One of the oldest museums in the Mid-West was recently relocated to an elegant new LEED Gold certified structure, garnering accolades from art aficionados and sustainability advocates alike. Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture designed the new Grand Rapids Art Museum to be as beautiful as the artworks within, placing a premium on public space and ultra-efficient modern design. Situated downtown amid Maya Lin’s “Ecliptic” park and Alexander Calder’s “Grand Vitesse”, the museum is an impressive addition to the renowned architecture of the “sculpture city”.
Portable green power sources are steadily gaining momentum as alternative energy tech gears up to help shoulder the strain of our overloaded energy grids. This recently released generator, dubbed the PowerCube 6000, is showing plenty of potential as an all-inclusive clean energy system. Whether you’re greening your home’s energy sources, preparing for an emergency, or opening up a Black Rock smoothie stand, the PowerCube offers an enticing (if expensive) way to break free from the grid.
Groundreaking architect Jean Nouvel has inspired and influenced international architecture (and many of us here at Inhabitat) for over three decades with creative interpretations of culture, location, program and client that have resulted in some of the world’s most unforgettable structures. In recognition of his abundant career and persistent imagination, he has been chosen as the 2008 Pritzker Architecture Laureate, the world’s highest architecture honor.
Today’s microchips, while tiny, still use a fair ammount of power. This means that batteries have to be large and don’t usually last very long. But what if microchips were just a little bit more efficient? That’s what a team of engineers at MIT was thinking when they set out to redesign the microchip to make it even more efficient. The result is a microchip with a power consumption that is so low it can be recharged by your very own body heat.
The Re-Run Messenger Bag by Fleurville is yet another fine example of how green design and product-alchemy seem to just get better with the passage of time. Fleurville’s entire line of recycled plastic bottle fabric totes, packs, and transport gear keeps on average ten 600ml plastic water bottles out of the landfill with the creation of each piece. We love their Spring 2008 eco-fab floral prints and clean graphic contours. These spacious and lightweight totes and shoulder bags make parenting a breeze and surely send the right message to small peeps who are looking on from their strollers as inheritors of the planet.
The 2nd Annual Project Earth Day Student Eco-Fashion Show is coming up on April 24 here in NYC, and Inhabitat will be there scouting the runway for future eco-fashion stars and sustainable style innovators! We will cover both the Project Earth Day Eco-Fashion Show as well as the student competition, and we are totally psyched to report on ‘just how green’ this year’s student line up will be. Last year’s runway show featured a dazzling line up of future-forward creations, and the 2008 competition is bound to up the ante on new and improved ways to advance green design and couture.
It’s no secret that we are totally obsessed with trash-to-treasure here at Inhabitat - we just cannot get our fill of landfills with a brighter lining. These pop-art recycled trash paks by Monsoon Vermont (part of Monsoon Group) really caught our eye when we spied them floating around the blogosphere. Crafted from recycled trash in Java (primarily detergent packets and toothpaste tubes) that are collected by slum-dwelling scavengers in Jakarta, this brilliant eco-enterprise is not only cleaning up the face of the planet but putting a new spin on dignity and right-livelihood in an otherwise economically impoverished area.
Last year, more than 2.2 million Earth Hour participants shut off their lights throughout Sydney in a powerful stand in support of protecting the environment. Tonight, the lights off action is going global! Around the world, cities on every continent - including Atlanta, Bangkok, Bogota, Chicago, Dublin, Montreal, Manilla, San Francisco, Sydney, Tel Aviv and more - 20,000+ businesses and almost 300,000 individuals have signed up to turn off the lights and turn up environmental awareness.
