The phrases “melting polar ice caps” and “rising water lines” are so ubiquitous now that they’ve almost lost their meaning. It’s all too easy to think “it will happen to that city, not mine.” Well to give us a bit more perspective, Studio Lindfors has presented us with these hauntingly realistic post-flood visions of New York and Tokyo. In a future partially submerged by melting glacier water, gondolas reemerge as a form of travel, riverside plants nestle up against neon street signs, and aquaculture blooms under bridges. It’s Water World without Mel Gibson to ease the blow – scary.

Read the rest of Studio Lindfors’ Haunting Visual Prediction of Our Flooded Future World

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Post tags: Aqualta, BLDGblog, Climate Change, flooded cities, global warming, melting ice caps, Rising Tides, rising water lines, Studio Lindfors

It’s a ghost highway in the middle of LA! Not the result of road closures, the apocalypse, a zombie scare, or a massive increase in the price of petroleum, this series of car-less highways are the brainchild of photographer Tom Baker. Curious as to what a traffic-less Los Angeles would look like, Baker went ahead and created this vision through the wonders of photoshop. The result is a series of images that are eerily calming.

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Post tags: eco-art, environmental art, green design, La without Traffic, los angeles without traffic, sustainable design, tom baker

If the earth could make music, what kind of songs would it sing? This crazy contraption, called the Terrafon, actually lets us find out the answer to that question! Designed as a huge turntable tone arm and transducer, this musical instrument plays the earth like a big gravelly vinyl record. Artists Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke premiered it as part of a performance entitled “Harvest” at the Volt Music Festival in Sweden. Read on to check out the video of these determined choir musicians as they drag the big wooden tool-of-music through the Swedish countryside.

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Post tags: eco-art, Harvest, Martin Lübcke, Olle Cornéer, performance, site-specific, Terrafon

One of the main principles of permaculture is that “the problem is the solution.” Problem: tons of waste cups created by attendees of the OutsideLands concert in San Francisco. Solution: a fabulous recycled cup canopy. BIOS Design Collective tapped a keg and invited their friends over for a canopy party, building a gorgeous wave of concave color at Stable Cafe just in time for Architecture and the City.

Read the rest of re:Use Canopy Upcycled from Plastic Cups by BIOS Design Collective

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Post tags: aiasf, beer keg, BIOS, Canopy, eco-art, OutsideLands, Recycled Materials

It never ceases to surprise us that much of good, sustainable design is also deliciously fun. Take Debbie Wijskamp’s paperpulp cabinets, for instance. They are what their name implies: drawers and shelves made out of pureed paper mache. And while I want to write sophisticated sentences with phrases like ‘materials reuse’ and ‘resource conservation,’ I just can’t help thinking about how glorious it must be, in a third-grade sort of way, to mash paper into furniture. Wijskamp’s process validates these daydreams.

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Post tags: "green furniture", cabinet, Debbie Wijskamp, eco furniture, eco-friendly furniture, furniture recycled materials, paper mache, paper pulp, Sustainable Materials

Spoiler alert: The Yes Men do actually fix the world– but only on paper. For years this two-man team has been pranking conferences, newscasts, and exhibitions by posing as representatives of the world’s biggest environmental transgressors. While speaking as DOW Chemical, they publicly apologized for the Bhopal disaster. While pretending to be from Halliburton, they demonstrated the Survivaball, a human disaster survival suit: prohibitively expensive and visually ridiculous. In a particularly complicated stunt, they created a fake version of the New York Times announcing everything from the end of the war in Iraq to the creation of a maximum wage law. They have provoked, embarrassed, ridiculed and shocked many captains of industry. Driven, ultimately, by the desire to address serious issues with humor and radical intervention, The Yes Men Fix the World in a documentary that pits itself against unchecked greed.

Read the rest of MOVIE REVIEW: The Yes Men Fix the World

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Post tags: activism, Art, Film, global warming, green design, movie, social responsibility, sustainable design, the art of the prank, Yes Men, yes men fix the world

Zombie chair! Out for your wood scraps! Oozing sawdust and pure carnage! Designer Hongtao Zhou, who we found  playing with ice, decided to get Holiday on a broken, abandoned chair he found on the streets in Madison, Wisconsin. The result: chair of the undead, risen from the swamp and demanding the chance to sit in your living room looking creepy. Zhou created the drippy effect with wood scraps and sawdust (and probably some monster blood and glue). Expect this chair on your front porch Halloween night, demanding all the sweet linseed oil you can muster. Happy creepy chair night, everyone, happy monster night.

