Gionata Gatto, an Italian designer based in the Netherlands, has soiled and seeded suitcases and such for gardening on the go. Designed as a graduation project, UrbanBuds enlivens luggage to grow up to 36 different food plants, either as still life or meals on wheels. Get a handle on your personal baggage and turn any place into a sustainable space simply by showing up and showing off some cultivation.
Via Designboom
If you were at West Coast Green this past weekend you would have surely noticed the elegant bamboo structures along the waterfront surrounded by beautiful native landscaping. What you may not have realized unless you looked closely is that the structure was actually supporting hanging gardens of marsh grass and was a way of preventing and remediating pollution from water runoff. A collaboration of The Natural Builders, Design Ecology, Floating Islands and Bertotti Landscaping, the installation was the talk of the trade show and highlight for us at Inhabitat.
San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is currently undergoing a massive renovation as an aging section of the East Bay span is replaced with a new one, and the old conduit has fired up architects’ imaginations for new ways to use the soon-to-be abandoned space. Inspired by the success of New York’s recently opened High Line Park, Rael San Fratello Architects haver proposed a hanging neighborhood and sky park complete with 1.92 miles of bicycle paths, climbing walls, gardens, and meadows.
Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik, photo Luanne Lozier
Green roofs are wonderful things; like a thick blanket, they keep roofs cool in summer and warm in winter. They have been around for centuries in Scandinavia and Iceland, where they moderate the cold winters and sometimes very hot summers. They reduce the “heat island” effect, where the air above and around the old black roofs gets hotter, making them hot properties in cities. Some, like Toronto have made them mandatory; other cities like Chicago give financial assistance to promote them. The provide habitat for birds and insects, even goats.
Studio Tjep’s Oogst 1000 Wonderland is a towering agricultural amusement park that makes farming fun by giving visitors the opportunity to take part in a self-sustaining vertical farm. The towering eco community houses a restaurant, a wind-powered amusement park, a farm that is tended by guests, and a biogas system recycles the waste they produce into fuel.
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 …
Combining methods for urban farming with design thinking, MetaboliCity is a design-research project by Loop.pH that explores how designers can help create models for sustainable urban food creation. Set on catalyzing positive changes in the built environment, the name is derived from a vision of a city that metabolizes its resources and waste to supply its inhabitants with all the nourishment they need and more.
James E. McWilliams seems like he may be a big bummer at a lot of cocktail parties. You can tell, because the introduction to his book Just Food is continually defensive. “My goal here is not to write a reactionary tract against the locavore movement,” he writes, yet his real and well-researched analysis of sustainable agriculture is laced with sideways critiques and subtle condemnations of current green culture. Within the pages of Just Food lie a mixed series of sustainable solutions and conflicting emotions regarding the challenges of eating an ethical diet.
Trees provide us with oxygen, shade, timber, and…power? That’s what researchers at the University of Washington proved recently when they ran a circuit off energy generated by a tree. The experiment was inspired by a MIT study from 2008 that discovered plants’ ability to generate tiny amounts of voltage when one sensor is attached to a plant and the other to the soil. The MIT study, however, never experimented with trees, and no one is entirely sure how trees produce power in the first place.
Head’s up green thumbs and urban gardeners across the states! Do you have an extraordinary edible garden project that you’re dying to share with the world? Well now’s your chance because Fritz Haeg and crew are currently accepting submissions to include in the expanded 2010 edition of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. They’re looking for examples of “full frontal gardening” from a handful of locations across the US that transform lifeless …
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!
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 …
Everyone knows that trees combat climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide out of the air. Now, plant leaves are tackling global warming in another way — by serving as models for a technology that produces clean, renewable power. UC Berkeley researcher Michel Maharbiz, has worked with other scientists to develop an alternative energy system based on transpiration, a natural process where trees pull water from roots to tops, with liquid eventually evaporating off of the leaves. The system relies on artificial glass leaves to generate a steady stream of energy and is yet another example of biomimicry at work.
While most of us are delighted by the idea of bringing the outdoors in, we are equally excited by the concept of bringing the indoors outside! These “lawnge chairs” get the job done. Designed by artist Lisette Spee in collaboration with architect Tim Van Den Burg, the playful seats are part of a series of lounge chairs created for public spaces in Valkenberg Park in Breda, Netherlands.
