As the trees begin to lose their leaves, once full and leafy branches grow increasingly bare to create suddenly spooky shadows in our windows — just in time for Halloween. Halloween is tomorrow and we’ve been admiring the green and ghoulish as well as just the plain weird. Take a look below for some of the best stories on Inhabitots and Ecouterre.

We’re curious to know if you would wear these LED eyelashes as part of your Halloween costume.

Sometimes a fashion faux-pas can be as frightening as a zombie, so take a look at these six howlers that will make your blood run cold.

We are seriously disturbed by these taxidermy accessories made of preserved rat heads, guinea pig feet, pigeon feathers and whole mice.

These spooky and eco-friendly lights are the perfect thing to provide light for your Halloween journey.

If you are thinking about doing some Halloween face painting, be sure to read this article about lead and other harmful toxins in paint.

And if you haven’t already, be sure to enter our Halloween costume contest on Inhabitots. There are great prizes!

Home Farming

Pesticides. Genetic-modification. Mistreated animals. It could just about kill anyone’s appetite to hear about all the horrible news about food production. Fortunately, the emerging food revolution focuses on both health and re-establishing the connection between people and the food they eat (making it harder to abuse our food sources). Designers are both leading and answering this shift in interest. Philips Design has begun an investigation called ‘Food Probe’ that looks at current social trends and how this may affect the way that people will eat in the future — and how this will manifest in design. Their investigation includes three parts: a self-contained farm for the kitchen, a nutrition farm and a high-tech cooking device.

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Halloween is almost upon us — and we hope that your’s will be as ghoulishy green as it is delightful. Not sure how? Well then, check out some of the best in green goodies for this Halloween featured on Inhabitots.

First, the costumes: Oeuf’s bat hat is an eco-friendly costume piece that will last even after the Halloween festivities are over.

But if you are looking for more, Oeuf also creates these wildlife-inspired animal knits for the adventurous child in your life. If your tyke is still too young for those, try these adorable hat & booties sets.

If you want to keep this year’s Halloween costumes DIY, take some advice from Vickie Howell or take a peek at Alison Jenkin’s book of wacky knitted costume designs.

Dressed up in cozy and eco-friendly costumes, you’ll probably want to treat your kids (ahem, yourself) to some Halloween candy , but if you’re not crazy about chemicals and artificial additives, try these healthier Halloween treats.

These Halloween crayons, perfect for creating spooky art, are the perfect answer for a non-sugary night.

Ah, and last, but certainly not least — check out these green options for stowing away that Halloween booty: a Jack on Black Halloween fabric bucket and ghastly casette tape sculptures that could make anyone squeal if asked to reach in for their treat.

The winner of the Solar Decathlon Competition was announced today — congratulations Team Germany! We’ve been following the competition happenings all week. Our friends have been as abuzz as us, and we’ve noticed that everyone is in a flurry of excitement about solar technology and energy efficient building. Check out what we saw this week!

Treehugger annouced the architecture and market viability awards on Tuesday.

GreenOptions reports on Steven Chu’s decision to spend an additional $87 million on solar technology.

JetsonGreen, our favorite green home expert, highlights the 20 beautiful, solar-powered homes of this year’s Solar Decathlon competition.

NYTimes comments that the students are proving that solar living doesn’t mean compromising lifestyle.

Clean Technica shows us 10 solar technologies to be exicted about.

CleanTechnica also reports that California will be giving more money to small-scale solar projects.

And of course, don’t forget to check out our coverage.

Re-inventing ordinary street dividers and concrete balls, Liesbet Bussche creates larger-than-life jewelry pieces for the streets of Amsterdam. The Belgian designer makes small interventions to the street scape, a charm to a chain or earring backs to a concrete ball. However, altogether the jewelry can easily make any passer-by smile upon finding a serendipitous change in the uniform vocabulary of the urban landscape.

READ MORE AT ECOUTERRE >

It’s finally the week of the Solar Decathlon competition! From Thursday, October 8 to Friday, October 16, 20 multi-disciplinary students teams made up of architects, engineers, and designers will participate in 10 contests to determine the winner. You can take a peek at each team’s standing here. Taking place at the National Mall, all the homes will be open for public viewing from October 9 to October 13 and October 15 to October 18. Inhabitat has been on the scene of the competition, so take a look at our up-to-date reporting today — and check back next week for more coverage.

We’ve also been scouting to see what the interwebs have been buzzing about the Decathlon:

Treehugger snaps some photos of the students re-building their homes on the National Mall.

