The Blind, Taiheiyo Evergreen Forests, 2008. Institute of Critical Zoologists.
Behold the Institute of Critical Zoologists! The ICZ aims to develop a critical approach to the zoological gaze, or how humans view animals.
They say:
“Urban societies live in relative isolation from animals; however, our demand and gaze upon them have grown significantly over the last century. It is undeniable that looking at animals is considered both desirable and pleasurable in societies. Animals convey meaning and values that are culture-specific, and in viewing the animal, we cannot escape the cultural context, political climate and social values in which that observation takes place. We seek to develop a Critical Zoological Gaze that pursues creative, interdisciplinary research that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies, such as aesthetics; and to advance unconventional, even radical, means of understanding human and animal relations.”
Simulation of mountain top, The Real World development laboratory, Mr Toyo, 2008.
The white whale swimming in the ocean depths off the coast of Omishima, circa 1985.
Description: In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water. The few remaining inhabitants have secluded themselves from their harsh environment in what could be called subterranean oasises. Far from idyllic, these havens, known as sietch, are essentially underground water storage banks. Water is wealth in this alternate reality. It is preciously conserved, rationed with strict authority, and secretly hidden and protected.
Although this science fiction novel sounded alien in 1965, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. Lured by cheap land and the promise of endless water via the powerful Colorado River, millions have made this area their home. However, the Colorado River has been desiccated by both heavy agricultural use and global warming to the point that it now ends in an intermittent trickle in Baja California. Towns that once relied on the river for water have increasingly begun to create underground water banks for use in emergency drought conditions. However, as droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, these water banks will become more than simply emergency precautions.
Sietch Nevada projects waterbanking as the fundamental factor in future urban infrastructure in the American Southwest. Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life. Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, the Sietch is a dense, underground community. A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation. The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice. Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture. However, the Sietch is also a bunker-like fortress preparing for the inevitable wars over water in the region.
Beetle’s house is the name for the raised home designed by Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori which is currently on display as part of ‘1:1 – architects build small spaces’ at the V&A museum in London.
V&A’s Transcript:
Terunobu Fujimori (sub-titled translation): The recurring theme which I play with in my work is the relationship with the natural world and what human beings have created. I go about this by using natural materials, such as trees and soil in the building of my homes and also by using plants within the buildings.
The focus of my work relates back to architecture before civilisation. How people originally lived, in their natural environment, which is a key subject of my architectural works. I’ve visited Stonehenge many times and other Neolithic sites, walking around and looking at them.
Abraham Thomas: … so this is where the structure will be, pretty much where that bench is. Very close to the Morlaix Staircase.
Terunobu Fujimori (sub-titled translation): I want to create a space that we can enjoy away from our everyday lives, a space with a small fire where people can enjoy tea.
There are seven architects taking part in this project, I know just one of them, the Japanese architect Fujimoto. I know Fujimoto very well. I’m really looking forward to seeing the works by the other five.
“Natural fuse” is a micro-scale carbon dioxide overload protection framework that works locally and globally, harnessing the carbon-sinking capabilities of plants. Generating electricity to power the electronic products that populate our lives has consequences on the amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, which in turn has detrimental environmental effects. The carbon footprint of the power used to run these devices can be offset by the natural carbon-capturing processes that occur as plants absorb carbon dioxide and grow. “Natural Fuse” units take advantage of this phenomena. They are now distributed in households in London, New York and San Sebastian.
Each Natural Fuse unit consists of a houseplant and a power socket. The amount of power available to the socket is limited by the capacity of the plant to offset the carbon footprint of the energy expended: if the appliance you plug in draws so much power that it requires more carbon-offsetting than available then the unit will not power.
The problem is that even low-power light bulbs draw more power than can be comfortably offset by a single plant. Therefore, all the units are connected together via the internet so that they can communicate and determine how much excess capacity of carbon-offsetting is available within the community of units as a whole. (text by Haque::design+research)
GLASSPHEMY! is Macro-Sea’s visceral and psychological recycling center. We have built a 20-foot high, 30-foot long steel tower specifically designed to allow you to hurl glass bottles at your friends, enemies, and loved ones while they are safely tucked away behind bulletproof glass.
We will be collecting bottles from some local Brooklyn bars and then recycling the glass on site. We will be making cool lights, pulverizing the glass for use as environmental fill or topsoil, and through a contest sponsored by Readymade magazine opening up the project to people with other interesting recycling ideas.
This whole recycling and green thing has gotten so damn boring in recent years that we felt we had to do something. GLASSPHEMY! celebrates the illicit thrill of breaking bottles while working through deeply rooted emotional issues (and sort of saving the planet a little). Text from Macro-Sea.