Lots of cities have farmers markets, but most — if not all — of the produce comes from rural farmers that use oil-intensive methods of transportation to cart around their food. With 80% of all people on the planet projected to live in cities by 2050, food production will have to move into cities if it is to remain cost-efficient. A Swedish-American company called Plantagon has conceived of an incredible solution: a massive urban greenhouse contained within a geodesic dome. The vertical farm, which consists of a spiral ramp inside a spherical dome, is currently in the development stages.
The Nautilus, designer Javier Senosiain’s bizarre, snail-shaped dwelling, is a mind-bending union of artistic experimentation and simplified living. Inspired by the work of Gaudí and Frank Lloyd Wright, Senosiain has brought to Mexico City another sparkling example of what he calls “Bio-Architecture” — the idea that buildings based on the natural principles of organic forms bring us back to local history, tradition and cultural roots, in turn creating harmony with nature.
More ironic than practical, Swiss designer Michel Bussien’s Growing Chair evokes pertinent ideas for the 21st century: nature trapped within the confines of man, manicured at his whim, or a specimen preserved behind glass – like fossils in a museum. On the other hand, when I look at the Growing Chair, I see the proliferation of life despite artificial boundaries. But, perhaps it’s something much simpler than that – a lush little greenhouse with a seat to enjoy it?
Here at Inhabitat we are big botanical architecture fans, but we also love seeing ideas that stand to add an extra bit of foliage to our lives. So, if you are a fan of Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Gardens or even Mass Studies’ Foliage Covered Botanical Building and you fancy your very own extra bit of wall-mounted greenery, the team behind ELT Easy Green …
Traditional medicine may be the best choice for some ailments, but sometimes all we need is a little help from Mother Nature. Samantha Lee’s Farmacy is a floating urban farm that grows medicinal plants and herbs in a series of nets along the brick wall of Regent’s canal. The factory’s design employs a waterwheel to wash, dry, grind, and distill herbs into their commercial state.
Gardening enthusiasts living in cities will certainly cheer for Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray’s Window Farms experiment. The artist-in-residence duo at Eyebeam have teamed up to develop a DIY system for creating “suspended, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield light-augmented” vertical gardens that will enable anyone to start their own garden right in their very own window. Britta and Rebecca were showcasing their prototype at Eyebeam last week and have enlisted a dozen or so volunteers that are building their own farms — all to go on display in windows throughout NYC from May 31 to July 14.
Fading right into the Big Sur landscape, this three-bedroom house is nearly invisible when viewed from certain angles. And that’s just how Mickey Muennig, the mastermind behind the project, wanted it. The 74-year old architect kept the environment in mind when he designed the sod roof and seeded it with native grasses and wildflowers. The roof is part of a garden that starts at Cooper Point, Big Sur, and stretches out to the Pacific Ocean.
While most people might see New York City as a densely developed, built-up city with little space for greenery, Brooklyn-based Alive Structures sees the opportunity to make open green space — and has actively created it up on the rooftops of NYC buildings. The business, founded by Marni Horwitz, has made a name for itself by planting native groundcovers and wildflowers in their green roof and living wall installations. Green roofs, besides being more pleasant to look at than concrete, improve air quality, reduce energy dependence, and provide native habitats for wildlife. And what’s especially exciting is that Alive Structures will be offering tours of one of their installed green roofs in East Village, the Wild Project Theater, for NYC Wildflower Week on May 2. Tours of the Wild Project Theater green roof will be given from 10 am to 5 pm at 195 3rd Street in the East Village.
Groundbreaking advancements in the realm of space engineering may soon see the moon sown with the first gardens to grow on the lunar surface. As part of the Google Lunar X Prize, Paragon Space Development Corporation has recently teamed with Odyssey Moon to develop a pressurized mini greenhouse to deploy on the surface of the moon, grow a plant from seed, and hopefully see it flower and seed itself. It’s a complicated endeavor, but it marks a critical stage of development for extending life beyond the confines of our planet.
Not many people would be envious of you if you were living in a cave — but they might be a little envious if you stayed in this hotel, located in Tanzania and designed by WOW Architects. The hotel is comprised of two buildings and its overall design was inspired by geological processes that shape rock formations in nature. It is no surprise that we are fans of the greenery that spills out of the buildings’ windows, but we also found the concept development of this project quite interesting. The architects were inspired by nature’s way of creating hills or mounds, and how these hills are eventually inhabited by living things.
