Sustainable Village in Nepal Houses Former Street Children

The Pegasus Project built a small sustainable village near Kathmandu, Nepal in the Himalaya mountains where there are over 40 super adobe domes to accommodate 80 children, 10 staff and a small school. The village also has solar panels for hot water and a bio gas plant. The video below shows how the adobe homes are built:

Wooden ‘Islands’ Allow Beachgoers to Enjoy Rocky Coast

Architect Vincent Guallart has come up with a way to access jagged, rocky oceanfront property that’s low impact and quite beautiful.  These hexagonal wooden ‘islands’ were built along a rough coast in Spain to allow locals to enjoy the beach comfortably without any major construction.  Guallart says they allow sunbathers and swimmers to enjoy a ‘previously nonexistent platform’.

Guallart is known for edgy, eye-catching designs, like this concept for the centerpiece of Polish city Wroclaw’s bid to host Expo 2012, a World’s Fair.

Link [TrendHunter] + [Guallart]

Vertical Farms are Beautiful and Productive

Imagine walking along a city street, looking up at the tall buildings around you and seeing beautiful hues of green, red, purple and other vibrant colors through glass windowpanes instead of just concrete and steel. Vertical farms wouldn’t just be a super smart way to grow local food in urban environments – they’re pretty, too. And, they’re well on their way to becoming reality.

From ecofriend:

Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Dr. Despommier’s pet project is the “vertical farm,” a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact. The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president.

Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said. While many believe that the potential concept is being given outlandish shape and form which is both unrealistic and not probable, I’m willing for now to go ahead with the concept of all this. After seeing what I have seen take shape in Dubai, improbable structures no longer exist in my vision and I’m willing to believe that very soon I will pick my apple from the 16th floor-West Block!

These artist renderings show some of the incredible ideas being developed. Design is getting greener and smarter!

Link [ecofriend]

The Slow Death of a City Block in St. Louis

“At any given time, there are about 6,000 abandoned buildings in St. Louis.”

BuiltStLouis.net laments the deterioration of what was once a city bustling with life, full of people and activity, but is now full of desolate urban landscapes punctuated by plywood boards over windows and piles of jagged bricks from demolitions. The worst part is the northern half of the city, which shows the most evidence of decay. BuiltStLouis.net has documented the fall of the 1900 block of Montgomery Street with painstaking detail, complete with drawings of how the area originally looked back in 1875 and how it looks now.

From BuiltStLouis.net:

The 1900 block of Montgomery Street is a textbook case, an ordinary residential block in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. At upper left, you see how it looked in 1875, its formative years, as captured in Compton and Dry’s perspective atlas of the city. It is a burgeoning urban environment: dense, walkable, human-scaled, full of sturdy red brick buildings. The block was alive, the buildings continuous from one corner to the other.

Today, 130 years later, only the shaded ones remain.

The devastation is so widespread that it’s hard to grasp how much has been lost. You visit 1900 Montgomery today, and you see 6 buildings, with spacious grass lots between them. You accept it and move on, thinking no further of it. And when another one succumbs to fire or wind or gravity or the bulldozer, you shrug. “It’s just one building,” they always say. Yes, one building…. one after another, and another, and another, and another, and another… thousands of anothers.

BuiltStLouis.net calls this story of decay ‘a disintegration of the urban fabric’. What was once a ‘series of connected outdoor rooms’ in a densely populated urban space is now practically devoid of life. The city is no longer walkable – retailers have long since moved. St. Louis certainly isn’t alone in this situation – so many other urban centers across America have seen the same thing happen. Perhaps there’s hope, though – as people begin to move toward walkable urban communities again, perhaps areas like these will be revitalized.

Check out BuiltStLouis.net for more details and photos.

Link [BuiltStLouis.net]

Disney’s ‘Dream Home’ is Tacky, Lame, and So Not Green

I’ve just seen the future, and it’s lame. Luckily, it’s nothing more than Disney’s ‘Dream Home’, not an actual vision of how we’ll be living our lives in the years to come. Unlike the innovative, futuristic 1950’s version, this ‘home of the future’ looks like a typical suburban McMansion, but with even more worthless electronic junk. Lloyd Alter of Treehugger agrees, and he’s written a scathing review of the home:

The builder said “The 1950s home didn’t look like anything, anywhere. It was space-age and kind of cold,” “We didn’t want the (new) home to intimidate the visitors. We want the house to be real accessible to our guests.” So Disney designer Tom Zofrea made it a mix of Art Nouveau and Craftsman Style. “The design celebrates the inventive thinking and optimism of both yesterday and today” But there seems to be nothing inventive at all, just more electronic junk than I have ever seen in one place, most of it off the shelf Microsoft and HP stuff. As one commenter said in an earlier post, “Instead of fantasizing about advancements in science and technology, we are once again led to simply fantasize about being rich.”

