Inhabitat has done a lot of coverage of living walls, particularly those of French botanist Patrick Blanc. They are complicated things, requiring pumps, hydroponics and a lot of care. If they don’t get it right they can fail, like the Paradise Park Childrens Centre in London did.

Edouard François does a different kind of green wall, known as green façades. In these much simpler structures, no pumps and technology are needed, as the vegetation is planted in the ground and the walls become the growing medium. It takes time; Inhabitat has pictures of François’s Eden Bio project, which will take about seven years to grow out and look like the renderings. But some of his other projects are completely grown.

Read the rest of The Green Façades of Édouard François

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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.

+ UrbanBuds

Via Designboom

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Post tags: agriculture, food, garden, green design, Organic, portable, soil, suitcase, sustainable design, urban, vertical farm

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.

Read the rest of Hanging Bamboo Gardens Make Beautiful Biofilters

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Post tags: bamboo sculpture, Bertotti Landscaping, Bioremediation, Design Ecology, Floating Islands International, storm water, The Natural Builder, waste water treatment, west coast green

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.

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Post tags: bay bridge park, bicycle park, green design, Green renovation, green space, high line, paths, public space, San Francisco, sustainable design

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.

Read the rest of Green Roofs Are Changing the Way Architects Design Buildings

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Post tags: agriculture, Architecture, botany, Green Building, green design, green roof, sustainable design, Urban design

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.

Read the rest of Vertical Farm Eco City is a Wind Powered Wonderland

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Post tags: 000 wonderland, agriculture, dutch, farm, farming, Netherlands, oogst 1, studio tjep

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

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Post tags: blooming buds, environmental art, plant art, plant material art, plant seeds

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.

Read the rest of MetaboliCity Aims to Grow Sustainable Food Systems

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Post tags: city planning, food growing, London Design Week, Metabolicity, urban agriculture, Urban Farming, urban gardening

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.

Read the rest of BOOK REVIEW: Just Food by James E. McWilliams

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Post tags: "sustainable agriculture", agriculture, green food, james e mcwilliams, just food, locavore, sustainable design

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.

Read the rest of Researchers Create Electric Circuit That Runs On Tree Power

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Post tags: alternative power, forest fires, green design, MIT, power, renewable energy, sustainable design, Trees, university of washington, voltage

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 front lawns into leafy green edible gardens. The deadline for submissions is coming up fast next Monday August 31st, so check to see if you’re in one of the applicable zones and submit your garden today!

+ Edible Estates

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Post tags: "sustainable agriculture", edible estates, fritz haeg, green design, suburbs, sustainable design, urban gardening

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!

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Post tags: Gardening, habitat restoration, plant restoration, reburbia, space revitilization, suburb re-design, suburban sprawl, wildlife rescue

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

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Post tags: home gardening, urban gardening, vegetable gardening

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.

Read the rest of LEAF POWER: Artificial Glass Leaves Produce Energy via Transpiration

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Post tags: artificial leaves, biomimicry, fern power, green design, maharbiz, renewable energy, sustainable design, transpiration, uc berkeley

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.

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Post tags: artificail grass, Burg, installation art, interactive art, lawnge chair, Netherlands, outdoors, public art