From the manicured forms of French estates to the sculptural gestures of Japanese gardens, the adjectives we use to describe a garden are often subject to the characteristics of the plants (or lack thereof) that grow there. No wonder horticultural research and experimentation have long been a fascination of scientists and gardeners alike. Which is why The World Horticultural Expo, slotted for 2011 and located in the city of Xi’an in China, will gain tremendous attention. The commission of designing the event’s masterplan was recently given to winning design team, Plasmastudio and Groundlab. The project, entitled The Flowing Gardens, was inspired by the convergence of the different types of expertise that will be brought together by this event; principally horticulture and technology, and landscape and architecture.
We loved MIO’s Flat Pack Origami table at first sight and couldn’t wait to see what would come next from this Philly fave. Luckily for us, Brothers Isaac and Jaime Salm do not disappoint. Just in time for the long dog days of summer, the duo has teamed with Target to launch a new line of beautiful, sustainable, and affordable eco-outdoor goodies, like the herb planter pots made from recycled paper (above), all for under $100.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II-era Victory Garden was a shining example to Americans that they could grow their own food. And now Michelle Obama is following in her footsteps, taking up the cause by planting an 1,100 square foot edible garden on the South Lawn of the White House. Her hope is to educate children about locally grown food, inspiring them to eat healthier and encourage their families and community to follow suit.
Soil naturally contains energy conducive metals like zinc, copper and iron, and microbial fuel cells (sometimes referred to as an earth batteries) are capable of converting electrolytes in soil into usable energy. Dutch designer Marieke Strap’s Soil Lamp uses conductive plates made from copper and zinc buried within the soil to provide constant and (nearly) eternal light for an LED bulb. Maintaining a Soil Lamp is as simple as watering a plant – just feed it a splash of water every now and then to keep the energy flowing.
Wondering what to do with all those old greeting cards and thank you notes? Now you can stick them in the ground and sprout wildflowers with Botanical Paperworks plantable greeting cards.. We’ve written about sprouting stamps and blooming business cards before, so …
Here at Inhabitat, we have a soft spot for all things green. But we have to make an exception for this rather colorful “Christmas tree” that took center stage on the ground floor reception at communications agency, AMV BBDO throughout the month of December. The rescued dead tree was given new life with the help of graphic designer Alex Ostrowski and illustrator and set maker Hattie Newman who thought to embellish the branches with colorful paper leaves.
Every year it’s a bit heartbreaking to see all those clear-cut christmas trees lining city streets, and evergreen plastic alternatives are hardly eco-friendly. Imagine our excitement when we ran across this gorgeous flat-pack christmas tree by Buro North. This update on the standard tree is constructed entirely of plywood that has been CNC-milled into a beautiful modern form that is ready to be decked out with ornaments …
San Francisco residents looking to deck their halls with green holiday decor will be excited to hear that for a limited time the SF Environment Department is teaming up with Friends of the Urban Forest to offer living Christmas trees that will be replanted in neighborhoods after the holidays! Although they’re not your classic x-mas evergreens, these adopted saplings offer an excellent alternative to clear-cut trees, and will live on as a gift to the community long after the holiday season.
Two years ago, Matt Blesso, a real estate developer, bought a 3,100 sq ft apartment in lower Manhattan. He dreamed of an apartment with beautiful rooftop gardens, and wanted to be surrounded by nature even in the heart of the city. Not having much of a green thumb as a real estate mogul, he turned his apartment over to two Yale professors. The duo was comprised of Joel Sanders, the architect, and Diana Balmori, the landscape architect, who teach a course together called Interface, all about uniting architecture and landscape design.
Every once in a while we come across an idea so fresh and simple it seems incredible that it has not been thought of before. The Rainwaterhog is just such an idea – the H2OG system is a modular rainwater harvesting system that is a ‘game-changer’ in the water harvesting and storage industry. The easy-to-install system “boldly fits where no water storage has fit before” and is expandable, reusable, and 100% recyclable.
After nearly a decade in the making, Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences is set to open this week – and Inhabitat recently took a sneak peak inside the incredible new institution! A crowning achievement of sustainable architecture, the Academy will house 38,000 live animals and is on track to receive LEED platinum. It is currently the only institution in the world to feature an aquarium, a natural history museum, a living rainforest, a planetarium, and world-class research and education programs – all housed under a 2.5 acre green roof. Read on for a tour of the museum’s many splendors!
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
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