This ‘dream home’ is the antithesis of what a true dream home of the future should look like. Instead of moving in the direction of more pointless empty space, energy inefficiency, and dozens of gadgets plugged into the wall, we should be seeing something far smarter. I choose to treat this like an alt-timeline version of the home of the future: “Look at the tacky homes we could have been living in if we hadn’t started on the path to smart green design.”

Lloyd truly said it best:

Watch the appalling video on the hideous website with the nauseating music. Walt is spinning in his cryogenic cylinder.

Link [Treehugger]

Architect Incorporates Mystery into Fifth Ave Apartment

This story isn’t really green, it’s just too awesome to pass up. An architect in NYC decided to go the extra mile – or 10 – when working on one family’s $8.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment. The luxurious digs don’t just house the family’s four children, dog and a lot of very expensive furniture; it’s got some amazing surprises hidden inside.

From The New York Times:

But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets — messages, games and treasures — that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

The apartment even comes with its own book, part of which is a fictional narrative that recalls “The Da Vinci Code” (without the funky religion or buckets of blood) and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” the children’s classic by E. L. Konigsburg about a brother and a sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discover — and solve — a mystery surrounding a Renaissance sculpture. It has its own soundtrack, too, with contributions by Kate Fenner, a young Canadian singer and songwriter with a lusty, alternative, Joni Mitchell-ish sound, with whom Mr. Clough fell in love during the project.

Mr. Clough (Mr. Clue?) gathered 40 creative professionals together to create the scavenger hunt inside the apartment, which all starts with a hidden message on one of the bedroom’s ceilings. One cipher led to another, and it took the family months to get through them all. Read the full account at The New York Times for all the details; it’s like an incredibly imaginative children’s tale come to life. How awesome would that be – to move into a new home and have a mystery waiting for you?

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Chicago Plans New Harborside Green Space with ‘Eco-Bridge’

Chicago may just become America’s greenest city before long; they’re already working on a green roof program and a green alley project. Now, the city is working on an ambitious plan to provide residents with green space via an ‘Eco-Bridge’. The Eco-Bridge will be a semicircle around the Monroe Harbor, serving as a breakwater that will give Chicagoans calm waters for sailing and rowing. The bridge itself will also serve as recreational space, containing public parks and fountains.

More details from Inhabitat:

The Eco-Bridge was originally conceived in the early 1900s as part of the 1909 Burnham Plan of Chicago. The bridge is now being designed by hometown firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. The Eco-Bridge is the last of the major recommendations drafted by the master plan to provide recreational opportunities, views of the city, and calm water for rowing and sailing. The two-mile bridge will connect opposite ends of the city center and Grant Park.

To give a modern and sustainable twist to the original idea, wind turbines will also be incorporated in the project to add economic value and show Chicago’s dedication to sustainability. An observation tower will be placed at the center of the bridge, providing spectacular views of the lake and city. The bridge also provides a chance to showcase the ecology of the Great Lakes and provide a safe environment for fish and water plants.

Chicago hopes that the Eco-Bridge will further enhance their bid for the 2016 Olympic Games – they hope the observation tower will be used to house the Olympic flame. It’s really a wonder why it’s taken so long to get this going, it seems like a great idea to promote the city’s sustainable initiatives, add recreational space, and create a draw for tourists.

The bottom photo shows the original 1919 plans for the Chicago City Center.

We’re proud to see this great city lead the nation in eco-friendly initiatives (EarthFirst headquarters are located in Chicago) and look forward to seeing more exciting things from the Windy City!

Link [Inhabitat]

Extremely Phallic, Clean Techonology Skyscaper makes our Editorial Intern Think Dirty Thoughts

Caroline likes…

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture of Chicago are working on a new wind-powered skyscraper that will make you need to cross your legs.

The curved tip of the building will be covered with a photovoltaic helmet, and turbines up and down the (ahem) shaft of the proposed structure will direct the windy cities’ wind inward for power and insulation. The eco-ingeniousness alone is enough to make you want to rub up against it. Then, you take a look at the slick, strong lines of the building and there’s no holding back. Seriously, the building looks exactly like a skyward-pointing, throbbing male organ complete with glorious mane of lush, green pubic hair. Can’t wait until it’s erect..ed.

Link [TrendHunter]