WOrld BOttle

interesting use of the statistical correlation between homelessness and alcohol abuse...

the POOP house

In the Architect's (Andrew Maynard Architecture) words...

"No matter which way you look at it, building a house is never green. It takes vast quantities of materials with high levels of embodied energy and water and it creates a lot of waste. Even houses constructed from recycled materials often have an incredibly high embodied energy to implement. So we at Andrew Maynard Architects asked ourselves "what's the greenest building" and we concluded that the answer was "no building at all". But rather than be nihilistic about it we decided that a house should build itself through a lengthy period of assembling house hold waste. Through adopting similar structural logic employed at Stanford University the Poop house is a water structure that, over time, takes all household bio-waste, including human excrement and food, and slowly constructs the walls and roof. "...more here

Sounds fantastic in principle... but the ‘yuk factor’ is hard to overcome ... a bit like drinking recycled sewage - no scientific or health reason for it not being ok, just yuk.

Wind to Light

Recently I was in windy Wellington for a 24hour design competition, where I was memerised by the colour of the water, highly amused by the proliferation (four) of strippers surrounding the School of Architecture and Design and informed that the Mayor had recently committed the city to Carbon Neutrality (more here) . Then I read about the Wind to Light project and thought... just maybe...

Artist Jason Burges Studio in onedotzero words
"this experimental site-specific installation illustrates alternative, sustainable ways of harnessing energy that will explore the power of the wind in the city, visualising it as an ephemeral cloud of light. the installation is custom built, using 500 mini wind turbines to generate power, which illuminates hundreds of mounted leds, creating firefly-like fields of light, with wind visually interpreted as electronic patterns across the installation. wind around the southbank generates the power, creating a unique and thought-provoking light art piece that will delight all ages. commissioned by riba london and onedotzero for architecture week 2007"

onedotzero presents: jason bruges studio wind to light in conjunction with riba london and southbank centre lightlab

An inspiring bit of subdivison

solar powered kettles in tibet

"In Rizhao City, which means City of Sunshine in Chinese, 99 percent of households in the central districts use solar water heaters, and most traffic signals, street and park lights are powered by photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. In the suburbs and villages, more than 30 percent of households use solar water heaters, and over 6,000 households have solar cooking facilities. More than 60,000 greenhouses are heated by solar panels, reducing overhead costs for farmers in nearby areas... The fact that Rizhao is a small, ordinary Chinese city with per capita incomes even lower than in most other cities in the region makes the story even more remarkable. The achievement was the result of an unusual convergence of three key factors: a government policy that encourages solar energy use and financially supports research and development, local solar panel industries that seized the opportunity and improved their products, and the strong political will of the city's leadership to adopt it..." Read more

Meanwhile in Australia...
"There is no technical reason why Australia could not produce a very high proportion of its electricity from renewable sources, backed up by natural gas as a transitional fuel. All that is lacking is political will." Greens energy spokesperson Senator Christine Milne. Read more

via renewable energy access

Beer + Sunshine = Hot Water

A Chinese farmer has made his own solar-powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes. “I invented this for my mother. I wanted her to shower comfortably,” says Ma Yanjun, of Qiqiao village, Shaanxi province. Ma’s invention features 66 beer bottles attached to a board. The bottles are connected to each other so that water flows through them. Sunlight heats the water as is passes slowly through the bottles before flowing into the bathroom as hot water, reports China Economy Network. Ma says it provides enough hot water for all three members of his family to have a shower every day. And more than 10 families in the village have already followed suit and installed their own versions of Ma’s invention.

via Weird Asian News

Mixed Greens

An international survey of state-of-the-art sustainable skyscraper design. MIXED GREENS marks the first collaboration between The Skyscraper Museum and The New York Academy of Sciences.
See also Uber-Eco-Towers: The Top Ten Green Skyscrapers
via The Underwire