The Drake Landing Solar Community is the first solar powered community of North America. Located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada, the project sets a wonderful example of how every household can lead a sustainable lifestyle. There are 800 solar panels located throughout the community on garage roofs, and they produce 1.5 mega-watts of thermal power during a summer day and supply heat to the district heating system. The whole system meets 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs of the homes.
Have you ever pedaled on a stationary bike at the gym and thought to yourself: ‘What if this energy I am exerting could be used for something better than just making me sweat?” Well now a new proposal from architect Mitchell Joachim promises to take all that energy expended at the gym to the next level, by capturing all that exertion and using it to transport people around the rivers of New York City. The River Gym concept is a human-powered floating gym that will provide the user with the one experience that no other gym can provide: floating your workout around Manhattan. Designed by architect Mitchell Joachim and personal trainer Douglas Joachim, this project could bring inspiration to both the morning commute and workout.
Herzog & de Meuron set about designing the Tate Modern Extension in 2006 with a modern, glass-filled aesthetic that contrasted the museum building’s origins as a former power station. A recently unveiled redesign of the addition has brought a pyramid shaped brick structure to this anchor point of the museum. The new program not only fits the museum’s needs better, it is poised to set a new standard for sustainability in the UK.
Al Gore recently appealed to the competitive nature of the US as a market driven society with an energy challenge that calls for a complete shift to renewables in the entire electricity sector. The former Vice President and Nobel laureate is raising the bar with the goal of total carbon-free wind, solar and geothermal power by 2018. Part of the vision includes powering electric vehicles (as truly emissions free), but the ambitious plan would transcend through transportation and ripple throughout the green building industry and beyond. With elections on the near horizon and a push to drill for yet more oil, Gore’s challenge is as timely as it is clear: in order to transcend an unsustainable existence, we need to transform our energy outlook.
There’s something about the prospect of starting an entire city from scratch that’s sure to stir the imagination, evoking ideals of efficiency and future-forward design at it’s finest. Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects were recently presented with just such an honor when they won first place in an international competition to create a new sustainable city set on the Paljassaare Peninsula in Estonia. Dubbed Ecobay, the mixed-use development will provide a self-sustaining community complete with housing, schools, commercial districts, and daycare centers. Situated serenely overlooking the Baltic Sea, the new city will benefit from a diverse portfolio of clean energy sources and will house up to 6,000 citizens as it is completed over the next 15-20 years.
Behold the mowercycle! Is this an awesome DIY design or what? This ingenious bicycle-lawnmower fashioned by an unknown suburban lawn owner out of an old bicycle and a broken lawnmower, is a testament to the creativity of the human spirit. Spotted in dot dream’s flickr stream, we have no idea who the original photographer was, nor do we know anything about the owner/designer of the MOWERCYCLE. All we know is that it is awesome and should be an inspiration to sustainable design fans and DIY tinkerers everywhere.
Sustainability got sexier last week as Coldcut and Jade Jagger hosted the opening of Surya in King’s Cross. The Club4Climate project is London’s first taste of eco-friendly clubbing, making clubbers happy in the knowledge that their organic beverage-induced booty shaking can generate 60% of the energy needed to run the club. The venue’s most exciting innovation is the piezoelectric dancefloor, which uses quartz crystals and ceramics to turn clubbers’ movement into electricity!
A few years ago, if you were to say that the largest rooftop solar panel was going to be installed in a car manufacturing plant we’d probably say that you were, well, bonkers. If you had mentioned that not only would this be true, but that it would be installed in the roof of a General Motors plant, we’d have gladly tried to sell you a bridge. Surprisingly though you’d have been correct. Last week General Motors announced that its Zaragoza plant in Spain will be fitted with the world’s largest rooftop solar power station.
This stunning energy-efficient glider recently took top prize in the Lucky Strike Junior Designer Competition for its innovative re-envisioning the life-cycle of the airplane. Designed by Roland Cernat, the Oriens Glider is constructed entirely of recyclable materials, runs on clean energy, and boasts a sleek translucent shell finished with glossy organic contours.
You may have heard the rumors, but it is now official, Ferrari is developing a hybrid sports car. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the company president, said, “We are currently working on the development of a Ferrari that will use alternative energy sources and which will be based on what we are doing at the moment in Formula One.” As per the 2009 Formula One regulations for vehicles, all race cars will utilize a kinetic energy recovery system, or KERS, which is essentially the hybrid system. The Italian sports car manufacturer expects to have the new vehicle on the market by 2015.
BIOS Design Collective is a working group of academic and professional designers “exploring the application of biological patterns to architecture.” The latest project to pull natural science into the built environment is the PhotoBioReactor Sculpture by Charles Lee. Part sculpture, part renewable fuel factory and part bio-remediation plant, the design brings artistic, yet functional, forms into the landscape to inspire the imagination.
Researchers at MIT recently revealed a cutting-edge solar technology that promises a “tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by solar cells.” The development utilizes dye-glazed glass panels to capture and concentrate sunlight and then transfer it to an edge-aligned framework of photovoltaic cells. The resulting system uses cheap and readily available materials, is easy to manufacture, and modular systems can even be layered over existing photovoltaic systems to effectively double their energy efficiency for a minimal additional cost.