ATTENTION NEW YORKERS! This weekend is the annual Armory show in New York City - a giant art show which brings 50,000+ art lovers to Pier 94 in New York City from March 27th to 30th, to scoop up great deals in contemporary art. This year lucky showgoers will have an opportunity to see stunning new green furniture designs in addition to the usual paintings and photographs, with Vivavi’s specially curated green design ARTFORUM Public Lounge. For the second year in a row, Vivavi will design and furnish the ARTFORUM Public Lounge to give visitors a chance to chill out and recharge in a setting that demonstrates the possibilities for merging great design with environmental responsibility. Teaming up with one of our favorite eco designers, Molo, Vivavi will furnish the entire green lounge with a giant foldable paper Molo ‘Softseat’.
Furniture designer Cliff Spencer couldn’t resist when he heard about a Napa winery discarding wine-stained oak. An avid user of reclaimed materials, Spencer now regularly reclaims oak staves from California wineries and transforms them into these stunning one-of-a-kind pieces for residential and commercial use. (p.s., you don’t have to be a wine aficionado to enjoy them).
Social design organizerion Design 21 recently launched an inspiring bicycle-focused design competition called Power to the Pedal. The challenge is to design a biking accessory or add-on for existing bikes that will improve the bicycling experience and encourage more people to make biking their primary means of transport – more convenient, more enjoyable, safer and more integrated into daily lifestyles – whether it’s for commuting, working, shopping, transporting, leisure or all of the above.
Up until fairly recently, Rocio Romero fans could only visit a fully realized public version of her enormously successful LV prefab in Missouri. Then, last month, a privately-owned and newly completed Rocio Romero LV home was open to the public in the Hudson Valley, NY. When we ran the news of the New York LV open house tour, many of you asked us to keep you posted when Romero’s homes were accessible elsewhere. Well, West Coasters, hang on to your hats because there’s a new LV in town - a Rocio Romero LV is open for tours and much more against the amazing backdrop of Napa County, just a short drive north of San Francisco, and Inhabitat’s hometown in Marin County.
Ever dreamed of owning a completely self-sufficient home that produces its own energy, water, and is completely customizable? New York architect Scott Specht has the answer to all of our zero-energy prefab dreams with the new ZeroHouse™. This completely self-sustaining prefabricated house generates its own power, collects its own water, processes its own waste and is 100% automatic. Versatile, durable and site-sensitive, ZeroHouse can be erected in almost any location in one day with steel frame components and a helical-anchor foundation system that requires no excavation.
Flipping through new magazines today can feel like shaking the colorful branches of a glossy tree, with leaves falling out from between its limbs. Only they’re falling into your lap, and sometimes 6 at a time. Magazine subscription cards, fouling up the pre-buy flip through at the newsstand and littering up your living room. Thought subscribing would keep them at bay? Nope, but an address file might. Ugly Kitty is taking those fallen leaves and turning them into functional, pretty indexing to keep your reading clean and your contacts in order.
Ever since we first laid eyes on Todd Laby’s stunning green furniture design back in 2005, we’ve been huge fans. Unlike so much of what passes for ’sustainable design’ these days, this thoughtful designer manages to make green design about more than simply using bamboo or eco-friendly adhesives in standard designs, but instead rethinks the very nature and construction of the objects we own, and does so in a way that is sleek, chic, and always provocative. In his ‘Modern Slant’ line of plyboo coffee tables, the bottoms and legs of the tables are positioned at acute angles in order to efficiently balance books and magazines, and keep them from falling over like in your typical flat shelf. Now Laby has a brand new end table that utilizes this same clever idea of angular legs to support all of your literature needs.
The Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill architectural firm has been busy stirring up the world’s skyline with a slew of lean, green superstructures that push the energy-neutral envelope. AS+GG recently unveiled plans for their latest oeuvre: a Clean Technology Tower in Chicago that takes a multi-generative approach to producing its own energy. Harnessing an atrium of wind turbines beneath a roof-top solar shell, the building “utilizes advanced technologies and climate-appropriate building systems to foster a symbiotic relationship with its local environment.”
We’re crazy about this gorgeous botanical garden in Medellin, Colombia that was recently renovated by Plan B Architects. The Orquideorama is an organically expanding wooden meshwork of modular “flower-tree” structures that weaves its way through the garden’s heart. A stunning study on structure and scale, the project unites the micro and macro worlds through an elegant synthesis of cellular and architectural forms.