“Many water purification methods introduced into the developing world are quickly abandoned as people don’t know how to use and maintain them, says Norma Alcantar at the University of South Florida in Tampa. So she and her colleagues decided to investigate the prickly pear cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica, which 19th-century Mexican communities used as a water purifier. The cactus is found across the globe.” Continue reading HERE.
“The process of using cactus mucilage is quite old, something Alcantar learned from her grandmother. But now the process has been validated by, and improved by, science.
Here’s how it works:
‘Mucilage,’ a thick, gum-like substance in the cactus pads, helps the cactus retain water in the dry climate and can be extracted by boiling the pads. When mucilage is added to dirty water it binds to the dirt and the larger dirt particles settle out of the water due to the high molecular weight of the gum-like mucilage when it swells in water.
Alcantar’s research has shown that the mucilage can bind to and starve bacteria as well as form a complex with arsenic, a known carcinogen that occurs naturally in the soil or comes from industrial or agricultural pollution. Arsenic is removed when it binds to the natural sugars in the mucilage and the combination is drawn through a sand or membrane filter. The amount of arsenic removed depends on several variables, such as the source and pH values of the water to be treated.
Even trace amounts of arsenic can cause serious health problems when consumed over long periods of time. Alcantar and her team are also assessing whether the cactus mucilage can be as effective in removing other dangerous heavy metals, such as selenium, chromium and cadmium, from water. ” Text from USF NEWS.
It is now universally recognized within science that humanity is confronting the prospect — if we do not soon change course — of a planetary ecological collapse. Not only is the global ecological crisis becoming more and more severe, with the time in which to address it fast running out, but the dominant environmental strategies are also forms of denial, demonstrably doomed to fail, judging by their own limited objectives. This tragic failure, I will argue, can be attributed to the refusal of the powers that be to address the roots of the ecological problem in capitalist production and the resulting necessity of ecological and social revolution.
The term “crisis,” attached to the global ecological problem, although unavoidable, is somewhat misleading, given its dominant economic associations. Since 2008, we have been living through a world economic crisis — the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. This has been a source of untold suffering for hundreds of millions, indeed billions, of people. But insofar as it is related to the business cycle and not to long-term factors, expectations are that it is temporary and will end, to be followed by a period of economic recovery and growth — until the advent of the next crisis. Capitalism is, in this sense, a crisis-ridden, cyclical economic system. Even if we were to go further, to conclude that the present crisis of accumulation is part of a long-term economic stagnation of the system — that is, a slowdown of the trend-rate of growth beyond the mere business cycle — we would still see this as a partial, historically limited calamity, raising, at most, the question of the future of the present system of production.
For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply an abdication of world leadership, as is often suggested, but had deeper roots in the inability of the capitalist system to address the accelerating threat to life on the planet. Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival. In the words of Fidel Castro in December 2009: “Until very recently, the discussion [on the future of world society] revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive.”
In 1999, Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang started collecting plastic debris—carrying it away by the bagful— all from Kehoe Beach, a remote stretch of the Point Reyes National Seashore, in Northern California.
The plastic they continuously find is not left by visitors; it is washing up from the ocean. In their studios they clean, sort and categorize the pieces according to color and kind. They use the plastic to make artworks including large sculptures, installations, photo tableaus and jewelry. Info found on their website called Beach Plastic.
“Located in southeastern Ecuador, near the Peruvian border, the Nangaritza River valley is mountainous, heavily forested and relatively inaccessible to most people. The upper river valley is known for its Tepuyes, or tabletop mountains, which are home to many species that are found nowhere else on earth, as well as other species whose populations are threatened in other locations but remain plentiful here.
Nangaritza’s isolation has not only helped to protect the mountain ecosystem from destruction, it has also long posed a challenge to detailed scientific study. Part of the region is under the protection of the Nangaritza Protected Forest, but wildlife experts believe that more land must be protected for this unique environment to thrive.
The Shuar indigenous association and a local farming organization have been granted management over much of the protected forest, but these groups are proposing that the lands be upgraded to a higher protection status, where they will be more sustainably managed. Before this step can be taken, however, more scientific data is needed.”
You’ve read the news—everyone wants to be green now. But do you really know how your personal choices are adding up? What about the choices of your fellow citizens? How well are people around the globe adopting behaviors that can make the world a more environmentally sustainable place? How have they changed over the past year? National Geographic and the international polling firm GlobeScan have just conducted their second annual study measuring and monitoring consumer progress toward environmentally sustainable consumption in 17 countries around the world.