CNET News takes us on a tour of the houses that feels like a tour around the country.

CNET News also reports that Energy Secretary Steven Chu plugged solar and building efficiency, announcing $87 million of funding for DOE for solar energy.

We also stumbled upon US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon flickr feed.

And to get some in-depth perspective on the event check out our coverage of competitions past, take a peek at our photos of the Solar Decathlon this year taken by Jill and Rebecca who visited the National Mall this week and read our on-the-scene coverage of Rice University’s ZEROW House.

And remember — Check back for more next week!

City governance and open-source programming never seemed like a likely marriage. However, emerging initiatives have been working towards it, and have received a boost of popular support through Obama’s call for open government. When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that already exist in New York City, and already explore methods that can offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.

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Capturing the usually short-lived moments of a blooming bud, environmental artist Richard Solomon’s Seed Orbs encapsulate Goat’s Beard seed heads in glass balls. As an artist, Solomon has worked with plant materials for 20 years — attempting to highlight their beauty while expressing the mystery of nature. Solomon makes the Seed Orbs by first collecting Goat’s Beard buds around the mountains of the northern Mexico, then as they are ready to bloom, he places them in the orbs, leaving them to bloom inside. The effect of the blooming Goat’s Beard bud in the glass is soft and delicate, leaving us to admire the diffused light and wonder at its ability to elicit ideas of mysticism.

+ Richard Seed Shaman

via GreenMuze

Last week, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG asked Mason White of InfraNet Lab for his thoughts on the growing interest in infrastructure and planning. White reflected that designers today that are looking to positively impact the built environment, and are subsequently thinking about the bigger picture rather than object-orientated thinking. So if you love architecture, and are curious about the larger systems at work at the city scale — and you want make sure it is environmentally conscious, take a peek at the initiatives and innovations that were covered this week below.

Mother Nature Network tells us about a program in New York City that will train building managers in the latest green building practices.

Good Magazine reminds us that there are several components to creating more livable cities.

Treehugger is cautious about a substance that enables concrete to remove nitrogen dioxide from the air.

Green Options says that England and China have new transportation projects: ecowordly says England has a dual plan that include bikes and trains. cleantechnica says China is funding a high-speed rail.

(Oh, and Happy Birthday, Worldchanging!)

For this year’s International Garden Festival at Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, Jane Hutton and Adrian Blackwell created this garden installation called Dymaxion Sleep. The project featured a hammock-like structure floating above triangulated planting beds modeled after Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion World Map. With scents of lavender, lemon geranium and peppermint wafting up the resters noses, the project is the perfect place to lounge outdoors.

+ Dymaxion Sleep

Via Pruned

A lush lawn can be a wonderful thing to stretch out on. Unfortunately, the high-maintenance needs, which include frequent seeding and fertilizing, of grass can make it more of a pain than a joy, leaving would-be loungers disappointed. Fortunately, grassy seating can put back some of the fun. The idea of creating seating out of grass is no new concept, as you may find with the lawnge chairs or living lawn chaise. In this formulation, the Floating Green, by Ling Fan, is a stretch of lawn that appears to have rebelled against horizontality by springing from the ground, doing an elegant twist and then settling into a vertically folded position to offer passers-by a place to sit.

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For years, we have been trying to control our interior environments — by putting up four walls and a roof, and then by stuffing insulation into walls and painting coats of funny chemicals on the outside. Today, we know that environmentally-sensitive indoor climate control will require re-wiring of buildings and the way we think. Lightening a building’s carbon footprint is a challenging task, but one that promises product innovation and creative design. It all starts with baby steps, and this week we’d thought to highlight a few initiatives that look at roofs and walls.

Treehugger spotted PNC Financial Service’s GIANT green wall. Jetson Green says that the south-facing wall is 25% cooler behind the verdant wall.

Clean Technica tells us about a solar paint that could fight climate change even better than white paint. (Did you know you could volunteer to paint roofs white in NYC?)

Bus-Tops is a blog devoted to tracking the results of a campaign to beautify bus tops.

Archinect showcases a vegi-tecture project that proposes a vertical garden as part of a cathedral in Los Angeles, California.

For those New Yorkers who look forward to the first Thursday of each month for the DUMBO Gallery Walk, now there is even more reason to head that direction: the DUMBO archway renovation is complete! Although the archway has been open since the fall of 2008, the DUMBO Improvement District and NYC Department of Transportation recently invited pedestrians in to view the structure’s upgraded interior. Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects and Jim Conti Lighting Design, the “beautification” project introduces wooden benches, lighting, and street improvements.