The 18-story façade of James Law Cybertecture’s new Pixel Tower in Dubai was inspired by the moving bubbles in a champagne glass and built for the young, techie and trendy. Intended for the Dubai Waterfront, Pixel Tower draws on passive solar techniques and strategic facade geometry to minimize heat gain on the structure’s south side and optimize views out over the Persian Gulf to the north.
There is quite a bit of eco-buzz circulating around the current E.P.A. exhibit at NYC’s Exit Art gallery, and with good reason as the tag ‘E-P-A’ has gained new momentum thanks to the show’s pro-active agenda. E.P.A. or “Environmental Performance Actions” is a group exhibition that sets a new stage for critical performance work that addresses contemporary environmental crises. One of our favorite green initiatives, ecoartspace, is the force behind E.P.A., providing thought-provoking curation as well as visual prompts that might finally move us to take notice and take action.
E.P.A. is on view at Exit Art in NYC until May 3, 2008 but we also want to let you know that there is a can’t miss HUMAN/NATURE panel discussion tonight (Wed, March 26th) at 7pm
This might not be the most practical outdoor light in the world, but what the Firewinder lacks in pedestrian utility it makes up for in sheer engaging awesomeness. Transforming wind into light, the Firewinder is a hanging, wind-powered LED light that can be powered by the smallest breeze. Unlike most wind turbines that spin vertically, the Firewinder spins in a horizontal direction, illuminating its LEDs in a spiraling helix of light. The coolest thing about the Firewinder is that it doesn’t just run on or off, but instead is visibly reactive to subtle changes in the environment. How bright the LEDs glow corresponds directly to how fast the turbine spins, enabling observers to visualize the power of wind.
Malaysia is no stranger to iconic buildings. Two of the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Twin Towers, are located in Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital. So it comes as no surprise to us that a stunning new residential development is planned for the Putrajaya waterfront known as Precinct 4, just 30km south of Kuala Lumpur. The design, however, is a refreshing and original with unique, marine-inspired structures - which also draw from traditional Islamic designs - arranged in a permeable, radiating block of bioclimatic architecture.
Now in its fourth year running, the eVolo Skyscraper Competition takes future-forward architecture to its breaking point, unveiling a stunning array of new structural concepts by architects, engineers, and designers. The latest crop of entries is up, and Daekwon Park’s Symbiotic Interlock goes far beyond the standard skyscraper to envision a total renovation of inner-city infrastructure. The pitch: it’s modular, prefabricated, and completely symbiotic on the existing vertical infrastructure of the city.
When the Miami Art Museum required a new headquarters they decided to hire famous Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. They were expecting an incredible design worthy of a cosmopolitan city such as Miami. What they got from Herzog & de Meuron can only be described as the modern interpretation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - an imaginative structure that bridges urban spaces, climates and cultures.
Anyone who works in Los Angeles is familiar with the ubiquitous “roach coach” - mobile kitchens on wheels that roll up for breakfast or lunch to serve up everything from burgers to burritos. Well Angelenos, commence rejoicing! Green Truck, the brainchild of Kam Miceli and Mitchell Collier, now brings us a green, gourmet, on-the-go alternative.
Step right in ladies and gentlemen, and gaze at the marvels of modern technology! Allow us to show you the most amazing car of the century: The magnificent Detroit Electric, the car of summer luxury! This 100 year-old antique electric car will be available in early 2009 from ZAP and China Youngman Automotive Group, proving once and for all that there is no such thing as a new idea. The Detroit Electric is considered to be the most popular electric car in history — and was produced by the Anderson Electric Car Company in 1907 (production ran from 1907 to 1939). This cute little EV could go fo 130 miles on one charge, and had a top speed of about 32km/h. Famous Detroit Electric owners included Thomas Edison, Charles Proteus Steinmetz and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