Why? We wanted to give people a better idea of how consumers in different countries are doing in taking action to preserve our planet by tracking, reporting, and promoting environmentally sustainable consumption and citizen behavior.
This quantitative consumer study of 17,000 consumers in a total of 17 countries (14 in 2008) asked about such behavior as energy use and conservation, transportation choices, food sources, the relative use of green products versus traditional products, attitudes towards the environment and sustainability, and knowledge of environmental issues. A group of international experts helped us determine the behaviors that were most critical to investigate. (text by Greendex)
At 18.00 on Tuesday 26th May, Weather Projection will commence transmission of the rest of the world.
Light from the Americas will be piped into Sydney’s dome and then retransmitted live by the webcam. An online roll-call clarifies the schedule, highlighting the chronographic star of the moment, shifting start time minutely with each new day.
As Smart Light Sydney begins, the sun first hits landmass in remote north-eastern Canada and the eastern shores of Brazil, slowly sweeping across the Americas until its sole terrestrial glint is seen at the western tips of Alaska and a few sparse Pacific islands. This sparsity is infilled by a review of the evening – a final rapid uber-time-lapse playing back the whole evening’s activity, crescendoing at midnight.
Taikun Li says: “Tourists traditionally spin a multitude of prayer wheels in Tibet. Now that positive energy can be harvested along Tibetan streets, turned into electricity, and used to provide evening lighting along those streets and inside the adjacent homes. The prayer wheel generator is built on a base of used bicycle parts and a discarded surplus fan motor, making it ideal for use in the developing world. This invention supplements an inadequate and unreliable electrical grid with the power of electricity generated by tourism. By combining the low-cost efficiency and long life of 21st century LED lighting, with the simple 20th century efficiency of a bicycle, the Prayer Wheel Generator uses the best of high and low technologies.”
Taikkun Yang Li is a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s GFRY Studio. His design was one of the favorite projects presented at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair. It is constructed simply around used bicycle parts and a discarded fan motor, making it ideal for efficient production and use in the developing world.
In 2002, Ned Kahn worked with the staff of Technorama, the major science center in Switzerland, and their architects, Durig and Rami, to create a facade for the building which is composed of thousands of aluminum panels that move in the air currents and reveal the complex patterns of turbulence in the wind.
The GreenLight is a prescription product developed for the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic. The light is prescribed for Impatients* interested in changing their relationship to energy systems; improving indoor air-quality and developing experience with closed and coupled systems design–the chief strategies for improved environmental performance.
This lighting product diffuses light by coupling to photosynthetic processes. Planting strategies can be specified to address particular indoor air quality issues including VOC, benzene and formaldehyde removal.
Like other prescription products this product requires a clinic appointment to introduce the design parameters involved, and the novel issues involved in distributed power production.
‘Huaxi City Centre of Guiyang’ by 11 international architectural firms.
In 2008, MAD organized and invited 11 young international architects to carry out an urban experiment: to design the Huaxi City Centre of Guiyang, in south western China. The architects invited by MAD included: Atelier Manferdini, BIG, Dieguez Fridman, Emergent/Tom Wiscombe, Houliang Architecture, JDS, MAD, Mass Studies, Rojkind Architects, Serie, Sou Fujimoto Architects. The masterplan was developed by Shanghai Tongji urban planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, together with MAD.
Designed by MAD.
The site of Huaxi is famous for its dramatic and beautiful landscape, as well as a diverse mix of minority cultural inhabitants during its history. Its future is defined by the local government’s urban planning as a new urban centre for finance, cultural activities and tourism. MAD brought the young architects together here in the summer of 2008, for a 3-day workshop to create an experimental urban vision for Huaxi.
Designed by BIG.
Each architect provided a design for a single part of the masterplan, based on their own understanding and interpretation of the local natural and cultural elements. the result is a series of individual buildings, growing from the natural environment, and working together to produce a compound of diverse urban activities. (text by Design Boom)
Recompute is a new way of thinking about computers that layers sustainable ideas throughout its lifecycle to make an overall sustainable product that can be easily replicated. Recompute address sustainability along three main points during its life.
Designed by Brenden Macaluso for this year’s Greener Gadget Design Competition. Go ahead an VOTE.
Manufacturing: Rather than making a large tower constructed from numerous materials (ABS plastic, aluminum, steel, etc.), hundreds of manufacturing processes, and dozens of individual components, the Recompute case is made of corrugated cardboard (recyclable and renewable). There are four low-impact manufacturing processes to assemble Recompute: Die cutting, gluing (with non-toxic white glue), printing and electronic assembly. Recompute uses only three major electronic components: A motherboard with processor & memory, power supply, and a hard drive.