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By now you have probably heard that composting helps make a garden green because it is an effective way to deliver nutrients to plants and reduce food waste. Previously we featured the Jarst planter, which makes composting food waste in your home easy with a side compartment that can distribute the compost directly to the plant soil. Here, we see this idea transform into something to fit the city scale. With Envi, industrial designer Julien Bergignant, proposes a concept for a city trash can outfitted to collect and then process public food waste, all while adding some green texture to the city landscape.

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Living in New York City, I’ve lost touch with the concept of affordable housing. However, after competition finalists were announced for an affordable student housing complex in the historic center of Athens, Greece, I felt inspired to seek out other exciting developments in the world of affordable design.

Jetson Green reports on net-zero energy homes nestled into an idyllic setting among evergreen trees and grasses.

gbNYC tells us that Connecticut is getting its first LEED-certified residential building that also happens to be the first affordable housing developing in downtown Hartfood. Woot!

And I am having mixed feelings about Curbed that Milstein Properties exporting their affordable housing development to Bronx and Staten Island.

Image via DepavePDX on Picasa

Today, we were proud to announce that Project H, founded by former Inhabitat editor Emily Pilloton, received an Adobe Foundation Grant. Emily is proving that design can make a positive impact on our world and society. So this week, we took a look into some other ventures that combine good design and doing good.

Notcot spotted these yummy drinks that also give back.

Green Options tells us about Clothing with a Cause.

Archinect links to an article on Flores en el atico about a non-profit called City Repair that is currently working tearing up asphalt to replace it with greenery.

Re-nest suggests plugging into Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems to check in with the latest in building innovations.

This week, we’ve been seeing lots of climage change news around the interweb and none too soon, as the UN Climate Change Conference is coming up in December. It will be crucial for our world leaders to come to an international agreement to protect millions of people from the effects of climate change. And as Treehugger reminds us, YOU can make a difference by signing the online petition for that urges governments to reach an agreement.

The Guardian reports that the future is beginning to look bleak for an international agreement on climate change when the US stalled on a climate change bill this week.

Green Options shares a new study that finds that global warming is much worse than previously thought. Yikes!

Worldchanging tells us that evena 1 degree increase temperature will mean a significant increase in risk of wildfires.

Treehugger alerts us that the latest report says that developing nations around the world will need $500 billion dollars in order to combat climate change.

Reuters reports that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked for swift action on a climate change treaty, based on studies that indicate that the sea level may rise 2 meters (6.5 feet) by 2100.

Imagine building your home exclusively of salvaged materials. No re-mixed concretes or FSC-certified woods. Just metals and woods that have been discarded. That’s exactly the kind of home-building Dan Phillips has set out to do through his low-income housing initiative, The Phoenix Commotion. Out to prove that homes can be sound, affordable, and energy-efficient — even aesthetically interesting, Dan is on a mission to build low-cost homes with salvaged materials sourced from unusual places, ranging from flea markets to auto-salvage yards.

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As the construction process for Hudson Yards drags on in New York, we’re glad to see green urban design is alive and well in Chicago. The windy city is no stranger to sustainable building, and this urban park, located on the fringe of the city’s downtown, will certainly give Chicago even more green cred. Perkins + Will, the architects behind the design, developed the park to create more open space for the city, but the greenway also proves to be a pedestrian-friendly gateway that connects the existing downtown to any future development across the Kennedy Expressway.

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Few would challenge the introduction of a bit of greenery into a city environment. Toronto residents, Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale, are making this basic urban space ideal into a reality with their poster pocket planters. The duo carve their way through existing posters to create little pockets, then fill them with potting soil and plants to create an impromptu green wall system. The result is a bit of greenery that effortlessly blends into the existing urban landscape. Best of all, Eric and Sean want to empower eco- and locally-minded folk by keeping the process open source– and are making their cutting patterns available online.

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100 child-sized ice sculptures sit in Beijing’s Temple of Earth to represent the 1 billion lives that will be lost in Asia due to water shortages caused by climate change. The art installation marks the launch of the TckTckTck Campaign, a campaign that works to raise awareness of the importance of a fair and ambitious agreement at the upcoming United Nations Copenhagen Climate Summit, taking place from December 7 to 18, 2009, where world leaders will gather to establish a plan to protect the world’s population from climate change.

