July 25, 2010
posted by Jose
The Center for Ecoliteracy supports and advances education for sustainable living.
We believe that schools play a pivotal role in moving us beyond our growing environmental crises and toward a sustainable society. We recognize schooling for sustainability as a process that fosters abundant living on a finite planet and makes teaching and learning come alive.
We bring a passion to our work that stems from our conviction that the best hope for learning to live sustainably lies in schooling that returns to the real basics: engaging with the natural world; understanding how nature sustains life; nurturing healthy communities; exploring the consequences of how we feed and provision ourselves; caring about the places where we live and the people and creatures in them.
June 28, 2010
posted by domenico
The Bauhaus SOLAR Award is being awarded for the first time at the 3rd International Congress Bauhaus.SOLAR in Erfurt on 10th November 2010.
Der Bauhaus.SOLAR Award for young talent is being sponsored by SolarInput e.V., Solarvalley Mitteldeutschland e.V., the German Solar Industry Association and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association. The award is being advertised all over Europe and is geared towards students and young graduates. It honours superb architecture and design projects from over the last two years which demonstrate innovative use of renewable energy and the award is endowed with 15,000 Euros. An international jury selected from architecture and industry assess the submitted works.
June 4, 2010
posted by domenico
ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future
Conference at Harvard University Graduate School of Design
April 3 – 5, 2009
The conference, which ran from April 3-5, 2009, brought together design practitioners, students and theorists, economists, engineers, environmental scientists, politicians and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future.
May 28, 2010
posted by andrea
Objective
The aim of this project is to make people aware of the increasing amount of rubbish we throw away and choices for its disposal. How many times have we thought to ourselves “What a pity to throw this away!”. It just shows how often people throw away items which can still be used. RCA wants to change our attitude towards these objects and offer them a second life: if we throw away something “with love”, then someone else may “love it again”. What has become useless to someone, can become useful to someone else.
RCA enables the public to think twice before getting rid of unnecessary belongings and points out the importance of “wasting” in a critical and conscious way.
May 26, 2010
posted by Jose
Climate change is an urgent global challenge. In response to the Stern Report, the RIBA Trust launched “International Dialogues: Architecture and Climate Change|”, a major programme of symposia exploring climate change, ecology, architecture, design and urbanism. Inaugurated by Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, Founder of the Green Belt Movement, the series brings together visionary thinkers and practitioners from a range of disciplines to consider new possibilities, design innovation, technologies and partnerships in the global effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Curated by Tamara Horbacka, RIBA Trust.
View videos of International Dialogues online:
http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/Talks/VideoArchive/VideoArchive.aspx
October 22, 2009
posted by michael
The exhibition What if…? cities is ongoing until the Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. Meanwhile the staff of Louisiana organise workshops with several schools from Denmark.
July 5, 2009
posted by michael
The Clinton Climate Initiative, from the William J. Clinton Foundation, has decided to promote 16 good practices in sustainable urban growth. Everybody is making list, as Forbes, but they don’t present very well the meaning of thist list. Through the website, we can see that the Initiative push the urban regeneration and the improvement of green energy as goals to reach better cities and better life’s. From this first post, our aim is communicate information about those projects, receive comments from our community and in two weeks offer a critical overview and some strategic keys to understand why some of the presented projects are in this list, and why some have no reasons. I hope we will generate some group of discussion on the present of our cities and some positive criticism on the ways to improve them.
June 26, 2009
posted by domenico
The European Urban Knowledge Network has published an interview with Belinda Tato (Ecosistema Urbano):
Many people, organisations and governmental bodies would agree that cities play an important role in reducing the negative effects of climate change. In the past few years, this role has been actively debated at conferences, summits and informal meetings. Some organisations have a very clear and progressive image of what cities can do to tackle climate change related issues and strongly believe in large-scale transformations. An example of such an organisation would be ‘Ecosistema Urbano’, a Madrid-based architectural research and design institute that is strongly committed towards ecology and sustainability. Belinda Tato, architect at Ecosistema Urbano, believes that far more can be done to make cities more sustainable. “In the last few decades cities have grown considerably, but nothing has been done to explore new urban models to improve their efficiency, especially in relation to the management of resources.” According to Ecosistema Urbano, the ideal sustainable city can become a reality if more creative and holistic solutions are sought.
May 13, 2009
posted by dpr_barcelona
What do we think or talk when we refer to Sustain and Develop in the last years and for the forthcoming future? How can architects confront their work and ideas within the paradox that any new building, any new city will inevitably disrupt the natural ecology?
April 28, 2009
posted by domenico
Wondering where breakthrough ideas addressing today’s major crises are? Look no further, the entries to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge are now available for view in the Idea Index, an open-source database of solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
April 12, 2009
posted by domenico
El día 16 de abril, el equipo responsable del proyecto de difusión Freshmadrid presenta su nueva web fresh, con la que unifica las tres ediciones: freshmadrid, freshforward y re fresh. Se hará una presentación escaparate urbano, de los estudios refresh en el estudio banana a las 20 horas.
March 26, 2009
posted by Jose
This was the building where Detroit’s deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste.
March 25, 2009
posted by domenico
Todo sobre ruedas es un proyecto de intervención participativa coordinado por Basurama en la Plaça dels Àngels que forma parte del festival eme3 collapse.