Use: Recompute is designed to allow the user to take advantage of existing hardware. For example; use the keyboard from a previous computer. For additional flexibility, external hardware customization is easy via 8 USB ports.
Disposal: Electronic components need to be properly recycled as they contain toxic heavy metals. However, this is often skipped because dismantling of computers is difficult. Recompute can be disassembled without tools, so the electronics and case can be easily recycled individually.
There’s something quite magical about watching trams in Barcelona, Strasbourg or Frankfurt glide silently along beds of grass as they do their city circuit. Where possible, this attractive combination of efficient public transport and inspired landscaping should be standard as part of the urban fabric.
Designed by Christopher Ottersbach, the ‘Aeolus’ is an aerial mode of transportation that allow the riders to travel the earth without causing any harm to the ecology. With the capacity of four travelers, the sustainable vehicle is powered (rather lifted) by a huge mass of helium that keeps the airship in the air for as minimum as two weeks. Featuring an aerodynamic shape, unlike the regular hot air balloons, the Aeolus is a motorized vehicle that can be steered with the air’s crews in any direction. And, for all this the vehicle doesn’t require any sort of infrastructure. The Aeolus not just moves the travelers over some of the most alien and untouched places of the earth, but the aircraft may land in different places away from airstrips, courtesy to its vertical shape and a fold out stand. The airship, which is just a concept at the moment, if came in production will make your voyage splendid, safe and sustainable.
Would you like to fly around the Green Cloud with this airship? Hmmm???
Now you can charge your mobile phone while having a bike ride. Not a single penny spent, only sweat. The mobile phone is charged from 0 to 100% in about 90 minutes. A short ride from home to your office will charge the phone for the day.
The system consists of a small kinetic generator that provides power to your mobile phone while you take an evening ride around the neighborhood or pedal to work. This model takes about 90 minutes to go from dead to fully charged, and it produces energy as long as the wheels keep turning.
Designed by Oscar L’Hermitte, a current product design student at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London.
Hello? Ahhhh! ….(and then the onomatopoeia we know)
In the Netherlands, every square meter of ground is a man-made landscape: original nature is nowhere to be found. The Oostvaardersplassen – which make up one of the Netherlands’ most important nature reserves – were, after the land was reclaimed, originally an industrial site; they were only turned into a nature reserve later. Even the ‘Green Heart’ at the center of the most densely populated part of Netherlands is in actual fact a medieval industrial area, which was originally reclaimed for turf-cutting. Our ‘nature reserves’ are thus in fact ‘culture reserves’ shaped by human activity. “God created the world, with the exception of the Netherlands. That the Dutch created themselves”, as Voltaire put it in the eighteenth century. And ever since, we have been doing everything we can to live up to his pronouncement. Today, we even actively design and build nature in the Netherlands. Prehistoric forests are being planted in locations designated by bureaucrats: our image of Nature is being carefully constructed in a recreational simulation (a ‘regeneration of our lost heritage’, as the nature-builders call it themselves [1]). Traditional cattle breeds are even being placed in this so-called ‘new nature’ [2]. The original wild ox unfortunately became extinct in 1627, but the Scottish Highlander is an acceptable alternative. These cattle know what they’re supposed to do: graze, under orders of the forestry service. Thanks to them, the landscape stays clear instead of becoming overgrown (we find this attractive, as it reminds us of famous 17th-century landscape paintings). In theory, the animals are supposed to look after themselves, but in winter the forestry service is willing to give them a bit of extra food. It also removes dead animals, lest walkers be offended by a cow rotting on the footpath. In our culture, nature is continually presented as a lost world. It is associated with originality, yet appears only once it has disappeared. Our experience of nature is a retro effect [3].
Dubai’s latest offering is a carbon-neutral ‘pyramid’ city “Ziggurat” is the name of the temple towers of the ancient Mesopotamian valley with the characteristic form of a terraced pyramid with successively receding stories. Now the name is about to enter a new phase. Timelinks, a Dubai-based pioneering environmental design company, has chosen it to describe a sustainable city of the future.
The city, in the shape of a futuristic pyramid, will be exhibited at Cityscape Dubai and according to Timelinks, could support an entire community of up to one million people by harnessing the power of nature.
Ridas Matonis, Managing Director of Timelinks, said: “Ziggurat communities can be almost totally self-sufficient energy-wise. Apart from using steam power in the building we will also employ wind turbine technology to harness natural energy resources.”
