Prior to the widespread use of polluting fossil fuels, most buildings were made from local materials, using techniques that made sense for the local climate and lifestyle. Now the Architecture Foundation of BC has issued an open challenge to the world: design a house using only materials and systems from within 100 miles of Vancouver.  This competition is open to designers, builders, students, thinkers and anyone else in the world who wants to accept the challenge.

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Post tags: 100 mile design challenge, 100 Mile Home, 100 mile house, architecture foundation of british columbia, Design Competition, green architecture, local architecture, local materials, local materials construction, locally sourced materials, sustainable design

Londoners taking the number 38 bus between Victoria and Hackney yesterday had the honor of being the first to ride the brand new Eco-Routemaster hybrid bus. The beautiful hybrid double-decker is sure to be a new icon for the city, and it gets more than twice the mileage of its standard diesel counterparts. It is the first of 8 Eco-Routemasters that will be rolled out between now and May.

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Post tags: eco design, eco-routemaster, green design, green public transit, Green Public Transportation, green transportation, hybrid bus, hybrid car, hybrid double decker bus, hybrid vehicle, London hybrid bus, routemaster, sustainable design

Japanese designer Atsuhiro Hayashi has created a poignant way to keep your favorite beverages chilled: ice cubes shaped like polar bears and penguins on ice floes.  These beautiful frosty figurines will help you keep your lemonade cool as summer’s heat sets in while serving as a reminder of the reality of climate change.

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Post tags: Design for Awareness, eco inspiration, global warming awareness, Global Warming Ice Cubes, green design, Penguin Ice Cubes, Penguins and Polar Bears, Polar Bear Ice Cubes

This rebuilt summer lodge in Skåtøy, Norway by Filter Arkitekter blends into its beautiful surroundings while keeping a small environmental footprint.  The owners wanted a cottage that opened up to the stunning views of the Kragerø Archipelago but also had privacy indoors and out. The 1,075 square foot home gives them just that as well as a sedum-covered living roof and a natural interior made from stone and untreated wood.

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", Green Building, green design, green roof, Green Summer House, Living Roof Homes, natural home, Norway Green Home, Small home, Sustainable Building, sustainable design

Today GE announced the launch of GeoSpring, its most energy-efficient hybrid-electric hot water heater. They also announced the opening of their new GeoSpring manufacturing facility in Lousiville, KY, which is part of GE’s commitment to invest $1 billion and create more than 1,300 new U.S. jobs by 2014. According to GE, The GeoSpring uses 62% less energy and will save average users $325 a year on their electric bill – imagine the savings if you have shower hogging teenagers!

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Post tags: "energy star", efficient hot water heater, energy efficient appliance, Energy-Efficient Appliances, GE GeoSpring, Green Appliances, green collar economy, green collar jobs, green economy, hybrid hot water heater, smart grid

Boulder Electric Vehicle just sold the first commercial electric truck capable of hitting 70 mph to Precision Plumbing and Electric. The company’s new fleet will use only one half-kilowatt hour per mile (2-5 times better than a diesel engine), generate zero local emissions, and find a savings of $5,000 per truck per year. Not only do these 2-ton capacity work-horses get 120 miles on a charge, but they are designed and made in the USA! How’s that for green economy?

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Post tags: Boulder Electric Vehicle, Commercial Electric Truck, electric vehicle, green delivery vehicle, USA Made EV

Mom-turned-designer Kate Fagelman of Little Play Spaces has created a series of kid-sized recycled cardboard playhouses that are so cool we wish she made them for us ‘big-kids’ The French Cafe has a chalk board menu, shelves for the finest little cheeses,  menus and more. Fagelman also offers a Medieval Castle complete with a tower and a customizable family crest for the little knights and princesses of your home.

+ French Cafe $79

+ Medieval Castle $79

+ Little Play Spaces

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Post tags: build your own playhouse, Cardboard Cafe, eco-friendly playhouse, green kids gear, green kids projects, Little Play Spaces, recycled cardboard furniture, Recycled Play House

The people who brought us memory foam, satellite radio, invisible braces and the charcoal water filter are at it again. The brilliant minds at NASA’s Ames Research Center are working to create a carbon-neutral fuel and food source using floating plastic bags filled with wastewater and algae. Supported by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and the California Energy Commission, OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosure for Growing Algae) hopes to take advantage of the amazing amount of oils produced by some algea (up to 40 times more than soy per acre).

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Post tags: algae biofuel, biofuel production, biofuel research, carbon neutral fuels, NASA OMEGA, renewable energy

Gather is a restaurant located at the heart of the sustainable food movement in Berkeley, California. Designed by Nicole Sillapere of Sillapere Design, the beautiful eco restaurant is housed in the greenest building in Berkeley, The David Brower Center. The chefs serve up local seasonal fare from some Bay Area favorite farms like River Dog and Devils Gulch paired with biodynamic wines from Verdad and other eco wineries — places that are proving that responsible farming can heal the land. The restaurant itself is made of beautifully re-purposed materials like seat benches made from leather belts and banquet tables made from old high school bleachers.

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Post tags: david brower center, Gather, Gather Restaurant, green design, recycled building materials, recycled interior design, repurposed interior furnishings, Responsible food, seat belt bench, sustainable design, sustainable food

A new project in Cambridge, MA dubbed the “Park Spark” has dogs powering the street lights in their own dog parks. Designed by Matthew Mazzotta, a visual artist with a degree from MIT, the project uses dog poop from the park to produce methane, which is then burned to light the park at night. The project was funded through the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and a partnership with the City of Cambridge, and it will hopefully spark a dog poo-fueled revolution of biogas-powered parks across the country.

