Energy company Sunrgi recently announced an astounding new solar system that will break our grids free from the fossil fuel lockdown. Their Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics promise a low-cost, high-efficiency system with an incredible projected energy pricing of 5 cents per kilowatt. This breakthrough puts solar on par with the cost of coal, natural gas, and other non-renewable energy sources.
Rain barrels, garbage cans, corrugated tanks… most water collection systems have a problem: they’ve got ugly written into their DNA. An unfortunate evolution, granted that rainwater storage has been practiced for more than 2,000 years. One would have hoped for a more elegant design by now! David l’Hôte’s Rainpod prototype rises to the occasion, pledging to better your battered cans with a simple, sleek design that uses only one operating principle: gravity.
We have a passion for following future-forward architecture that pushes the envelope of environmental design. Imagine our excitement when we saw these recently released photos of Taiwan’s Next Gene 20! The project challenges 20 acclaimed architects to design 20 villas along the north-east coast of Taiwan. The selected architects include big international names such as MVRDV, Graft, Kengo Kuma, and Julien De Smedt as well as 10 up and coming Taiwanese architects. The designs showcase an impressive array of styles ranging from minimalist modules to elaborate biomorphisms, yet they are all united around the common goal of integrating seamlessly with their environment. These results are the fruit of an exciting cultural exchange, and they provide some cutting edge concepts for the future of architecture.
Forget Habby and Inhabipuppy, and get ready for the next round of eco-cuteness! Lotta Jansdotter’s adorable sustainable soft toys are the latest eco-apples of our eye with their beautiful color palette, smoothly shaped designs and environmentally friendly composition. The line consists of a blissful green whale, a sagacious herringbone owl, and a vibrant vermillion giraffe, each lovingly crafted by Scandinavian born Lotta Anderson. Her store, Lotta Jansdotter, is named after her daughter Jan, and carries a stunning selection of warm wool knits, playful prints, and pristine stationary. We love Lotta’s modern, natural aesthetic that stems from her childhood spent on the island of Åland (between Sweden and Finland) and her travels throughout the globe. We’ll be getting our hands on these sweet, sustainable toys at BKLYN Designs this weekend, and you can be sure that Abigail and Jill will be hitting this booth in the upcoming Mother’s Day Green Design Walking Tour on Sunday.
The 2008 Metropolis Magazine Next Generation design competition challenged young architects and designers to create a sustainable solution to make the world better, and safer, with ideas related to the theme of ‘water.’ We are thrilled to announce that this year’s $10,000 prize was awarded to San Francisco based architect and CCA professor Eric Olsen! Olsen’s winning design is a Solar Water Disinfecting Tarpaulin, a revolutionary design that promises to provide portable and potable water anywhere that it is needed.
We love this beautifully sculpted cardboard mille-feuille that lines the walls of Yiorgos Eleftheriades‘ Yeshop in Athens. Dubbed “Papercut”, the project was a collaboration between the fashion designer and dARCH Studio. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to interior design, synthesizing elements of fashion and architecture into a streamlined, self-illuminated, biomorphic installation that was handmade using all eco-friendly materials.
This striking modern structure cuts a profile every bit as sleek as it is streamlined for efficiency. It is composed of four single family units joined by a flowing fusion of glass and “smog-eating” photo-catalytic concrete, creating a series of separate yet structurally connected spaces. Italian architects Iosa Ghini Associati designed the residence to integrate seamlessly into its sweeping Mediterranean landscape, and its airy day-lit interiors benefit from a slick set of green features including adjustable solar panels, rainwater recycling, and a heat storage system.
The Water + Life Museums complex in Hemet, California, has just become the first museum to break the LEED Platinum barrier, beating out the California Academy of Sciences and scores of other hopeful projects. The stunning $40 million campus runs 72,000 square feet and was constructed by LA based Michael Lehrer Architects. The iconic cultural complex has done an incredible job of keeping a light footprint while adapting to a challenging desert climate that runs from freezing in the winter to more than 100 degrees in the summer.
