If you’ve ever seen a painfully chained or otherwise constrained tree on the street, you might have wished you could free it – but how? One Brooklynite has taken the matter into his own hands with his “Treedom Project“, which aims to find chained or otherwise abused NYC trees (the shackles don’t just look oppressive – they can actually cause trees to weaken and die) and liberate them. With the help of a network of “informants” and a pair of city distributed clippers, Rob Birdsong is planning to set each and every wrongly chained tree free. Read on to see how you can help!
Freeman Thomas won his first drawing competition in the first grade—it was a fire truck. Today, Thomas is credited with delivering some of the hottest designs in the automotive industry. A pioneer in his field, he has designed everything from the New Beetle to the Audi TT, and he’s been steering Ford’s Strategic Design department as Director since 2005. In anticipation of our ‘Design with a Conscience’ webcast—a thought-provoking event, which brought together visionary California architects and automotive designers eager to talk about the intersection of car and building design—we asked Mr. Thomas to answer few questions for us about the future of car design, as well as some of the things that inspire his work. Read on to hear what he had to say, and then find out what was discussed in the webcast here.
If you’ve always dreamed of having a little herb garden in your kitchen, here’s a video DIY from our friend Summer Rayne Oakes that can bring that fantasy to fruition today. Follow along as Summer and her dad use just a few components to create a mason jar herb garden that not only provides fresh seasonings for cooking but also looks fantastic.
Google’s amazing new Timelapse may be the closest thing to a time machine that we’ve seen yet. Forget waiting for Doc to fix the time-traveling Delorean, Timelapse has the capability of showing some of the big changes seen on Earth since 1986. Although it can only go back 28 years, the feature lets us see the incredible growth of urban sprawl, or deterioration of the world’s forests, and the drift and melt of glaciers from year to year.
Photo via Shutterstock
We broke a record this week — but not the good kind. On Thursday, scientists at a research facility on top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii reported that average daily levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time. As the New York Times notes, CO2 levels haven’t been this high for at least 3 million years, meaning that we are likely to see changes to the climate never experienced by humans before. The 400 PPM milestone is symbolic, but it’s a reminder of how global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions are failing.
It all started three years ago with a funky felt lounger featuring a cushion made from rolled felt that Brooklyn-based design studio Lamacek unveiled at BLKYN Designs 2010. Then, last year, Lamacek founder Connie Lam expanded her line of felt furnishings to include small table pads that can be used as trivets and larger wall clusters. Lamacek is back at BKLYN Designs again this year with a wide range of products made from bundled pieces of rolled-up felt, and word on the street is that she also takes custom orders.
A 408-foot silver spire was installed on top of One World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan on Friday, bringing its official height to 1,776 feet and making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Since the tower was first announced, a debate has raged over whether or not it truly is the tallest. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat — the authority on such matters — because the WTC’s spire is ornamental and not functional, it was counted in the building’s official height, edging out Chicago’s Willis Tower.
Calls to boycott western fashion companies mounted following the tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza Building that killed more than 800 people in Bangladesh, but labor activists caution that this is not the most effective solution to the problem. Instead, they businesses and the government to step up their standards so that locals can still benefit from the work without the hazards. Here are nine brands that are leading the way.
Communist leaders of the former Soviet Union had some wacky plans that trickled into all spheres of life – including fashion. So New York based artists Joanna Malinowka and Christian Tomaszewski from Poland designed a giant inflatable Russian space suit modeled after the garment worn by the first woman in space, Valentina Tershkova, and are currently holding a fashion show in its belly – right now – at the Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw, Poland.
Photo by Andrew Biraj for Reuters
We’ve been closely following the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, where over 700 people have lost their lives when an eight-story garment factory collapsed on April 24th. Rescue workers are still pulling victims from the wreckage and the death toll continues to rise. “Fast Fashion” and lack of corporate social responsibility certainly contributed to the disaster, but there’s also another issue at hand that is even more important – building practices. Bad buildings kill people. Without proper building codes, appropriate architecture & engineering, safe building practices and government oversight, inadequate building practices put people at risk. This incident makes it plainly obvious that the construction industry in Bangladesh is broken – and everyone involved, from the owners to the architects, engineers, planning commission, inspectors and even the municipality is to blame.
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