With a design which would easily fit in a 1970’s Stanley Kubrick film, Postfossil’s award winning First Light reading lamp is certainly cinematic. Powered entirely by a cog and wheel mechanism, the light remains lit once ‘wound’ by pulling the weighted cord. While the illumination relies on a relatively continuous input from the user, Postfossil’s Anna Blattert and Daniel Gafner have found a way to remind us of our energy consumption though the tried and tested method of action and reward.
Spirituality seems to be taking a green course. The world’s largest solar kitchen has been installed by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University and Academy for a Better World. And now a Hindu religious and cultural center in California has taken significant steps towards sustainability including running on solar power, reducing energy consumption and a plethora of planting trees. Currently under construction, this religious meeting place is being built as a place of love, peace and harmony, and protecting the environment is part of the vision.
Seems like everywhere we turn these days there’s green news on the Olympic front. We’ve written about the London 2012 Olympics stadium and Beijing’s Olympic Stadium. And now, even as the 2008 Summer Games have yet to start, the 2010 Winter Olympics are making headlines with the intent to become the green envy of eco-minded Olympic planning committees everywhere. The 2010 Winter Olympics Athletes’ Village will be built to a remarkably high level of sustainability and meet the LEED standards.
The opportunity to rebuild New Orleans as an international example of sustainability comes in the aftermath of what is increasingly being recognized as the tipping point for global awareness of climate change and its devastating impacts. Global Green is committed to helping New Orleans rebuild and to use the national and international attention on the city as a wake-up call to push urgently for solutions to global warming. Global Green is accomplishing this through many initiatives including The Holy Cross Project which is going for the USGBC’s highest LEED certification.
As part of G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan, Sharp will be showcasing some futuristic new technologies in the Zero Emission House. Amongst the future-forward prototypes to be shown: a 26-inch solar-powered LCD television that can be powered by a thin-film photovoltaic panel! Sharp’s plan is to distribute the TV and solar module to areas that have no easy access to grid power.
A snake-like rubber tube floating in the ocean could prove that wave energy conversion is an economically viable solution to meet our power needs. At least that’s what the creators of the Anaconda device are hoping. Designed in the UK by Francis Farley and Rod Rainey, the Anaconda is a very simple giant rubber tube that generates energy by simply bobbing up and down in the water. We’ll bite our tongues and hold the inevitable dirty jokes on this one (but do check out the video below the fold).
Hidden Valley Cabins is Australia’s first carbon neutral resort and tour company. The solar powered getaway is located one and half hours northwest of Townsville, near Running River on the western slope of the Paluma range in Queensland, Australia. This is Australia’s first stand-alone resort that operates solely on solar power, and saves 78 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year!
Just as things were really heating up in the solar energy sector, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) pulled the plug on new solar power plants. Last week the New York Times reported that “the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.” Headlines like world’s largest solar array in California or world’s largest solar power plant in the Mojave desert promised to be few and far between as the BLM decided to take its time to assess the more than 130 proposals filed by solar companies in the past three years. Just days later, after an uproar of voiced concern, the moratorium was reversed. Not fast enough to avoid drops in stocks, but quick enough to avoid fatally derailing the renewable energy sector off the tracks.
Just north of I-80, between Toledo and Cleveland, is an unexpected educational facility that is setting a shining example of sustainable building for ecological and human health. Completed in 2000, the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies is an ongoing green build experiment, as its energy performance is studied and adjusted as green technologies continue to evolve. We wouldn’t expect less from Inhabitat favorite William McDonough + Partners, but were surprised to find that this particular PV-powered experiment was taking place in Ohio. It just goes to show that you don’t have to live in sunny California in order to efficiently harvest solar power.
Foster+Partners is making their mark in Amsterdam with their newly completed towers housing the headquarters for Ernst & Young. Standing 24 stories tall, the new tower has been dubbed the “gateway” to the Vivaldi Park area of a new Zuidas district development south of Amsterdam. While it is arguable that the new Ernst & Young headquarters is not nearly as highly designed of as some of our past Foster + Partners postings, there are at least two things that we can guarantee about this new design: the building is completed and it is exceeding targeted Dutch environmental standards.
The crowd was rapt this year at the 37th Annual Architectural Awards ceremony held June 14th in Beverly Hills where the Los Angeles Business Council recognized 25 project teams and seven entertainment studios for outstanding contributions to Los Angeles. The diverse projects spanned 12 different categories including mixed-use, preservation, public use, landscape architecture, renovation, and sustainability, and this year the urban fabric of LA featured several notable green threads.
A few months ago, prolific product design star Philippe Starck shocked the world with his proclamation ‘Design is Dead’, and the announcement of his pending retirement due to his frustration with the ethical/consumption issues inherent to product design. Sounds to us like Starck had some sort of a midlife crisis and came to a realization that everything he’s ever designed is totally useless:
Of course, we could have told him this awhile ago - but were still a bit surprised and frustrated about his pessimistic proclamation and subsequent retirement. One would think that the most helpful and sensible approach to the realization that one has been wasting one’s time producing useless crap (like uncomfortable see-through plastic chairs and scarily alien looking lemon-juicers that can’t actually be used) - would be to STOP producing useless crap and start putting one’s talent to use to try to make a positive difference in the world.
And despite the melodramatic announcement this spring, perhaps this is where Starck is headed after all, regardless of the threats of giving up entirely. Recently Philippe Starck has brought an amazing idea for renewable wind energy to life through a sleek new mini wind turbine called ‘Democratic Ecology’.
