Now and then something appears in the local pages of Italian newspaper that deserves English translation. This is from the Turin section of today's La Stampa:
A new eco mall will double the size of Turin's Eataly From green cars to sustainable food to bio-clothes
By Emanuela Minucci
Oscar Farinetti [the founder of Eataly] doesn't stop. And stays true to his ideas. Notwithstanding the success he is having with the Eataly brand worldwide, he has chosen Turin, his first love, to try out a new concept that cannot be more aligned with these times of economic and environmental concerns.
He is planning a new complex, the first "Green Retail Park" in the world, right next to the Carpano building in the Lingotto area, where he started off in 2007 with his first mix of thematic restaurants and the sales of products that until then people could only find at the Salone del Gusto [the yearly Slow Food fair].
And the visions of the two "Eataly"'s are closely aligned.
The new complex will host retail activities and services that in their production/creation, distribution and sales are driven by a vision of eco-sustainability and social responsibility.
Designed by Negozio Blu Architetti Associati, the 20,000 sq mt spaces are all dedicated to green shopping: from food to clothing to cars. Everything in this bio-cathedral will be "good, clean and fair" [The Slow Food motto].
A green environment...
The building will be constructed with sustainable technologies and materials. [...] The south facing facade will use natural screening and shading, as well as plant walls, and the roof will be covered with grass and plants—one of the many actions to reduce the building's environmental impact. The plants will reduce of cooling needs and the associated heat island effect, help filter the particulate pollution in our urban air, and dampen urban street noise. "We will use a range of sustainable technologies, materials and architectural interventions, including solar panels," explains the architect Cristiana Catino.
... with green products and services
The space will host stores that sell sustainable clothing and shoes, service entities specialized in renewable energy, and companies focused on bio-construction. Also on sale will be products for the garden and the biological vegetable garden, food and biological cosmetics, and sustainable furniture and household products. There will be a quality restaurant, and a specialized wellbeing center. One can even buy a green scooter or car. The heart of the space will host an eco assistance zone, where people can go to for advice on how to save energy in their homes, how to install solar panels, or how they can have a meaningful environmental impact in their day-to-day activities.
I am not sure whether it is the first green retail park in the world, probably not, and I hope that "Green Retail Park" is just a working title, but knowing Farinetti and what he has achieved with Eataly, we can expect it to have a big impact, and not just in Turin.
INTERVIEW / The Dutch multinational Unilever wants to boost its participation in EU research programmes to develop the breakthrough technologies it needs to cut the water use and CO2 emissions of its products by half – two of its key environmental objectives.
Forget the Jetsons: Smart Design’s Dan Saffer on how we should interact with the automobiles of the (near) future.
Every Saturday the robots take over. The apartment whirrs to life with the mechanical sounds of machines as they remove stains from clothes, scrub dried food from plates, and vacuum dust from the floor. There’s the muffled thunk of the wet clothing boulder tumbling in the dryer. The chug of the dishwasher, the waves-in-a-box crashing against glasses that were once sand. And the loud whine of the Roomba rolling across rugs in its almost incomprehensible zigzag pattern to eventually and inevitably crash into the startled dog.
How is a dishwasher a robot? Well, about a decade or so ago, a magic ingredient began being built into our appliances, and that ingredient—the secret robot sauce--is sensors. Sensors generate data, and data can be acted upon without human intervention. In other words, these devices can do things themselves without asking. Sure, I turn my dishwasher on, but from then on, it knows how dirty the plates are inside and adjusts itself accordingly. I can offer guidance--by pressing the Power Scrub button for example--but I don’t have to tell it every detail of how to do its job. Using the sensors built into it--its inner eyes--it figures out how hard it needs to work.
This is obvious stuff, and you probably don’t even think about it anymore, because ceding details to a dryer or vacuum cleaner is trivial, inconsequential. But imagine a 4,000-pound robot under its own control barreling down crowded city streets filled with vehicles and pedestrians.
Which brings us to cars.
Your car is your new robot. Been in a new car lately? A high-end car is a veritable bristling cluster of sensors connected to electro-mechanical systems. Almost any part of the car that can have a sensor attached to it now does--right down to the tires (which soon will be able to inflate themselves). They can already park themselves, and it doesn’t take a highly paid futurist to know we’re only a few years away from having them drive themselves.
