Vice President Al Gore will be partying with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in San Antonio, Texas over Cinco de Mayo (Saturday May 5, 2007) next year as the closing keynote speaker to the AIA’s 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition. Themed with the title, “Growing Beyond Green,” the 2007 AIA Convention is an excellent stage for someone who has been an avid supporter of sustainability and the environment. The AIA is excited to have Gore present at their 2007 convention, which also happens to be a celebration of its 150 Birthday.
Talk about a closed loop! Artist Amy Youngs has created a table that allows you to compost your dinner scraps without even leaving the table. Whatever you don’t eat, the bacteria, sowbugs and worms will comsume for you. Simply lift the lid in the center of the table and dump it in, and they’ll go to work. And when the critters are done, a rich compost squeezes right out the bottom like a loamy frosting for the plants at the base. Rather than staring at the tv while you eat, you can watch the LCD screen fit into the top of the table. An infrared camera will send images of the entire process for your viewing and digestive pleasure.
Back in late August, Global Green and Brad Pitt announced the winners of the Global Green Sustainable Design Competition For New Orleans. The winning proposal, titled GreeNOLA and submitted by Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of Workshop APD, calls for six houses and two multifamily units which employ energy-efficient appliances, solar power, and recycled building materials, as well as providing social services like child care and a community garden. Workshop APD’sproposal is designed to cut pollution and decrease operating energy use by 50-60 percent, compared to traditional homes. The success of the GreeNOLA design is its seemless integration of cutting edge green technology with the traditional building wisdom of the region. This combination creates healthy and affordable new residences for displaced residents of New Orleans. Groundbreaking of the new complex starts this January.
I sat down with the two architects to discuss their winning design proposal for rebuilding in New Orleans….
It’s that time of year again and we here at Inhabitat have big green plans for the holidays. Our Green Gift Guide is kicking off next week, and we’ll be throwing our first ever holiday party in San Francisco with Branch Home and Design Within Reach on December 20th. Here’s the latest news from Inhabitat:
Leo Marmol’s prefab Desert House has turned heads before, and is one of the attractions of the upcoming Dwell On Design conference in Palm Springs. But most recently, Marmol Radziner has announced the presale of two new prefab homes in Joshua Tree, California, that offer two bedrooms, two baths, an optional casita, and pool, all on a 1.25 acre lot included in the total cost. What’s more, the sleek, modern abodes are chock-full of some of the most environmentally-friendly and high-tech green materials on the market. Designed for LEED certification, the two homes come standard with solar panels, bamboo flooring, recycled steel frame construction, Structural Insulated Panels (SIP’s), and FSC-certified wood.
Just a little reminder that the Dwell on Design conference is happening December 1st-3rd in Palm Springs - that’s THIS WEEKEND, design aficionados! The conference boasts a great lineup of speakers, events, and home tours, so if you’re a design fan in the southern CA area, you shouldn’t miss it. Although it’s getting down to the wire, you can still purchase tickets online and get a $75 discount through Inhabitat if you use our special code “HABITAT”.
If you are feeling the chill at home this winter, why not consider a more eco-friendly form of insulation instead of the hazardous fiberglass standby? We’ve raved about Arizona-based company Bonded Logic in the past but we just can’t get enough of their superb product Ultra Touch. Comprising of 100% recycled denim, Ultra Touch proves that you don’t need to sacrifice your health in order to reap the benefits of efficient insulation. Unlike its toxic candy-floss-like alternative, the cotton material is safe enough for your kids to enjoy a tumble in, being entirely free of carcinogens and formaldehyde.
Last week Sustainable Style Sunday served up some eco-friendly shoes for those of you who are not opposed to wearing leather. This week we offer some vegan fashion treats from the inimitable Stella McCartney, for those of you who prefer not to wear leather or other animal-derived materials. Thankfully the market provides plenty of options to keep you covered both ethically and aesthetically, whatever your stance on leather and animal rights.
Jennifer Siegal has received much acclaim for her prefab structures that combine a clean modern aesthetic with seamlessly integrated environmentally-friendly materials and technologies. Now, the design details of her pioneering prefab concepts can be seen first hand at the Showhouse, completed in August and located in Venice, California. The Showhouse serves as a showroom and prototypical “model home” for her Office of Mobile Design, which offers prefab homes at reasonable prices, starting at about $240 per square foot.
We hope you are all enjoying yourselves with family and friends, and eating a nice meal, wherever you are. We thought today might be a nice time to talk about the things we’re thankful for, here in the world of green design and architecture. There are a lot of new design innovations that come out all the time, but few and far between are the innovations we find truly groundbreaking and inspiring. In no particular order, here are some things we are thankful for here at Inhabitat:
The word Tagei means versatility in Japanese, and what better way to describe this fabulous line of plyboo furniture that converts from table into bench? Brooklyn designer Akemi Tanaka caught our eye last year when she debuted her clever Futaba unfolding couch/table. Now Akemi’s got a new addition to the eco-friendly, transforming-furniture family, and we think its as cute and clever as its big sister Futaba.
Some of the best new sustainable styles happen to be the most old-fashioned. Take jorg & olif’s Dutch City Bike. No hybrid engine, no hydrogen fuel; just the same two-wheeled contraption it’s always been, but with a modern, urban spin that makes human-powered transit hip. READ MORE >
Sam Johnson’s Light Reading is a low-energy compact fluorescent lamp ingeniously disguised as a book. It is meant to nestle in between other books on your bookshelf and remain invisible until illuminated: when turned off it blends right in with your other books, but switched on, it emits a bright white light which reveals its title. Made from a material called ‘Secret sign’ (by Perspex), the low-energy fluorescent fixture ensures that you won’t use much energy and the book lamp won’t ever overheat (and damage your other books). We love the way Light Reading puts a clever new spin on the concept of reading lamp.