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Post tags: cambridge, dog poo power, green design, MIT, Poo Power!, renewable energy, Spark Park Project, sustainable design

Designer Andrew Kim has created a new Eco Coke concept bottle that minimizes the packaging’s environmental footprint while maximizing its efficiency. The square bottles are more collapsible, fit tightly with other bottles for efficient shipping and stocking, and are made from sugar based bioplastic.

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Post tags: collapsible container, Eco-Coke Packaging, eco-friendly packaging, green design, green product, sustainable design, Waste reduction

Windows are a two-way street when it comes to efficient green building. We need them for light, fresh air, beauty, and the connection they create to the outdoors, but even the most efficient windows, installed perfectly, are akin to having a hole in the wall as far as energy is concerned. Enter Peer +, who has developed a new type of energy-generating smart glass that can change its opacity to filter sunlight, significantly reducing the energy costs of solar over-exposure. You can select settings from bright to dark to private (scattering), and the windows will actually generate electricity from the blocked sunlight. Pretty nifty!

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Post tags: building products, dynamic windows, Peer+, PV Windows, Smart Energy Glass, windows

Bamboo forests are beautiful things — especially when they are cleaning urban air, soil, and water AND shielding communities from industry and heavily trafficked areas. Urban Biofilter creates bamboo forests on brownfields that are fed with wastewater. The harvested Bamboo then creates income in areas that are otherwise neglected through sustainable bamboo harvesting and timber production.

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Post tags: Bioremediation, brownfield reclamation, green design, green gardening, public space, sustainable design, sustainable landscaping, urban biofilter project, waste management

This week the International Living Building Institute released its new green building standard to the public at Greenbuild 2009. Version 2.0 expands on its already impressive focus to now cover social issues – any Certified Living Building must be net-zero energy, net-zero water, non-toxic, provide for habitat restoration on sister sites, and urban agriculture is mandated. The 20 imperatives, all of which must be addressed, go well beyond the simple efficiency standards that our industry seems content to comply with before calling a project ‘sustainable’. Seriously, read this thing!

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Post tags: "leed", Architecture, Certification, International Living Building Institute, Jason McLennan, Living Building Challenge, Social Justice, Sustainable buildings

If you were at West Coast Green this past weekend you would have surely noticed the elegant bamboo structures along the waterfront surrounded by beautiful native landscaping. What you may not have realized unless you looked closely is that the structure was actually supporting hanging gardens of marsh grass and was a way of preventing and remediating pollution from water runoff. A collaboration of The Natural Builders, Design Ecology, Floating Islands and Bertotti Landscaping, the installation was the talk of the trade show and highlight for us at Inhabitat.

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Post tags: bamboo sculpture, Bertotti Landscaping, Bioremediation, Design Ecology, Floating Islands International, storm water, The Natural Builder, waste water treatment, west coast green

While scientists work to increase the efficiency of photovoltaics, designers are striving to make them sleeker, more adaptive, and easier to install. Case in point: SRS Energy’s Solé Power Tile, a beautiful solar shingle that is designed to fit into standard Mission style roofs while generating electricity. We caught up with these ingenious modular solar panels at West Coast Green this year, where they stole the show alongside several other innovative solar designs.

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Post tags: Armageddon Energy, green design, renewable energy, Soalr Panels, solar tiles, SRS Energy, sustainable design, west coast green

Combining methods for urban farming with design thinking, MetaboliCity is a design-research project by Loop.pH that explores how designers can help create models for sustainable urban food creation. Set on catalyzing positive changes in the built environment, the name is derived from a vision of a city that metabolizes its resources and waste to supply its inhabitants with all the nourishment they need and more.

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Post tags: city planning, food growing, London Design Week, Metabolicity, urban agriculture, Urban Farming, urban gardening

We spotted this fancy multi-tasking toilet/sink by Roca at the London Design Festival. It’s obviously compact and perfect for any loft space or small apartment, and its sleek design houses a nifty self-contained greywater system that is capable of reducing water use by up to 25% compared to a standard 6/3-litre dual flush toilet. It’s a much trendier and elegant solution to existing sink to toilet greywater systems, and we’re excited that high design has embraced waste-water management.

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Post tags: green design, greywater recycling system, roca, sustainable design, w+w, washbasin + watercloset, Water Issues

Recent RPI Masters of Architecture graduate Henry Miller has devised a way to reuse waste plastic as an aggregate in cement, circumventing the energy-intensive process of plastic recycling. By grinding up landfill-bound plastic and mixing it with portland cement, Miller was able to create a material just as strong as traditional concrete made with mined aggregate. The ingenious solution netted miller first place in the “Component Category” of the second annual Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World competition.

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Post tags: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, building materials, concrete, Henry Miller, Plastic Aggregate Concrete, Plastic Concrete, Portland Cement Association, Recycled Concrete, Recycled Materials, RPI

StrawJet, of Ashland, Oregon, has developed a unique process for the creation of structural building components from a variety of waste agricultural stalks. Essentially, they have created a machine that takes waste stalks and creates a tightly wrapped beam which can then be applied to many different facets of construction. The cables are made and wrapped without glues, resins or chemicals and are made completely from waste material. As long as we are growing food there will be straw, so why not use it creatively?

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Post tags: CASBA, Green Building, Malawi, natural building, reuse, SOAIA, Straw Building, StrawJet, Sustainable Building, Waste Straw