Green design will save the world

Architecture

World’s Largest and Most Expensive Family Home Completed

by Diane Pham, 10/14/10

filed under: Architecture, Greenwashing

The “Greenest of All Buildings” was recently completed in Mumbai, India and we couldn’t be more appalled. The Antilia house which unveiled its first renderings just over two-years ago has become a frightening reality, egregiously boasting 27 stories at 568 feet high, with a total area of over 398,000 square feet of living space. What at first glimpse looks and sounds like a typical skyscraper is far from it – the Antilla is in fact a $1 billion family home built for India’s richest man (and Forbes’ fourth richest man) Mukesh Ambani, his wife, and three children. Constructed within a country estimated to have one-third of the world’s poorest population, the Antilia truly exemplifies the disease of excessive consumption, extreme wastefulness, and unsustainable living that is permeating today’s society.

Contests

ANNOUNCING: The Inhabitat Green Halloween Costume Contest!

by Yuka Yoneda, 10/14/10

filed under: Announcements, Green Design Competitions

Calling DIY Costume-Makers and Creative Halloween Crafters!

This year skip the local big box store’s selection of generic polyester getups and fashion your very own green-themed DIY Halloween costume, then enter it into our spectacular Green Halloween Costume Contest for some ghoulish glory and pulse-pounding prizes! Not only will your costume be one-of-a-kind, but you’ll be able to show off your otherworldly costume crafting skills to everyone reading Inhabitat, and the winners will take home exciting prizes like a sweet FEED Halloween bag filled with Yummy Earth Lollipops, an awesome $100 gift certificate to the Inhabitatshop or our fabulous Inhabitat t-shirts and tote bags! So what are you waiting for?

ENTER OUR CONTEST HERE! >

And if you’d rather flaunt the costumes you made for your kids and win cute kids’ schwag, enter them into in the kid-oriented INHABITOTS GREEN HALLOWEEN COSTUME CONTEST >

Need some inspiration? Check out our gallery of last year’s winners:

NYC Readers: Join Our Inhabitat Meetup Focus Group!

by Mike Chino, 10/14/10

filed under: Announcements

Heads up New York Inhabitat Readers!

Are you an avid Inhabitat reader? Do you want to meet the team behind Inhabitat and have a hand in helping us improve the website? Looking for a free meal and some Inhabishwag for your time? We’re looking for some awesome NYC-area readers who would like to come chat with us for an hour on Friday, October 22nd or Saturday, October 23rd and give us feedback and suggestions that will help us improve Inhabitat. All participants will be compensated for their time with food, awesome inhabischwag (T-shirts) and Inhabitat Shop gift certificates. Best of all, you’ll have a chance to contribute your voice and shape the future of the Inhabitat website. Send an email to editor at inhabitat dot com with the title “Inhabitat NYC Reader Survey” if you’d like to join us – we’re looking forward to meeting you!

Email us here >

Art

GUERILLA STREET ART: Amazing Scratched Building Portraits

by Bridgette Meinhold, 10/14/10

filed under: Architecture, Art

Call it street art, call it reverse graffiti, or call it architectural sculpture - whatever it is, Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto's portrait series is mesmerizing and fascinating. Farto has been interested in street art since he was 13 years old and now this 23 year old artist has taken up scratching faces into the facades of buildings all around the world. These architectural embellishments, or rather subtractions, are hauntingly beautiful and created using jackhammers, picks and hammers.

Heat Your Home With SolTech Energy’s Beautiful Glass Roof Tiles

by Frida Jeppsson, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Materials, Solar Power

SolTech Energy, a Swedish company selling solutions for clean solar power, was recently awarded “Hottest New Material 2010” for their unique home heating system contained within roofing tiles made out of ordinary transparent glass. The attractive house-warming tiles (somewhat ironically) give roofs a beautiful, icy appearance quite unlike anything else we’ve ever seen before.

Architecture

Gorgeous Solar Powered Auditorium Unveiled in Italy

by Bridgette Meinhold, 10/14/10

filed under: Architecture, Sustainable Building

Italian architect Marco Acerbis recently unveiled his latest architectural project at the 12th Annual Venice Biennale of Architecture, which kicked off at the end of August. POLINS is a multi-functional business building designed for the Portogruaro Council and Portogruaro Campus, and the structure hosts an incredible auditorium and meeting space. The gorgeous building has been partially built into the side of a hill and features sustainable materials and a solar panel covered roof that both generates power and provides shade for the building.

Interiors

Staybull Makes Recycled Wood Flooring Out of Lumber Scraps

by jsantiago, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Materials, Green Products, green Interiors

Recycled flooring manufacturer Staybull Flooring is working to cut out the waste cycle in the flooring industry by salvaging over 20 species of discarded lumber from mills across the world. The strips are fused together with VOC-free adhesives and finished to create an eco-friendly flooring product with many benefits. The material has an extended lifespan compared to concrete installations and features a unique, mosaic-like aesthetic.