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Last Sunday, Nicolai Ouroussoff at the NY Times wrote that New York City needs new heroes for architecture. He reminiscences about the New York Five of the 1970s who wanted to “reassert the importance of architecture as art form” and we couldn’t help but recognize how drastically different that kind of thinking is compared to the demands of architecture today. Nowadays architects are asked to address climate change, habitat destruction, the housing crisis AND make buildings that are aesthetically pleasing. All this certainly sounds like a job cut out for no one less than a hero.

Luckily, Andrew Bernheimer at The Design Observer points out that there are already many eager and responsible architects who are courageous stewards of the built environment and valiant defenders of public space. Bernheimer says, “The work and teachings of many of my colleagues is mostly lacking in self-promotion but overflowing with substance. This is what makes them influential and, at times, heroic.”

If substance is what makes a hero, what definition does Ouroussoff have of substance for New York City architecture? “[NY5's] greatest contribution, in retrospect, was its assertion that architecture had not reached a dead end. The architects saw themselves as artists and thinkers — not activists…” So does Ouroussoff feel that art should take precedence over social change? “Real change will first demand a radical shift in our cultural priorities,” he says. But how can we respond to contemporary culture without being an activist of some sort? A Design Observer reader says the argument is between “object- versus fabric-oriented architecture,” with New York City architecture needing to fit into a restricting urban grid. So what do you think? Where do you stand in this debate?

Sitting atop thin steel stilts, the Froschköenig Treehouse conjures up ideas of a space pod just landed among a canopy of trees. Designed by well-known treehouse designer and manufacturer, Baumraum, the prefabricated treehouse features a futuristic, curved zinc roof enveloping a more rustic-feeling tatajuba wood foundation to create a whimsical hideaway for kids and adults.

READ MORE AT INHABITOTS >

Sitting among the canopy of a jungle forest near Yelapa, Mexico, these V-Houses by Heinz Legler are quite possibly an eco-adventurer’s paradise. The treehouse-like structures are lofted 16 feet above the ground and open on all sides to offer panoramic views of the tropical surroundings. Although the rooms measure only 16 feet by 16 feet, a slanted ceiling and open walls make the treehouse seem larger — blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors. And to top off this eco-dream of a jungle retreat, the V-Houses were designed with modular components, made with sustainable materials, and have incorporated solar panels, composting toilets, and a greywater system.

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Photo by Seth Holladay, via Flickr

Today is the last day for NYC’s Summer Streets 2009!

NYC DOT has been closing Park Avenue from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on Saturdays, from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. to all motor traffic so that NYC residents can walk, run, or bike along city streets. This is the third and LAST Saturday for this great initiative, so we hope you are planning on getting out there. Why, you ask? Well, we support anything that encourages people to get outside and enjoy the warm weather, but foot traffic is also a boon to local business. Speedy transportation often facilitates the growth of chain stores and fast food joints. So please slow down your pace today and show your support for NYC, this initiative, and a more livable and friendly city!

+ Summer Streets NYC 2009

The New York International Gift Fair was this week and we are sorry to say that we missed it, which is why we paid extra attention to the buzz around it — and just like Design Week, we are hearing that there is no shortage of good green design.

Mother Nature Network provides a round-up of the latest green products at the fair.

Habitually Chic creates some online buzz for a new company at the fair this year, oomph!

Treehugger reveals an extremely wasteful aspect of giant expos: the booths — and shows us one example that is doing it with salvaged materials.

Re-nest spotted Ronel Jordaan’s stunning hand-dyed and hand-felted blankets, pillows, and curtains at the fair.

Quirky and full of unexpected design choices, this Australian residence by Kavellaris Urban Design, asserts that holding onto old architectural aesthetics can be both silly and unsustainable. The Perforated House’s high-tech, translucent exterior is etched with ornamental details to pose commentary on contemporary homes that adhere strongly to traditional architectural typologies — the terrace home, in this particular case. Observing that the dated aesthetic has “a stronger link with romanticized nostalgia rather than good design,” the architects set out to re-work the traditional terrace home, creating this case study house with an ironic and more eco-friendly new aesthetic for building.

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Suburban sprawl has become the problem of our generation — that’s why we partnered with Dwell to sponsor, Reburbia, a design competition to re-imagine the suburb. We posted the finalists earlier this week, and we’ve already seen a huge response to the entries. Everyone is voting in on their favorites, so take a peek at what’s hot…and what’s not.

Fast Company asks us to think about the modest and realistic solutions rather than the futuristic stuff that leaves them wanting more.

The authors of Freakonomics give Reburbia a shout-out on the NY Times.

Wired shares a snarky review of the contest and the finalists’ solutions.