Royal Boon Edam Group Holding has proved, once again, to be the world leader in entrance technology with their latest feature in revolving doors. Boon Edam developed an energy generating revolving door for the Driebergen-Zeist railway station in The Netherlands, which not only saves energy but also generates energy with every person passing through the door. A sustainable railway station
The refurbishment of the station was done by RAU, an architect firm specializing in ecological buildings, together with various environmental conscious companies. The innovative and characteristic concept contains of many sustainable technologies to contribute to the central theme of energy conservation. The station holds a daily capacity of 8500 commuters and was converted into a multifunctional area with a restaurant, tourist information and a visitor center.
The human powered energy revolving door
The Boon Edam revolving door plays a very important part in achieving and maintaining the sustainability of the building. The TQM revolving door will help primarily to save the carefully generated and conserved energy. A calculation was made for this particular situation that indicated an energy saving of around 4600 kWh per year, a considerable saving compared to a conventional sliding entrance.
For this very special project, Boon Edam has gone one step further to become the first manufacturer in the world to develop an energy generating manual revolving door, which will not only save energy but also generate energy with every person passing through the door. The revolving door is equipped with a special generator that is driven by the human energy applied to the door whilst the generator controls the rotating speed of the door and makes it safer. The ceiling of the revolving door is made of safety class and gives a clear view of the technology. A set of super capacitors stores the generated energy as a buffer and provides a consistent supply for the low energy LED lights in the ceiling. In case the LED lights have used-up all the stored energy, the highly efficient control unit will switch to the alternative mains supply of the building. This ensures that the door is illuminated at all times, even when the passenger flow is minimal.
Interaction with the user
LED scales inside the door indicates the amount of energy that is generated. When passing through the door at a slow speed, the scale will end up in the red or orange zone, whereas a normal or fast pace pushes the scale into the green zone, indicating that significant electric energy is generated. Another LED indicator at the control unit shows when the illumination of the revolving door is powered by human energy, or by the mains supply. “Human Powered Energy” stickers were applied to the revolving door to make users aware of their contribution to this green building. The total amount of energy that is generated by the revolving door is accumulated and shown on a large display inside the building.
Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, a new book by businessman and climate-change commentator Chris Goodall, says climate change can be overcome if we adopt the following energy sources and technologies. (text by New Scientist)
Wind power – Solar energy – Power from the oceans – Combined heat and power – Super-efficient homes – Electric cars – Second-generation biofuels – Carbon capture – Biochar – Biogas stoves.
The Portable Light Project is an initiative that mixes technology with the traditional cultural values of nomadic communities, to provide renewable and portable power to areas without centralized electricity supplies.
The project brings advanced photovoltaic (PV) technologies to indigenous communities in the developing world, supplying them sufficient amounts of light without the reliance of attaching to power lines or grid.
The idea combines lightweight solar or PV cells — which take in energy from the sun — with light-emitting diodes that are then attached to the surface of a fabric.
This fabric can be incorporated onto a bag or clothing, as examples, which is carried around or worn in daylight hours — effectively charging up the portable light for later use.
A single portable light unit can also provide enough power to charge a cell phone and provide bright, white light to support community-based education and household economic development. (text by Rocky Mountain Institute)
A Portable Light textile provides bright, white light to read, support cottage industries and facilitate community based education and health care. Each textile generates electrical power to charge cell phones and other small devices. Portable Light maximizes its efficiency through digital communication protocols between linked units. This distributed intelligence allows linked Portable Light units to charge in the sun and work together more efficiently as a group than they could as a collection of individual units. Families benefit from individual ownership of Portable Light and can join their units at times to create a co-operative and sustainable distributed network for community tasks.
Portable Light has been serving indigenous communities in the Mexican Sierra Madre since 2005. New Portable Light projects are underway for Nicaragua, through the Paso Pacifico program, for the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazonias through Tele-Salud Medicos and for Zwa-Zulu Natal through the iTEACH program at the Edendale Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital. The Portable Light Team is working with the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), to scale the project. (text by www.portablelight.org)
The Blind, Taiheiyo Evergreen Forests, 2008. Institute of Critical Zoologists.
Simulation of mountain top, The Real World development laboratory, Mr Toyo, 2008.
The white whale swimming in the ocean depths off the coast of Omishima, circa 1985.
Dr. 
‘Huaxi City Centre of Guiyang’ by 11 international architectural firms.
Designed by MAD.
Designed by BIG.
Designed by Rojkind Architects
Designed by Serie
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St. Etienne, France
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