Ljusglimtar

On new adventures in the Baltics. #nordplus #SmILE #latvia (på/i Statoil Salacgriva)

MetaboliCity is a vision of a city that metabolizes its resources and waste to supply its inhabitants with all the nourishment they need and more.

Hobbit Hole Chicken Coops Bring the Beauty of the Shire to Your Backyard! The Hobbit Hole coops are available in several different models inspired by the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each comes equipped with a nest box, 4 feet of roosting space, two windows, and AvanTech flooring for moisture resistance and durability.

Iskandar, an area that covers 2,217 square kilometers at the southern tip of Malaysia, is the center of its country’s sustainable development strategy as an ultra-green and socially integrated city of the future. This megalopolis, which is about 3 times the size of Singapore, is planned to run on green energy – eliminating a lot of the pollution problems facing modern Asian cities – and is supposed to be a socially inclusive haven for people to live, work and play. The current population of Iskander is 1.3 million people and it’s projected to grow to 3 million by 2025

Most people are looking at how one can make cars better, but Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure are looking at ways to fix the roads. The induction priority lane will charge your car while you drive, probably using induction coils buried in the road. Such a car could also very easily be made driverless, just following the coil.

Extraordinary Off-Grid Hobbit Home in Wales Only Cost £3,000 to Build Simon Dale constructed an extraordinary hobbit home that has virtually no visual or environmental impact on the surrounding landscape. Using locally-sourced and natural materials taken from the nearby woodlands.

Green Building in Zimbabwe Modeled After Termite Mounds The Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, typifies the best of green architecture and ecologically sensitive adaptation. The country’s largest office and shopping complex is an architectural marvel in its use of biomimicry principles. The mid-rise building, has no conventional air-conditioning or heating, yet stays regulated year round with dramatically less energy consumption using design methods inspired by indigenous Zimbabwean masonry and the self-cooling mounds of African termites!

Using bamboo rods, Hassani fashioned a spherical device light enough to be propelled by the breeze. On the outer end of this tumbling starburst are mine-sized discs made frombiodegradable plastic. At the heart of the sphere, called Mine Kafon, is a GPS computer. The idea is that these rolling minesweepers could be unleashed in an area known to be riddled with mines. The wind would blow it around randomly, and more than likely trigger a mine or two. It’s possible that a stiff wind could blow Mine Kafon over a mine, triggering it quickly, before blowing away. In most cases, detonation would destroy the sphere as well as the mine, but if it does, the materials are relatively benign. As Gadgetose points out, the explosion triggers the integrated GPS to log the location of the mine so the area can be noted and swept at a later time. 

H&M has come under fire after a Swedish broadcast claims the high-street retailer isn’t doing enough to prevent sweatshop-like conditions at a subcontractor’s factory in Cambodia. The television documentary, aired by TV4′s Kalla Fakta (“Cold Facts”) program on Wednesday night, alleges that Cambodian workers producing clothing for the company are paid so little they have to borrow money to buy food.

If you’re one of the 60 million Americans that will be affected by this storm, now’s a good time to prepare for extreme cold, wind, and lengthy power outages. These five essential green gadgets could help you stay warm, safe, and well informed.

As Hurricane Sandy barrels down on the East Coast, a group of activists with 350.org, a global climate campaign, will unfurl a giant parachute banner with the words "End Climate Silence."

Matsuo Basho was born in 1644 and by the time of his death in 1694 had become one of Japan’s most celebrated poets. In 1689, the haiku master -- known for his rejection of urban life – took a 2,400km trip through the northeastern provinces of Japan’s main island, Honshu, and this trip inspired his masterpiece, a book of personal narratives and haiku called Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North).

Eighty-nine-year-old military veteran Raymond Green decided that there’s no reason why clean energy and birds can’t coexist, so he designed the Catching Wind Power device, a bladeless wind turbine that promises to harness wind energy without harming our feathered friends.

City Rising

For Digital Fabrication with Danny Rozin, our assignment was to create something using the laser cutter. I chose to create a computer keyboard made of wood and moss. I was passionate about creating this because I feel the aesthetic of modern technological objects are cold and lifeless. Surrounded with tech gadgets made of glass, metals, and plastics – I believe that as a society – we are constantly removing ourselves from nature and have drawn ourselves into a motif of objects that are visually very clean, but also visually bland and tactilely inept. What if our technology lived and breathed? If it required us to water it at night in order to allow it to bloom? If it were both visually and tactilely stimulating would user interactions change and would their relationship toward the object change?

Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur – Unknown “That man is wise who talks little”