(EPCOT agriculture intern shows off specially grown Mickey-shaped pumpkin)
Anyone who’s ever been to Florida has probably visited Walt Disney World, and if you have - you’ve hopefully visited EPCOT center, which is by far the most interesting part of the behemoth theme park that covers Orlando, FL. EPCOT stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” and was originally intended to be a futuristic model community based on utopian modernist ideas of communal living, no cars and no private ownership. Much of the design of the park is lifted straight from Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and drawings, including the massive geodesic sphere which now houses theme park rides. Sounds like it would be right up Inhabitat’s alley, right?
While the world may be split between cat and dog lovers, we should all be able to agree on the merit of this very green feline design: The Cat Cocoon, a piece of cardboard furniture designed by Warren Lieu, allows even the most doting cat lover to bring good design to their pet’s world in eco-friendly and functional style.
If the overwhelming number of gas-guzzling yellow cabs on the streets of New York is as sobering to you as it is to us, you’re in luck- OZO Car provides the perfect green alternative to on-call car services. As the Prius takes the cake for one of the most successful and earth-friendly automotive trends in history, we’re thrilled to see fleet companies like PlanetTran (in SF) and OZO Car (in NYC) jumping on the band wagon and providing green taxi and car services for the masses.
From the Austrian countryside, the hills are alive, with the sound of…. prefab! Salzburg-based Espace Mobile has recently debuted their very eye-catching, very affordable prefabricated line of customizable homes, ranging from €55,000 to €95,000. The concept behind Espace is the individual “at home” in a natural environment, designed for modular customization with the best materials for long lifetimes and flexibility.
Making its debut at HauteGREEN this year, Propeller’s gorgeous new pendant lamps demonstrate the potential of combining CNC milling with sustainable materials like Plyboo. What particularly attracts us to the Furrow Parkade pendant light is the simple linear design, with cuts that reveal the inner core of the material, making it equally beautiful when showcased in natural light or when used to light-up a dark night.
If you are looking for a cool alternative to your average, run-of-the-mill upholstered furniture, the latest buzz (and one of the stunners of the HauteGREEN show) is the Emir chair by Lars Urheim of the Norwegian design house Trokk16. A beautiful specimen of classic Scandinavian design, the Emir chair is constructed out of natural latex foam, sustainable wood, wool fabric and woolen felt. The biodegradable Emir is as much about form as it is about substance. According to Urheim, the chair’s components can easily be separated and reused or recycled after its initial use has run its course.
While walking through the woods near Eureka Springs, Arkansas, one might be forgiven to mistake Thorncrown Chapel for a grove of trees in the middle of the forest. The transparent glazed facade, combined with the timber trusses, create the appearance of a grand forest rather than a carefully constructed chapel. It is only when one is inside the chapel that one starts appreciating the small details that set it apart as a paragon of architectural achievement: the steel joints on the trusses, the lanterns, the reflection of the glass, and finally the steel roof.
For the (green) kid in all of us, check out Droog designer Marcel Wanders’ latest creation- ‘Swing With The Plants’ combines flora and the nostalgia of childhood days spent on a swingset. The seat of Swing with the Plants serves as a planter, AND comes packed with soil and the seeds of a climbing plant that will grow upwards along the ropes.
For all of us urban dwellers who crave indoor greenery but find ourselves a bit short on space, here’s a great solution that requires almost no square footage: Joost Bakker’s Schiavello Vertical Gardens. The steel-frame interior plant system was designed on a grid that allows numerous plants to be stacked vertically in columns or walls- providing the perfect backdrop for any office or apartment that needs and extra bit of greening but can’t afford the space required for them (when you can’t build out, build up!).
It’s a good time to be green, and Google is leading the way. Last year, the search giant Google announced that their installation of the solar panels on their campus, which are expected to provide around 1,600 kw/h. And keeping with their green commitment, they recently launched the Google solar panel project webpage which will help anyone track how much power their solar panels are generating. And now, their newest green initiatives include everything from plug-in hybrids and car-powered homes to carbon neutrality.
Near Shanghai, the Songjiang district has become a popular weekend destination for many tourists with its natural beauty and sprawling landscapes. And now the Songjiang Hotel might just become the newest and greenest attraction. While it may look a bit sci-fi, this hotel was designed for the real (green) world, with many sustainable features in mind.
A variety of environmentally-friendly pendant lights lit up the HauteGREEN exhibition last month in New York, but none of them more exquisitely displays our love for bamboo than the Moso Pendant by designer Brian Schmitt. Made almost entirely of bamboo and only three components (shade panels, bamboo frame, and cord set), the Moso Pendant can be flat packed and shipped to your preferred destination and be assembled without the use of any fasteners or glue. How cool is that?
For those of you who work in a professional design office, you know how quickly we become inundated with samples of all sorts. From rubber to glass and everything in-between, we can’t help but find ourselves on the receiving end of sample shipments, momentarily entranced by the possibilities of their novelty.