Esta intervención consiste en la ocupación temporal de la plaza con muebles transformados para que sean móviles. El objetivo es provocar una nueva situación urbana en la plaza que posibilite la aparición de nuevos usos en la misma.
On June 10, 2008, Vancouver City Council unanimously voted to adopt the EcoDensity Charter. The EcoDensity Charter commits the City to make environmental sustainability a primary goal in all city planning decisions – in ways that also support housing affordability and livability.
March 21, 2009
posted by admin
Exploring the Residual Landscape – Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work.
March 19, 2009
posted by Jose
Worldchanging is a 501(c)3 media organization that comprises a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers covering the world’s most intelligent solutions to today’s problems. We inspire readers around the world with stories of the most important and innovative new tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future. Our readers are ready to change the world, and Worldchanging links them to the first steps.
March 5, 2009
posted by domenico
New interesting post about “ecobulevar project” in the a+t magazine blog.
February 27, 2009
posted by domenico
El próximo lunes 2 de Marzo ecosistema urbano imparte un Taller en la Escuela de Arte y Superior de Diseño de La Rioja . El tema será la sostenibilidad urbana creativa.
from http://www.playpumps.org
Access to clean drinking water is critical for human survival and is an essential ingredient for improving the lives of those living in poverty in developing countries.
February 23, 2009
posted by Jose
Architecture of Density, an exhibition of large scale color photographs by Michael Wolf.
Wolf has lived and worked in Hong Kong for ten years. Stimulated by the region’s complex urban dynamics, he makes dizzying photographs of its architecture.
One of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer. The majority of its citizens live in flats in high-rise buildings. In Architecture of Density, Wolf investigates these vibrant city blocks, finding a mesmerizing abstraction in the buildings’ facades.
February 8, 2009
posted by domenico
What’s the smarter solution for bringing mobility to 21st century cities: bus rapid transit (BRT) or light rail? With questions this big, it’s important to consider all the perspectives.
February 2, 2009
posted by immaginoteca
“Scientists think that ice will probably disappear from the North Pole for the first time by this summer 2008 due to the global warming. We would like to express our solidarity with the hungry – and probably angry – polar bears that will soon reach our lands (?) trying to find some dry land and food. What about architecture?”
January 26, 2009
posted by Johannes
In its newest edition Volume #18, published by an international think-tank including AMO, Archis and C-LAB, is raising questions about the condition of sustainability in a world that seems to have yet accepted its importance, but still searches for its meaning.
January 19, 2009
posted by andrea
Urbania Festival 29-30-31/01/2009 Bologna Italy
The Festival is focused on “the Hell and Paradise” of life in contemporary cities. Urbania, the Bologna urbanism festival, proposes to gather urbanists, landscape architects, artists and politicians from Italy and abroad. Lectures, talks and meetings held for three days in order to discuss about urban economy, town life and urban writing. Here, some of the preeminent international figures of architecture, economics, public administration, art and literature aim to exchange views on several themes.
January 9, 2009
posted by andrea
Quite often grand cultural events, as the Architecture Biennale is, cross the city of Venice in a such imposing manner, rarely interacting with what stays out of the exhibition path. This applies to the citizens (inhabitants, students, workers) and also to the professionals and the artists officially invited.
December 18, 2008
posted by Jose
With Kylie Minogue, Charlize Theron, Shirley Bassey, Michael Jordan and Robert De Niro in attendance and a fireworks display literally visible from space, the $20 million opening party for the Atlantis Resort on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah islands last month seemed a fittingly extravagant farewell to Dubai’s construction adolescence. With the UAE’s supposedly impermeable economy feeling the strain together with the rest of the world, Dubai has been forced to redress construction behaviour.
December 15, 2008
posted by Luisa
Una flota de alrededor de 60 bicis mensajeras patrullan París al servicio de La Petite Reine, una original empresa de mensajería que realiza entregas de pequeño y mediano porte dentro de un área urbana de 30 km.
December 2, 2008
posted by Jose
Silicon Valley has changed the world once. Now, thanks to a wave of investment and innovation in solar power, it’s on to the next revolution: A massive disruption of the U.S. electricity market.
(Business 2.0 Magazine) — There’s a missile-bunker vibe you get when walking into Solaicx, a Silicon Valley startup that manufactures the silicon wafers that are the building blocks of solar panels.
December 1, 2008
posted by andrea
The RETScreen Clean Energy Project Analysis Software is a unique decision support tool developed with the contribution of numerous experts from government, industry, and academia.
The software, provided free-of-charge, can be used worldwide to evaluate the energy production and savings, costs, emission reductions, financial viability and risk for various types of Renewable-energy and Energy-efficient Technologies (RETs).
November 6, 2008
posted by domenico
The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies.
October 29, 2008
posted by immaginoteca
Shawn Frayne, a young inventor based in Mountain View, California, is the creator of Windbelt, a new device for wind-energy production based on an aerodynamic phenomenon known as aeroelastic flutter.
This phenomenon is a well-known destructive force and it caused, for example, the Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge to collapse in 1940 (video). Researchers at Humdinger (this is the name of the company pushing forward the Windbelt technology) have discovered that it can also be a useful and powerful mechanism for ‘catching the wind’ at a variety of scales and costs beyond the reach of traditional turbines.
