Melbourne Water, a water supply company owned by the Victorian State Government, is encouraging Australian residents to create 10,000 rain gardens – and they’re already up to 7,804! A rain garden is a water-saving garden that is designed to capture stormwater from hard surfaces such as driveways, patios and roofs via downpipes after it rains. The water supply company has set up a website with information on designing, creating and caring for rain gardens – no previous experience necessary.
Seeking to help restore the world’s declining honey bee population, designer Rowan Dunford has created a simple, stackable beehive that makes it easy for anyone to raise bees. Dunford’s aptly named Urban Beehive is user-friendly, inexpensive, and can be flat packed to ship. Dunford’s straightforward design takes the guesswork out of raising bees, so it’s perfect for the beginner beekeeper.
by: mocoloco, 2013-01-29 20:44:11 UTC
An outline and table top edge that reflects the world of traditional cabinet making is matched with a minimalist steel base in Eric Jourdan's Gilda Table for Super-ette.
What if human waste, what’s left after our bodies extract energy-producing nutrients from our food and drink, could itself be transformed into energy? Four African teenagers went beyond asking this question: they created a generator powered by human urine. The machine, built by 14-year-olds Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola,was presented in Lagos, Nigeria at the fourth annual Maker Faire Africa this November. The pan-African Maker Faire features and supports inventions that work to address problems like the worldwide need for energy production.
According to the Maker Faire Africa website, the machine turns 1 liter of urine into 6 hours of electricity and works like this: urine goes into an electrolytic cell, which extracts the hydrogen from the pee (specifically from the urea, one of the main compounds of urine). This hydrogen is purified in a water filter, and then pushed into a gas cylinder. There, the gas cylinder pushes the hydrogen into a liquid borax cylinder, where moisture is removed from the hydrogen gas. Finally, the purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator to power it.
As with all new inventions in alternative energy, this generator isn’t a panacea for our global energy problems. NBC’s John Roach offers a “reality check” concerning the pee-powered generator, pointing out that the Maker Faire Africa website does not list the wattage produced, so we don’t know just how much the generator could power. While Roach’s article tempers excitement about the pee generator, it does point to where this technology could be used effectively: wastewater treatment facilities where the pee already flows, ready to be put to use.
Perhaps machines like these could eventually become features of wastewater treatment facilities. Such a resourceful new invention that turns waste into electricity could turn wastewater treatment facilities into places where wastewater is not only treated, but where pee turns into power.
Our old gadgets create millions of tons of electronic waste each year, which is hazardously recycled in impoverished countries. One U.K.-based designer aims to change the process.
We don’t often think about the final resting place of our favorite devices. But much of the electronics we throw away--computers, phones, televisions--gets illegally dumped in poverty-stricken countries like Ghana and Nigeria, which lack the infrastructure to recycle the parts efficiently. Instead, they are stripped down by hand, and some pieces are haphazardly set ablaze to extract the valuable metals within, exposing workers to harmful toxins.
Hal Watts, a designer and recent graduate of the Imperial College in London, has devised an easier, safer way to recycle copper wiring, one of the most common forms of e-waste. His device, called Esource--which started out as his final project at Imperial--includes two components: a bicycle-powered shredder that pulverizes the copper and its plastic coating into fine particles, and a sorter, which separates the copper from the plastic. The process is not only nonhazardous but also results in a 2% greater yield of pure copper.
“A lot of these people depend on burning cables as their primary income, but it’s the most health-damaging [e-waste] issue,” says Watts, who was recently nominated for design of the year by the Design Museum in London. In 2011, after becoming interested in electronic waste, he spent a week at an e-waste dump in Accra, Ghana, where he observed the burning process firsthand and talked to the copper exporters. (Ironically, most of the copper is sent back to Europe, which, according to the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency, illegally exports up to 75%, or 8 million tons, of its e-waste.)
As water is poured over the spinning spiral, which is powered by a pump on the bike, copper particles float up to the middle.
After his trip, Watts prototyped about 20 different versions of Esource. In the current iteration, a worker folds out a stand on the bicycle and places the wires and cables into an attached shredder. As he pedals, the shredder grinds up the cables into bits of copper and plastic, which are then placed in the sorter, made from a light aluminum material. As water is poured over the rotating spiral, the materials are separated by density, and the copper floats slowly to the center of the spiral and into the pan.
Watts was inspired by a similar, age-old process called gold-panning used by gold miners to sift out the mineral from clumps of dirt and gravel. “To build something cheaply, you often have to go back and look at older technologies,” he says. With a grant from the Wates Family Enterprise Trust to continue his project, Watts will be taking another trip to Ghana in April to test-trial the device, and to court local manufacturers to make Esource. He also plans to make the product affordable and easy to adopt by making its design open-sourced.