A recent contest sponsored by carpet manufacturers Bentley Prince Street and Tricycle resulted in some of the best examples of upcycling we’ve seen in a while: from wine carriers to benches, these designers took to the task of finding real, new uses for their excess carpet samples. The winner of the contest was the Rugburm lounge chair, pictured above, designed by a group at RSA. The design incorporates 42 samples and takes advantage of their flexible and weight bearing properties.
While the idea of sleeping in a pipe might not immediately connote luxury in your mind, this hotel design turns concrete pipes into quite the comfortable space for your next overnight stay. Almost like glorified camping, the DasParkHotel is a series of individual hotel room pipes, set on a beautiful flora-filled backdrop just steps from the Danube River.
Sustainable Style Sunday is on a recycling roll, so we figured we’d continue the theme with Andrea Crews, a Paris-based creative collective whose work defies definition as solely design, art, or fashion. Their projects are based on the use and reinterpretation of the second-hand garment as a social, economic and ethical choice. One part Swap-o-rama, one part Imitation of Christ, mixed with a let’s-play-dress-up enthusiasm, they express their vision in workshops, performances, fashion shows, and eventually the commercial sale of their creations.
Last July, Australia’s Victoria state legislation, home to Melbourne, announced legislation to put a levy of 10 cents on every giveaway plastic bag given at supermarkets. The move was seen as a necessary step to curb the ammount of plastic bags going into landfill, and follows the actions of several small towns in Victoria and in other parts of the country.
Next time you go grocery shopping in San Francisco, you won’t be hearing “paper or plastic” at the check out. As of this past March, San Francisco is officially the first city in the United States to ban plastic shopping bags in certain establishments. The city by the Bay’s Board of Supervisors approved the groundbreaking legislation that would officially ban plastic checkout bags supermarkets by September and pharmacies by early 2008. City officials are optimistic that other U.S. cities including Los Angeles and New York will follow suit.
Lawmakers are closer to passing an environmental levy to cut plastic bag use in Hong Kong. “No Plastic Bag Day” campaigns may become permanent. According to a report released recently by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, Hong Kong throws out over 8 billion plastic shopping bags every year (that’s more than 3 bags per person a day).
As prefab housing takes hold as a viable, sustainable, contemporary building technique, one of the lessons we are learning is that bigger does not necessarily equal better. In fact, when is comes to simplifying your life and trying to tread lightly on the planet, we would argue that smaller is most certainly better. Some of our favorite prefabs here at Inhabitat have been those with the least amount of square footage. In an era of shoddily-built cookie-cutter McMansions, it’s nice to see a growing trend toward living small and efficiently, in a well built compact home. Read on for our Top 5 Tiniest Prefab Homes…
We all know how good spinach is for your body, but did you know that it is also good for your house? That’s the proposition behind the house designed by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum. Together, they have designed a residence which obtains its electricity from spinach, making it worthy of being declared the winner of Cradle to Cradle contest.
What if architecture was designed to work for you to keep you healthy? Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin, architects at The Living have come up with a new material called “Living Glass” that will look out for your health by monitoring CO2 levels in the air. The new smart material is a thin, transparent, non-mechanical surface which automatically opens and closes “gills” in response to human presence to control the air quality in the room.
Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photographs manage to be both beautiful and simultaneously horrifying, and film director Jennifer Baichwal has managed to capture both the aesthetic and concept behind Burtynsky’s ground-breaking photography in her recently-debuted documentary film Manufactured Landscapes. The film was shown at the Seattle Film Festival, showcasing Edward Burtynsky’s photography through Baichwal’s aesthetic eye and and Peter Mettler’s artful cinematography. Burtynsky’s work highlights the effects of human interventions on the land, in such a stunning yet critical way that he was awarded the TED Prize for his art in 2005.
Ross Lovegrove’s System X, which he designed for Yamagiwa, is a modular lighting system composed of flexible fluorescent X’s that can be linked with other X modules to create a modern and sculptural lighting system for any interior space. Imagine the possibilities, you can link as many or as few X modules you want both horizontally and vertically to cover entire walls, ceilings, even connect the X’s together to form circles of different sizes.
Anyone who’s ever spent time in San Francisco (and perhaps stepped in a stinky patch in Duboce park) knows that this is a city that loves its dogs. So much so that dog poop is a real issue in terms of urban cleanliness — pet feces currently makes up nearly 4 percent of San Francisco’s residential waste! So its about time then, that someone came up with the brilliant idea to put San Francisco’s dog poop to work and find a better use for it than simply filling up garbage cans (and getting stuck on people’s shoes). The forward-thinking environmentally-friendly city will be the first in the nation to use dog feces as a renewable energy source through the production and combustion of methane gas.
When it comes to finding cleaner greener sources of electrical power, we’re going to have to start thinking out of the box a bit if we want to reduce carbon emissions and increase efficiency. Coal, solar, wind and hydro may be the most common sources to power your home, but now you can now add cow poop to the list as well. And no we’re not kidding…
(EPCOT agriculture intern shows off specially grown Mickey-shaped pumpkin)
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