Despite the stereotypes, “eco-friendly footwear” doesn’t have to mean hemp sandals or Birkenstocks. British shoe company Terra Plana has been putting its own unique stamp on eco-friendly style since 2001, with their quirky shoes made from environmentally sustainable materials like recycled rubber, vegetable tanned leathers, and recycled Pakistani quilts.
We love treehouses here at Inhabitat, and are enamored with eco-architect Mitchell Joachim’s visionary ideas about how to grow living treehouses from ficus molded around frame structures. We’ve covered these brilliantly playful architectural ideas before on Inhabitat, but now we have a video from Mitchell Joachim explaining the details of how they work. Joachim does much better justice to his future-forward ecological designs than we are able to do in a mere post, so if you have any interest in living treehouses (and we know you do), check out this fascinating video above.
Something mysterious happened in Jersey City this past Monday night… On this grey and windy evening, while most people were at home watching TV, giant neon lights emerged up in the windows of an abandoned factory, spelling out the sentence: “It is green thinks nature - even in the dark”.
The neon-light public art installation is visible from the surrounding area, from the New Jersey Turnpike, and even from the air for incoming and outbound flights. The goal of the illuminated art piece, sponsored by the Precipice Alliance, is to spark public discussion about global warming, energy conservation and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
If you happened to be in San Francisco this Friday, November 17th, you might have noticed the grass couches which sneakily popped up around the Ferry Building and Justin Herman Plaza. The couches were part of a series of interactive green installations celebrating the launch of a new website, www.letsgreenthiscity.com. You may remember this sod grass couch from a Readymade How-To that was published back in 2005. Well, we couldn’t get enough of it then, so we stopped by to test those couches out for ourselves. Apparently we weren’t the only ones - mayor Gavin Newsom was spotted relaxing on one in front of city hall. To see our pics, click here >
Since the last time we touted Studio 804’s design/build prefab projects, the University of Kansas studio group has completed construction and landed the prestigious Home Of The Year Award, given annually by Architecture magazine. Their prefab Modular 3 home, which was conceptualized, designed, and built all within a twenty-week long semester, earned the award with its modular framework, environmentally-friendly materials, and gorgeously modern aesthetic.
For those of you who think that last week’s Greenbuild Conference was all about grass roofs and composting toilets, think again. One of the more diverse sessions was led by a group of chemists from the Green Chemistry Institute. Their concepts are not far from those advocated by the design community, such as Biomimicry and Cradle-to Cradle. However, these chemists are working to enhance human health and the environment by changing products at a molecular level.
Just think about the possibilities: Smog Eating Concrete!
What does sex have to do with sustainability? This is a question posed by a new book coming out called Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design. It’s an issue that resonates heavily with the staff at Inhabitat - an organization that is 90% female. Despite the fact that architecture, building and construction have long been male-dominated fields, a lot of women are joining the sustainable design movement and we are wondering what this means… Are women more interested in environmentalism in general? Or is there something about the confluence of design and environmentalism that particularly appeals to women?
Well folks, we’ve got some good news and some bad news; The good news is that you’re currently reading one of the best weblogs for keeping up to date with all the latest and greatest materials in the green building world. The bad news is, we’ve already shown you most of the cool new materials gracing the Exhibit Hall floor - they’re all covered already in our NEW MATERIALS section. Unfortunately, we haven’t stumbled upon any new groundbreaking products here in Denver. But for those of you who couldn’t venture to the Mile High City, we’ll show you some of our favorites, and remind you of the broad range of exciting resources at your fingertips.
The USGBC’sGreenbuild Conference kicked off bright and early Wednesday morning as several speakers took the stage for the opening plenary. Some were expected, like the USGBC President Rick Fedrizzi. Others, like Ira Magaziner of the Clinton Climate Initiative were a pleasant surprise. But we all know who we were really waiting for: the current sage of global sustainability, Bill McDonough - and he didn’t disappoint.
For a few of the highlights of the opening session, read on…
This past week, pedestrians passing the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore were happily surprised by periodic bursts of precipitation falling from a nearby Angsana tree. Many innocent passers-by gawked in wonderment, but those in the know recognized it as an art installation conceptualized and executed by Dutch-born artist Iepe B. T. Rubingh in conjunction with the first annual Singapore Biennale. Rubingh, known more familiarly as IEPE, says he uncovered the Singapore Miracle tree’s supernatural powers after ‘talking’ to it for three weeks. Inspired by traditional folklore, he believes that the rain from the tree cleanses one’s sins, cures diseases and acts as a kind of fountain of youth. Even without the rhetoric, we love the simple beauty and poetic imagery of a raining tree in an urban setting.
Quiet Revolution Ltd has revolutionized the windmill with their new QuietRevolution wind turbine, the QR5. Not only is it one of the most visually appealing wind turbines available on the market, its small scale allows it to fit seamlessly into an urban environment, providing a renewable energy resource in places where space constraints previously made it impossible to hook up green power systems.
There’s something so identifiable and charming about Dutch Design. Tejo Remy, one of the first and most influential members of the Dutch Design group Droog, has recently split from the collective to launch a project-based firm called RemyVeenhuizen with cohort Rene Veenhuizen. Their Leaf Project, whose cascading waterfall of leaves create a fluid series of shelves, benches, and wall coverings, is a great example of witty, innovative, and engaging design. We love the flora motif made structural and functional.
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