—on May 1st (a.k.a., International Workers’ Day, Labour Day and millions of other workers’ protests around the world). A collaboration between an eclectic group of artists, curators and educators, Waterpod is an experimental, self-sustaining community or as the organizers say, “a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides.”

New York’s Governor’s Island is set to receive an incredible set of renovations that will transform the 172-acre plot of decaying Coast Guard structures into a stunning eco-park. Designed by West 8, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Rogers Marvel Architects, the project is a hybrid of landscape and architecture based around a sinuous set of new paths, watercourses, restaurants, aquaria and even complimentary wooden bicycles. Slated for completion in 2012, the ambitious, new and improved Governors Island will incorporate a host of environmentally friendly features.

Riding the wave of new development in China, Studio SHIFT recently won a competition to design a fantastic new landmark in Miyi County. Miyi Tower will sit on the edge of the Anning river as a symbol of the new face of Sichuan provence. The tower’s most striking feature is its whimsical latticework skin, which suffuses the structure with daylight and “evokes the shimmering surface of the river below.” This connection is reinforced by the project’s goal of filtering and transforming the polluted Anning river into a lush landscape of wetlands, lakes, leisure and agricultural areas.

The creative minds at miniWIZ recently debuted the POLLI-Brick, a recycled polymer bottle that can be interlocked to build an incredible array of structures. Made from recycled PET bottles, the lightweight bricks offer excellent acoustic and thermal insulation and can build anything from fences and roofs to pots for plants, skylights and beautiful walls of light.

Proving once again that the best ideas are often the simplest, 21-year-old student/inventor/entrepreneur Emily Cummins has designed a brilliant portable solar-powered refrigerator that works based upon the principle of evaporation. Employing a combination of conduction and convection, the refrigerator requires no electricity and can be made from commonly available materials like cardboard, sand, and recycled metal.

The handmade movement is taking the country by storm. Make this holiday memorable by choosing to give something one-of-a-kind, made with skill and craftsmanship not found at the mall. And just think of the sustainable benefits: reduced carbon footprint, recycled/recyclable materials and the satisfaction that comes from knowing you’re helping sustain local artisans. Strike a blow for sustainability and give handmade this season!

Umbrellas that light up with integrated LEDs are nothing new: from Instructable’s DIY illuminated umbrella to patio umbrellas available at Lowes, LED Umbrellas have been around the block. But here’s a brilliant idea we’ve never seen before: an illuminated umbrella that is powered by rain! Designer Sang-Kyun Park has taken the illuminated umbrella idea to the next level with Lightdrops, an umbrella made from polyvinylidene fluoride [PDVF], a conductive membrane that powers LEDs with energy from falling rain.

Papal social policy is not typically characterized as progressive. Flying in the face of this perception, Vatican City has just installed 2,400 photovoltaic solar panels on the 5,000 square meter roof of Nervi Hall where popes hold general audiences when the weather is poor. The 1.2 million euro ($1.6 million) system went live earlier this month just hours before Pope Benedict held what is being called the “first ecological general audience in the Vatican.”

Vivace is a new energy technology that gets its name from a phenomenon that engineers have been battling for 25 years. VIV (vortex induced vibrations) destroyed the Narrows Bridge in Washington State in 1940, and the Ferrybridge power station cooling towers in England in 1965. Ironically it is also the same phenomenon that allows schools of fish to swim as fast as they do. Now Dr. Michael M. Bernitsas and researchers at the University of Michigan are turning this ‘threat’ into a resource. Rather than suppressing VIV, Vivace actually creates and then harvests energy from VIV, and it does it all using slow water currents, a previously untapped source of sustainable energy.

Drywall is the number three producer of greenhouse gasses among building materials, trailing just behind cement and steel. Its production generates 200 million tons of carbon dioxide gas, a host of gypsum mines, and immense amounts of energy are required to fire the 500 degree kilns in which it is produced. But a ‘game-changer’ is on the horizon: EcoRock. This innovative material requires no gypsum, no ovens to produce, is made from 85 percent industrial by-products and is fully recyclable!

The new Yellow Treehouse Restaurant by New Zealand based Pacific Environments Architects Ltd. (PEL) is a stunning architectural feat perched high above a redwood first. Appearing for all the world like an enormous chrysalis grafted onto a 40-meter-high redwood tree, the project is constructed of plantation poplar slats, redwood balustrading milled at the site, and makes extensive use of natural lighting throughout.

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What if we could light our homes with glowing wallpaper rather than having to rely on electric lights? Swedish designer Camilla Diedrich has asked this exact question, and in response, created a stunning line of luminescent wallpaper that is lit by fiber optics. Her Nature Ray Charles Wallpaper features a delicate assortment of floral motifs that shine through in lucid lines, adding a touch of energy-efficient ambiance to any room.

At first glance Patrick Morris’ Sky Planter is deceptively simple, consisting of a hanging potted houseplant turned upside down. But upon closer inspection we can see that Morris didn’t stop there. The Sky Planter actually uses a ground-breaking internal reservoir system that feeds water directly to the roots without leaks or evaporation, using up to 90% less water than ordinary pots. The system locks in the soil so there’s no mess, and our favorite part is that you only have to water your plant once or twice a month!

Ushida Findlay Architects (UFA) recently received permission to build this gorgeous eco-friendly, multi-family Park House compound in Preston, UK. The stunning design incorporates sustainable elements such as solar power, extensive use of natural light, and locally-sourced materials, but its defining element is certainly the undulating green roof that links the homes of five branches of a single family.

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The e-charkha is an ingenious update to India’s ubiquitous charkha [spinning wheel] that transforms the simple machine into a potentially significant source of energy for millions of struggling families in India. Designed by RS Hiremath, the e-charkha “not only produces yarn but also generates electricity using a maintenance free lead acid battery fixed at the bottom, which functions as an inverter.”

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