Our cars--like our dishwashers--have secretly been robots for a long time. We’ve had sensor-driven automatic braking systems for decades. The difference between then and now is the amount and visibility of the autonomy our robots have. It’s one thing to have a machine invisibly helping to slow your car, quite another to have it parallel parking for you.
Don’t get me wrong: the automatic parallel parking (when it works) is frigging amazing, especially in urban areas where parallel parking is some kind of spectator sport. Having the car maneuver itself into a parking space is like the first time you saw a magician pull a bouquet from his sleeve at a kid’s birthday party: total magic. You can’t believe it’s happening. On the streets, people still stop and stare. It’s like the fulfillment of a promise from a millennium ago, when objects would come alive and do chores for us. And think about how many times you would pay $10, $20, even $50 just to get the damn car into the damn space.
But there is something weird about it. Unsettling. Maybe it’s the scale: Cars are BIG. Big things moving by themselves trigger primal instincts. Like perhaps you’re about to get run down by a charging rhino. Or maybe it’s that it’s happening in public. Cars are a weird public/private hybrid space; the inside is yours, the outside is the world’s. Having the car do things for you exposes your inner private world to the outside.
Robot cars also bring up our worst SkyNet/Terminator fears. Have we created robots we can no longer control? Because control is exactly what we’re giving up. Sometimes this is great; giving up control is something we as humans crave. See: alcohol, drugs, sex. GPS navigation, especially when combined with traffic data like in the navigation app Waze, is an awesome kind of giving up control, even if it takes you on routes determined by algorithms that feel inhuman in their almost Roomba-like zigzag paths through the city streets. When the car is driving itself, you might not notice or care. Heck, you might not even notice or care now because driving is (primarily) a chore. It’s pretty clear that most people, given the choice, would rather be texting.
For decades, we’ve been shown car commercials with drivers zipping around mountain curves or through the desert. This vision is far removed from the driving experience many of us deal with every day--gridlocked highway traffic, congested city streets, and grueling, teeth-grinding commutes.
Is it possible that car travel, like airline travel, has lost its glamour? It seems likely. Cars are the expensive, often ugly, boxes we’re trapped in for hours a day that are also destroying the planet with every high-priced gallon of gas they consume. It’s no wonder people under 30 are saying no thanks to cars whenever possible, using services like ZipCar only if they must.
In part, this is what is fueling the rush to turn your car into your new robot. By putting more technology into cars, they’ll become more interesting again. That’s the theory. And it’s not a bad one. (As witnessed by this article alone, it might even be working.) It’s a safe bet: In the past 15 years, every piece of technology you probably own has significantly changed--except your car. Even if you have a brand new car, it was designed at the soonest three years ago. But as designers--and particularly car designers--know, having a personality (manifest in the form) matters. We’ll overlook a car’s flaws if its personality is something we respond to. The trick now is having that personality in not just the body of the car but also in the behavior of the car as well. How it "talks" to you--sometimes by actually talking to you à la KITT from Knight Rider--through its interfaces: the screens and controls now in the dashboards and center stack of cars. Making those screens have personality while not distracting from the road is a good trick.
And then there’s the tyranny of screens. The car was one of the few places left without a glowing rectangle visible. No longer. I suspect, however, this is a temporary situation, that luxury will demand that screens be mostly hidden, that the interface will become (once again) the steering column, and physical controls shall reign again. Or maybe not, maybe screens will become background, their UIs more subtle, more glanceable, less demanding of our time and attention. Voice, gesture, and haptic feedback will mix into the physical and touch-screen controls we’ll use to text, check Facebook, read the news, and, oh yes, drive from place to place.
What will this feel like, riding in our new robot cars? If the experience of being a “driver” in our new cars isn’t designed well, it could feel like we’re trapped in a public taxi, surrounded by screens blaring at us. Robot car is a robot, after all, not human. But there is also another way it could be: like having our own private driver who knows our preferences, our daily routes, the right temperature settings, and how much control of the car we want. These cars will have a personality--although not too much personality--and they’ll know us and conform to us. Their sensors won’t just be trained on the roads and their mechanics; they’ll also be trained on us. They’ll observe us, get to know us, and adapt to us. Our robot cars will respond to being spoken to, and even to unspoken cues by not interrupting us when we’re busy or tired. They will be our moving exoskeletons, acknowledging and respecting our very humanity yet compensating for our limitations by having superpowers like 360-degree vision and the ability to parse traffic data. This is how carmakers will build brand loyalty. We will love our robot cars, and never dream of jet packs again.