DOI Approves First Solar ‘Power Tower’ in the US

by Timon Singh, 10/14/10

filed under: Renewable Energy, Sustainable Building

The Department of the Interior (DOI) has just approved the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the first large-scale solar energy project in the United States to utilise ‘power tower’ technology. The solar ‘power tower’ has been proposed for the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California by BrightSource Energy, and it will produce up to 370 megawatts of clean energy. This energy would be enough to power between 111,000 to 277,500 American homes, and the project will create over 1,000 jobs.

Art

LEGO Letterpress Makes Ultra-Unique Pixelated Designs

by Ariel Schwartz, 10/14/10

filed under: Art

We love old letterpresses and LEGO blocks, so we were extremely excited to see the combination of the two in the LEGO Letterpress - a letterpress that makes pixelated art with a little help from our favorite colorful block. The hand-cranked letterpress uses a Vandercook and a monospace grid, and the prints are generated on Strathmore 300 Series Bristol paper with Van Son rubber inks. Want some LEGO-like art of your own? Physical Fiction is selling ready-made posters here.

+ Physical Fiction

Via Make

Products

BOOM CASE: A Boombox Made From an Old Suitcase

by Yuka Yoneda, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Products, Recycled Materials

From suitcase chairs to suitcases that grow food, our fascination with portmanteaus seems to know no boundaries – and these amazing Boom Cases are no different! Hidden inside an old suitcase, the set of powerful speakers has a built-in battery that can blast (or play softly, depending on your mood) seven hours of music, and even comes with a built-in charger. The retro looking boomboxes start at $250, and can easily be hooked up to your phone, iPod or mp3 player.

Via Dvice via Boom Case via Uncrate

Awesome Animated LED Clock Unveiled in Tokyo (VIDEO)

by Diane Pham, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Lighting

http://www.vimeo.com/15452594

Sadly, the centerpieces of many modern shopping centers are stone fountains that hark back to the Roman ages. Lucky for us, there’s one designer out there who is taking this underutilized space to a whole new level. Designed by Hiroshi Yoneya, the Hikari no Tokei Gate is an incredible new LED clock at the Seibu Ikebukuro flagship store in Tokyo, Japan. Far from a mundane time-telling pillar, this awesome design features a full-on animated LED light show.

Via Notcot

Transportation

Green Overdrive Video: Onya Cycles From Saul Griffith!

by Katie Fehrenbacher, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Transportation, automotive

For this week’s episode of GigaOM TV’s Green Overdrive video show — where if it’s green we’ll drive it — we hung out with Saul Griffith, entrepreneur, inventor and Chief Scientist of incubator Other Lab. Griffith is knee-deep in his latest venture Onya Cycles, which makes electric, heavy-lifting, bicycles that are meant to replace local car trips. We test drove Onya Cycles’ electric tilting tricycle, the Front-End Loader – check it out!

GREEN OVERDRIVE >

Interiors

Stunning Chandelier Features Dandelion-Encased LEDs

by Moe Beitiks, 10/14/10

filed under: Green Lighting, Green Lighting, green Interiors

At one time or another, many of use can recall plucking a dandelion from the Earth and blowing its delicate florets to the wind with a wish in mind. Enchanted by this wonder-filled aesthetic and slight physical nature, designers Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn took hundreds of dandelion seed heads and created a new natural wonder. Dubbed the Fragile Future III, this stunning chandelier tells the story of the amalgamation of nature and technology within a compact network of metal squares encasing LED lights encircled by tiny dandelion clouds. Read on to discover more about the painstaking craft of this gorgeous constellation.

Products

The Self-Watering TriPot Lets Plants Take Care of Themselves

by Diane Pham, 10/14/10

filed under: Gardening, Green Home decor, Green Products

Just because you’ve been responsible for more than your fair share of brown, shriveled up plants doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dream of attaining a green thumb. There are a number of smart products out there that make it easier for plant lovers to actually grow gorgeous greens in their home without having to question what they’ve done wrong. One of our favorite new finds is the TriPot from Greenamic, an awesome eco-friendly planter that not only lets plants “take care of themselves” for up to 8-weeks, but uses less water than conventional methods!

Energy

Google Funded Geothermal Vents Could Double Virginia’s Energy

by Timon Singh, 10/14/10

filed under: Renewable Energy

Google seems to be all about renewable energy these days – the online search giant just invested in both an offshore wind highway and a human powered monorail system. Today a project funded by Google announced the discovery of massive geothermal vents under West Virginia that could potentially double the state’s energy generation capacity.