Spring is off to a fresh start in New York as Harlem’s first affordable green community blossoms to life. Situated on West 153rd Street, David & Joyce Dinkins Gardens offers 85 units of affordable housing in addition to a 25,000 square foot youth center and a community garden. Jonathan Rose Companies and Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement developed the $19.5 million community to help repair the “physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual fabric of the neighborhood.” Towards these goals the project has kept costs low while integrating a noble set of social and environmental ideals governed by principles of diversity, interdependence, and environmental responsibility.
The past month has seen shock waves resonating throughout the world of sustainable architecture with two monumental reports on green building backed by some serious changes in public policy. First, the CEC released “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”, which lauded sustainable buildings as the quickest, cheapest, and most substantive way to cut down on North American greenhouse gas emissions. Next, CoStar released a comparison report stating that LEED buildings consistently outperform their peers in terms of occupancy rates, sale prices, and rental rates, with demand far outnumbering their supply. And, last week on Earth Day, Los Angeles approved a green building ordinance that signifies a significant shift towards a policy and market-driven era of economically and environmentally viable building.
Tending away from the industrious (and eponymous) prefabricated square, the Plus House embraces its Nordic roots and rural setting as a thoroughly modern take on the Swedish barn house. The two-story prefab is situated in Tyresö and was designed by the award winning Claesson, Koivisto, and Rune architects for Arkitekthus. We love how their distinctive design melds a classic wood-paneled profile with ethereal day-lit interiors, synthesizing traditional structure with the best in ultra-efficient modern construction.
It’s a condo boom for sea creatures as retired New York subway cars are being hurled into the ocean deep. The initiative, headed by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, has deposited hundreds of the vacant vessels in an effort to jump start a new reef 16 miles off the state’s coast. The concept has already shown great promise, transforming “a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.”
It’s an exciting time for OLED technology as it finally begins to integrate into the home and designers start to realize its potential for efficient and inexpensive lighting solutions in a variety of stunning new applications. Resembling a tiny tree blossoming with lucent leaves, Ingo Maurer’s Early Future lamp is the world’s first to pack energy efficient OLED lighting into a tabletop form factor.
One of our favorite finds at this year’s green-themed Salone Satellite was the work of ascendent Swiss “redesigner” Fethi Atakol. His design debut would do Duchamp proud, as it showcased a wonderful assortment of “functional artworks” made from found objects. Atakol’s designs are funky and fun, joining together a disparate set of everyday items to extraordinary effect.
The first day of Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile was an exciting affair that showcased some of the the finest names in sustainable design. We were particularly captivated by the soft atmospheric glow cast by Stephan Siepermann’s Leaft lamps. Each luminescent leaf is composed of recycled (or ‘upcycled’) plastic casts that wind together into a binding branch. The effect is magical, weaving fine lucent lines into a delicate interplay of light and shadow.
TRØKK16 are turning heads left and right at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair with an elegantly engineered line of prototypes including the graceful Frøy Chair. A modern update on the side chair, it makes smart use of natural materials with a slim design that seamlessly joins ergonomic angles with distinctive stature. A set of elegantly tapered back legs bloom into the chair’s split backrest that is made from laminated wood. Frøy is composed of solid ash and addresses the modern model of “good design” that is beautiful and built to last.
The Queensland University of Technology recently announced that it has been working with Dyesol to develop an innovative solar cell technology that re-envisions windows as clear, clean energy providers. Professor John Bell has said that these dye-infused solar cells would significantly reduce building energy costs, and could even generate surplus energy to be stored or sold. The development has been touted as the most promising advance in solar cell technology since the invention of the silicon cell.
The 2008 Olympics have found China caught in the center of a heated nexus of political and social controversy, with human rights and of course the Tibet issue popping up to disturb Olympic revelers’ idealist visions for the celebration. While originally commissioned as a monument to Beijing’s might, Herzog and deMeuron’s stunning Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium, (looking as spectacular as we imagined it), perhaps now better symbolizes the complex web of problems and paradox assailing modern China. Photographer Andy Ryan has recently released a eye-catchign set of photos depicting the structure silently weathering its storm-ridden cultural context. Divorced from scenes of social turmoil, these frames capture the architectural marvel’s complex and implacable beauty.