+ Hongtao Zhou

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Post tags: "green furniture", environmental art, furniture design, halloween, Hongtau Zhou

As part of last month’s Architecture and the City Festival GOOD magazine took it upon themselves to match San Francisco civic leaders with well-respected designers to attack city problems head-on. In a packed lecture hall at the SPUR building, Alyssa Walker moderated a breakdown of design stalemates and enlivenings. It was all about remixing the streets: “What GOOD Design can do for San Francisco.”

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Post tags: aia, GOOD magazine, kuth ranieri, mike and maaike, min day, stamen, surface design, volume

Wine makes the whole world more beautiful. Seriously, can you argue otherwise, given wine bottle cheese boards, used cork accoutrement — and now, these stunning light boxes from artist Tracey Johnson? They’re made out of used wine crates and a little bit of magic. Can’t tell? Read on.

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Post tags: light installation, recycled materials art, recycled materials installation, used wine boxes, used wine crates

So, by this point, I think it’s pretty clear that we, the humans, have messed up on a pretty grand scale. You don’t need me to read you the stats again. We need several more planets. We make and consume a lot of crap. There are islands of crap in the ocean. There’s crap in the rivers, crap in our bodies, crap in the air. All of this crap is difficult to digest, you know, on a daily level. Nobly, many artists are facing this pile of crap and trying to make compost from it. Problem is, some eco-art is actually pretty crappy.

Read the rest of GREEN RANT: Lame Eco-Art

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Post tags: art criticism, contemporary art, eco-art, environmental art, Green Rant

Stunning, no? Apparently some icebergs have stripes, and it’s not the result of Photoshop or internet pranks or penguin sledding or any outside manipulation. You might have seen these shots in an email that’s made the rounds– it’s even been examined by snopes.com and hoax-slayer.com.  The email includes a series of beautiful photos of candy-striped ice-scapes. The stripes are real, the result of natural pressures and formations. Nature’s got this one covered — thanks — no prestigious exhibition needed.

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Post tags: Antarctic, envioronmental art, glacier art, glaciers, iceberg art, icebergs, natural beauty, natural phenomenon, stripes

I have to admit that when I saw the title of Christopher Steiner’s new book, I scoffed a bit. Twenty Dollars per Gallon of gas seems like an outrageous, unfathomable price, even when you’re a believer in peak oil. But part of the beauty of Steiners’ book is its ability to track the effects of ever-more-scarce oil in believable detail. Whether the author’s predictions of local food, high-speed trains and alternative plastics are correct, they are excellent illustrations of the pervasiveness of petroleum.

Read the rest of BOOK REVIEW: $20 per Gallon

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Post tags: $20 per gallon, alternative energy, book review, christopher steiner, green design, oil, sustainable design

Only 14% of plastic water bottles are recycled, and Americans add 30 million PET water bottles to landfills every day! Design firm MSLK has made its statement about plastic bottle use with Watershed, a series of bottle-droplets hanging in rain-like strings from a massive tree. The installation will be showcased at tonight’s Age of Stupid opening and will then travel to the D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge festival, carrying with it some hefty statistics about guilt and trash-making.

Read the rest of Watershed: Recycled Bottle Eco Art Hits Age of Stupid Premier

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Post tags: Age of Stupid, eco-art, green design, MSLK, Recycled Materials, sustainable design, water bottles

Park(ing) Day! Parking space invasion day! The day to roll out some sod, fire up the barbeque, and set out in the street like it’s your front porch. If you didn’t hear about it from us, from the event site, or from last year’s awesome photos, then you must not have gotten the telegram, ’cause this is the best reason to cruise around the city on bikes since you were 10 years old.

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Post tags: green spaces, New York., parking day, parking day 2009, San Francisco

It’s remix-the-city-time: the Conflux Festival is back. This annual NYC-based festival of psychogeography promises some great urban tinkering, featuring the work of several artists we’ve featured here on Inhabitat. From Eve Mosher to Swimming Cities to Reverend Billy, the artists of Conflux use technology to explore public space in the city — re-defining the city and its proper use and maintenance.

Read the rest of Conflux Festival is this weekend!

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Post tags: art performance, art technology, art workshops, conflux festival, Eve Mosher, new york city, psychogeography, reverend billy, swimming cities, swoon, urban art