Architecture

Futuristic Multi Floor Bridge for Seoul Creates Its Own Energy

Architecture

Park-side Eco Kindergarten Features a Glowing Façade

The Nursery in the Park is a sensitively-designed and placed building in the heart of an old park in the city of Zaragoza, Spain. Santiago Carroquino Arquitectos focused on creating a preschool with lasting character that expresses playfulness yet minimally disrupts the surrounding natural environment. From the façade to the green roof to the preservation of indigenous trees, the kindergarten blends the boundaries between nature and building while providing a safe, light-filled, and airy place for children to play and learn.

Architecture

INHABITAT INTERVIEW: 7 Questions With Architect Steven Holl

Steven Holl has risen to become one of the most celebrated and well-respected architects working today. His architectural work is widely recognized and covers extensive ground ranging from the museums, educational facilities, residences, retail design, office design, public utilities, and master planning. But unlike the indistinguishable corporate work or ego driven monstrosities that litter the physical and cultural landscape, each of Steven’s structures rises above any predictable style, and are instead inspired by a unique contextual awareness. His ability to masterfully blend space and light in subtle forms has turned him into a central figure in the discussion of contemporary sustainable design. It also comes as no surprise that his work has garnered him wide acclaim not only from critics, but most notably, from his contemporaries.

On this rare occasion, Steven was kind enough to sit down and answer a few of our questions regarding his style, green design, and even a little something about his childhood. Steven also marks the first interview in a new series in which Inhabitat will pose seven questions to one of today’s most influential designers, hoping to shed some critical light on the state of design today. Read ahead for our seven questions with Steven Holl.

Packaging the Future: Packaging Reuse – What a Concept!

Recycling, reducing, and composting are all important concepts when it comes to more sustainable packaging design, but reuse, the second directive of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra has thus far been ignored in this series – but no longer! From commercially reused beer bottles in Europe to organic milk container reuse here in the United States, reuse is a simple (and a fun-retro) way to really cut down on the necessity of creating new packaging before it even starts!

Architecture

Utrecht’s Rainbow Shipping Container Dorms Are a Work of Art

Shipping container dormitories seem to be all the rage these days but we just came across these cheerfully stacked student homes that have been around since at least 2005. Located on the Utrecht University campus in Utrecht, Netherlands, the container dorms were built as a solution to an overwhelming shortage of student housing. Each unit is painted in a brilliant color, making the complex seem more like a work of modern art than a place for college kids to live.

Products

Oddbirds: Unique Lamps Made From Lost and Found Tableware

Swedish design collective Oddbirds has produced a beautiful range of interior objects, accessories and textiles by creatively combining old, new and recycled materials. This series of unique lamps is made from lost and found, rediscovered, and inherited tableware. Each lamp is made of pieces from various coffee and tea sets, and the designers are not shy of combining the chunky and rustic with the delicate and dear, which may be the secret to their success.

Energy

World’s Largest Laser a Step Closer to Fusion Energy

This week California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that it fired up the world’s largest laser in a ‘dry run’ — a crucial first step towards the lab’s goal of creating nuclear fusion. During the process, 192 laser beams were converged in a 30-foot-in-diameter metal sphere where they delivered a 1 megajoule blast to a hydrogen-filled pellet. Fusion power is the holy grail of energy production — though it has never been achieved, it has the potential to create incredible amounts of energy and could replace the need for oil and gas reserves.

Architecture

University of Tennessee Students Build a Zero Energy House

Students and faculty at the University of Tennessee Knoxville have created a zero energy house that not only teaches the students around campus about sustainable design, but also reaches a wider audience in the surrounding community. The site really comes alive on college game days, when the campus is not just populated with UT’s 20,000 student population but also by 100,000-plus residents from …

Energy

PHATport Solar Awning Provides Outdoor Shade and Solar Power

PHAT Energy recently unveiled the PHATport 350, an outdoor solar structure that can serve as everything from a cozy, sun-sheltering patio to an energy-generating car port (imagine plugging your EV into one of these!). The self-contained solar shade will be on display at this year’s Solar Power International in Los Angeles (which runs today and tomorrow!), and the company has rolled out a quirky ad campaign that features a series of solar power fables sure to Flip Your Switch. Check out their hilarious videos after the jump!

Energy

World’s Largest Wind Farm Will Be Built in Oregon

The US Department of Energy has approved the partial guarantee for a $1.3 billion loan to support the construction of the world’s largest wind farm, located in eastern Oregon. Known as the Caithness Energy LLC’s Shepherds Flat Wind Project, the renewable energy initiative will give way to a massive 845-megawatt wind-powered energy generating facility located immediately south of the Columbia River, built on approximately 32,000 acres in Gilliam and Morrow counties.