What could be more refreshing than casting off your carbon shackles with a bunch of solar balloons? Our favorite environmental architect visionary, Joseph Cory, of Geotectura has seized this dream with an award winning way to take solar energy to the skies. He’s teamed up with Technion aerospace engineer Dr. Pini Gurfil to develop an an array of helium filled platforms constructed from a new fabric coated with photovoltaic solar cells. Dubbed Sunhope, the project is showing great promise as a low-cost deployable system that would harness solar energy while maintaining a minuscule environmental footprint.
With California utilities expanding rapidly into renewables, the Mojave Desert is one of the hottest spots for solar energy. Last year, plans for the world’s largest solar array got underway in this ideal energy harvesting setting and the latest news is just as groundbreaking. Pacific Gas and Electric recently signed the world’s largest solar deal to date, teaming up with BrightSource Energy to produce three new solar-thermal electric plants for a whopping 500 megawatts of clean green power. The $2 to $3 billion dollar deal provides options for additional plants (up to 900 megawatts total), which would be enough to power 375,000 Californian homes!
Orly Airport has recently announced that it plans to provide more than a third of its heating needs via geothermal energy. Slated for completion in 2011, the $17 million dollar project will cut annual CO2 emissions by 7,000 tons from the current level of 20,000 tons. As France’s second busiest airport, Orly aims to be its greenest by launching of a vast program intended to increase its energy efficiency by 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2040.
Invoking the shape of myriad objects, this futuristic architectural design is shortlisted in an international contest to create a new observatory in Liverpool, England, reminding us that space-age proposals have a great way of stirring the imagination. Charged with reinventing the Mersey riverbank, Duggan Morris Architects‘ structure will supplant an obsolete radar tower with a luminous cathedral-like shell that offers unparalleled views of the heavens while keeping its environs in close consideration.
In a deadening blow to a breathe-easy future for New York, the State Assembly has just shot down Mayor Bloomberg’s implementation plan for congestion mitigation. The proposal would have mobilized $354 million in federal grants to simultaneously tackle two dire transportation problems, alleviating inner-city traffic while providing a steady source of income for the funds-starved Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Early last week New York’s City Council had approved of the plan with a 30-20 vote, but it was snuffed by a secretive vote conducted by State Assembly higher ups.
image shows ‘Annie’ - the recycled shopping cart chair from Reestore Design
All green ID geniuses! All chair connoisseurs! Here’s your chance to conjure up an innovative armchair in keeping with the tenets of “good” (ie “green”) design. The One Good Chair Competition is looking for some smart new designs that balance beauty with comfort while letting sustainable forms shine through. The winning team will receive $4,500 to help realize their design as a prototype.
Office Workers rejoice! No longer shall sweet Spring breezes and the splendid Summer sun tempt thy shade-drawn domain! Shirk off thy cubicles, thy mouse and keyboard manacles! Too dramatic? Well, at any rate, this solar powered outdoor workspace by Mathias Schnyder offers an attractive office alternative for desk-bound drones seeking to brighten their work environment.
Luxim labs recently unveiled an incredibly energy efficient light bulb that packs more luminosity than a street lamp into a pill-sized form factor. Each bulb is filled with argon gas, which turns to plasma when electricity is focused through it. The energy is driven to the bulb without electrodes. The resulting light is intensely bright and mirrors the quality of light radiated by the sun, yet is produced by one of the smallest, most energy efficient light sources we’ve seen.
Founded in 2001, Berg Design offers gorgeous sustainable solutions to residential projects. Their Old Stone Highway house was designed by John Berg as a “Single Family Residence with Environmentally Low Impact Building Technology”. We totally dig their uncompromising approach to housing that is luxurious, super green, and chock full of mid-century charm.