Add Trait To Your Home With New And Ultra-Modern Fireplace Designs Ideas
Inception of winter brings about an urgent requisite to warm up your body and pacify bothered nerves. With the progression in technology, there is no need to assemble around typical smoke fireplace, which are hoarded with bulk of woods. If your home is still integrated with old smoke fireplaces, then it is time to unveil new and ultra-modern fireplace designs ideas. Nowadays, homeowners can also settle on mobile and eco-friendly fireplaces to give a swift boost to their home interiors. Some of the latest fireplace concepts based on technology can enhance the way you capitalize on fireplaces.
High-Tech Fireplace Design Ideas
Eco-Smart Zeta Fireplace: Geoform is a renowned firm based in Sydney known for its recent launch “EcoSmart Zeta Fireplace”. Zeta Fireplace is integrated with a unique elliptical design in which leather together with aluminum is intellectually blended to form body of ecological fireplace. Moreover, swivel base of stainless steel makes this eco-friendly fireplace a portable unit. “EcoSmart Zeta Fireplace” makes use of renewable ethanol in place of fuel. Homeowners can also single out leather shade to match up the environment of living room. Best thing is that Zeta Fireplace is affordable and glows with colorless flame.
Smokeless Blomus Fireplace: Vindro is an eco-friendly fireplace introduced by Blomus. Bring home an eco-friendly fireplace if you are willing to install a durable chimney in home. Installation of this ecological Vindro chimney is quite expensive, but it leaves you in a comfort zone. However, it is very essential to be cautious when this fireplace is burning, as it glows with invisible flame.
Arkaine Fireplace: Arkaine is a renowned French Company that deals in refining conventional heating system. This company has recently introduced two fireplaces namely Icoi and Yan Li. These new launches are actually creative fireplaces that can be mounted on wall to add gleam to your living area. Butterfly design of Icoi fireplace intent to symbolize God worshipped by ancient Icas. On the other hand, Yan-Li design is quite similar to that of flame. These glamorous and alluring fireplaces are ecological and are suitable to be used at workplace.
Tube Bioethanol Fire Place by Acquaefuoco: This tube fireplace has evolved as a leading attraction for your living area. Tube Bioethanol is an outcome of utmost contribution by Mario Mazzer and Acquaefuoco who dedicated long hours to craft a green design. With the use of single laser cut, this tube fireplace has been extracted into a circular burner of steel. This fireplace uses Bioethanol as fuel to produce heat. Good thing is that Tube Bioethanol does not release smoke and its black color can certainly uplift the appearance of your home. This masterwork singled out from outdoor collection of Acquaefuoco has been honored with “Red Hot Design Award”.
Escea Fireplace Controllable by Android Phone and iPhone: In a recent press release, launch of Escea’s Gas Fireplace integrated with Wi-Fi connectivity has been confirmed. This fireplace gives you an access to control it from your iPhone and Android Phone.
How to make decision
Fireplace design ideas are available in a broad spectrum ranging from ornately scrolled artwork to time-honored oak mantles. However, assortment of fireplace design entirely depends upon the preference.
Ascertain design you prefer: Homeowners often get confused between contemporary, classic, eclectic or American Traditional fireplace. Once, you have singled out style, it becomes quite easy to choose a design that matches your preferences.
How to use fireplace: Whether it is kitchen, living room, or bedroom, you can always use fireplace as a primary heating system.
Make Fireplace a focal point of home: Most of the people find it difficult to make their living area an attention-grabbing corner of home. To make an allowance for it, homeowners can play up with the features of fireplace.
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2012-12-20 00:15:38 UTC
While it’s definitely important to keep the heavy metals in discarded batteries out of the environment, the sorting of all of the different types of batteries that arrive at a recycling depot could no doubt get extremely tedious. It’s the type of job that often goes to a machine. Well, such a machine has been invented. Called the Optisort, it can recognize about 2,000 types of batteries, and is currently being used to sort one third of those recycled in the UK.
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Continue Reading Machine uses artificial intelligence to sort dead batteries
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