But it’s not just about style. The new look breeds new efficiency.
Old-world construction is like stew--the thicker, the better. Raw wood planks and rough stone bricks convey comfort in their permanence. So rather than feeling like you’re surrounded by something old and decrepit, you feel like you’re surrounded by something that’s only grown more grizzled over time.
German stove tiles are the epitome of this idea. Built thick to absorb and release a stove’s heat, they’re painted and glazed with a fatty, rustic sheen. But Daniel Becker wondered, could you modernize the design while making it more efficient? His solution was a new style of German stove tile--the "Berlin"--textured to increase surface area (and thereby increase ambient heat transfer) while speaking in an entirely new visual language.
“Instead of painting it in colors, I tried to work with the generally larger thickness of a stove tile and search for a unique solution and aesthetics only applicable to stove tiles,” Becker tells Co.Design. “The decision for this pattern came out intuitively, starting with a circle as a base . . . [when] I realized the optical illusion of geometric shapes that occurred in different lighting situations and refined it.”
Eventually, Becker created a tile that plays with light and shadow in such a way that you can’t quite pin down its texture. Is each piece made of stacks or holes? It’s hard to tell. So as part of a larger design, intermixed with untextured tiles, you can become lost in Escherian delight. Only close inspection reveals the secret: a relatively simple dimpled gradient that’s no more expensive to produce than traditional German stove tiles.
The unique shape of Casa W provides the residence with two courtyards protected from whipping sandstorms.
There are lots of obvious perks to living directly on the coast: an amazing vista stretched out as far as the eye can see, fresh sea air forever blowing over the crashing waves, the incredible ability to enter directly into Nature simply by stepping out the front door. The unceasing elements, however, can really take a toll on structures built on the shore. In Huentelauquén, Chile, 01ARQ designed Casa W, a home that manages to take advantage of the locale while still protecting against the elements.
In order to maximize the expansive, unbroken views, floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows line the entirety of the sea-facing side of the house. As an added bonus, the framed panes are set on tracks that allow them to slide open and let the breeze blow through--not a bad feature for a warm night, drinking a beer as night falls. The interior is characterized by clean-but-comfortable whites and dark-wood paneling, with a standalone fireplace separating the living and dining areas. Minimal landscaping of a few cacti line the exterior of the property, so as not to compete with the rocky shores.
Perhaps the most unique feature of the site are the private courtyards formed by the custom shape of Casa W, which is essentially a block-letter U: a strip of living area, with two open-air adjuncts on either end. Situated behind the open-plan front room is a shielded square that functions as a small private beach--especially clever, as the sightline still manages to run straight through to the horizon. So, even on the windiest day, it’s still possible to feel the sun shining on your face--sans sandstorm.
In China, someone’s old music collection is getting a second chance at life. MINIWIZ Sustainable Energy Development Ltd recently announced plans to build the iGreen, an aviation museum featuring a 5D movie theater that will act as the centerpiece to Dream World park near Shanghai. At a diameter of 50 meters the globe will be one of the largest spherical structures in the world, and it will be constructed using 100% recycled CDs and DVDs. In addition to housing the museum complex, iGreen will create a microclimate allowing tropical plants flourish. Designed to withstand typhoon-strength gusts, acid rain, and UV radiation, the futuristic building is slated to be one of China’s most impressive landmarks.
Products are displayed amongst an array of colourful metal wireframes at this pharmacy in Madrid by interiors studio Stone Designs (+ slideshow). (more...)
by: TreeHugger Design, 2013-01-24 16:24:00 UTC
This shower head uses 50% less water while still making it feel like you're taking a full-pressure shower.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-15 18:28:53 UTC
My favorite launch of innovative products at this week's IMM Cologne. The Ready Made Cortain of Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Kvadrat. They really ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-14 17:20:14 UTC
This is my brand discovery of this weeks IMM Cologne, one of the worlds biggest furniture fairs. Extremis, a Belgium brand of outdoor furniture. They ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-11 16:33:49 UTC
OLEDs – how do they work?
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are semiconductors made of layers of thin organic materials only a few nanometers ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-09 09:17:02 UTC
I have been writing on "OLED technology before":http://www.design-4-sustainability.com/materials/62-oled-organic-led-s-power-efficient-light-surfaces ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-07 22:08:09 UTC
Natural evaporation and self cooling... Terracotta has been used for water storage for centuries. Cooling occurs by natural evaporation through the ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-01-03 17:20:30 UTC
Sometimes you are touched by the beauty of things, often so simple that you wonder why nobody thought of it before. Trap Light is the result of an ...
This shower head uses 50% less water while still making it feel like you're taking a full-pressure shower.
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