Apartment Therapy gives Re-burbia a shout-out, commenting on the range of the entries.

BLDGBLOG has a special soft spot for the solutions rooted in converting suburban land into green-scapes or useful filtration systems.

PopSci.com reports on what is popular and their favorite tech-y solution.

In July, we partnered with Dwell to launch Reburbia, a competition to imagine how the suburbs could be re-structured to be more sustainable. Asking participants to create  five images to portray their idea, we said “The wilder, the better!” — and indeed many of the solutions proposed are a little bit zany, while many others inspired us with their agrarian dreams. There are several very good ideas, however, there will be only one winner!  The winner of Reburbia will be featured in the December 2009 issue of Dwell Magazine and receive a $1,000 cash prize.

Reburbia’s top 20 finalists went live on Monday. So now we want to hear what you think! Join the discussion by commenting and voting on your favorite today!

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE HERE >

Imagine having flora and fauna living inside the bricks of your building! A snow-white style fantasy? Not according to the designers of ‘Brick Habitats’ – bricks that have a little pocket for plants to grow and birds to hang out in. While most of the other entries into our massive Reburbia competition to find bold, new solutions to fix up suburbia propose large-scale solutions for the re-organization of housing or land use, Brick Habitats by Chooi-leng Tan envisions a much subtler change to the suburban landscape. These built-in brick coves are like mini-condos that attract native wildlife back to the suburbs!

READ MORE >

Through the end of August, the Museum of Arts and Design is hosting a weekly evening of good drinks, food and art on Thursdays starting at 5:00 PM. Big fans of pay-as-you-wish admission to museums, the Inhabitat team went on the first night. As we wandered around the museum, we were easily enamored with the objects on display. And then we wondered — in an eco-world, are these objects responsible? What about functionality? Is creating something just for the sake of looking at it, a waste of resources? So this week, we’ve been scouring for designers who have a knack for creating objects that inspire us with great curiosity, but are created with eco-responsibility.

Designboom has us wondering how many components you can subtract from a chair and still make it structurally sound with Timothy Lile’s Less Chair.

Designsponge inspired us with the simple rustic look of these lamps by Zeke Leonard.

Atelier29 talks about a tree trunk bench that proves any tree trunk can become seating — in fact, Jurgen Bey only sells the chair backs, ready to be installed into any tree trunk.

Design Milk features the Barnacle Chair, a comfy chair perfect for small spaces, made of reclaimed industrial felt and sustainably-harvested ash.

Committed to opening up NYC’s waterfront to the public, the Hudson River Park Trust transforms the West side’s old shipping docks — once used to bring in cargo into the city — into elongated recreational spaces, connected by a green promenade. With several piers already completed, the park board recently chose Inhabitat-fav LOT-EK’s design for Pier 57, located outside Chelsea. The architecture firm proposed a waterfront attraction to be constructed of refurbished shipping containers, and decked out with a rooftop for watching films, flexible green space, open-air public market, and underwater educational and exhibition space.

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Looking to grow your own vegetable garden but afraid you don’t have a green thumb? Chris Chapman’s Roll-Out Veg Mat could be just the solution you’re searching for. The corrugated cardboard mat is sowed with four types of vegetable seeds and organic fertilizer all ready to be rolled out – all you need to do is add water and soil. Chapman plans to create different mats for different seasons, keeping in step with changing growing cycles. Complete with fun graphics and instructions, Chapman’s design makes gardening much more approachable to budding green thumbs.

+ Chris Chapman

This past spring, New York City’s Architecture for Humanity chapter (AFHny) partnered with Parsons School of Continuing Education in the spirit of volunteerism to offer a design studio for high school students. Under the tutelage of Parsons teacher, Nick Brinen, and several AFHny volunteers, the students developed concepts for two park shelters located at the entrances of the soon-to-be-reopened High Bridge. Having gained real-world experience and an appreciation for public service, we weren’t surprised to hear that several of the participating students earned scholarships for various design majors at Parsons, FIT, and Pratt. Read on to learn more about their designs!

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On Monday, July 13, 2009, Diana Balmori and her NYC-based landscape and urban design firm hosted a forum that was part-academic discussion, part-social media experiment. The forum, called Making Public Places, was hosted in the Meatpacking District (MPD) while it streamed live online via Twitter and Ustream. The design firm was joined by 40 landscape architecture and urban design students from the Netherlands. Photos and tweets were updated throughout the event and yours truly was there to see it in action and provide you with highlights. But for more in-depth information, you can check out Balmori Associates‘ recently launched blog focused on public places.

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