The OPEN SOURCE HOUSE design competition started on January 15th, 2010 and is open for team or individual participation. The challenge is to design a sustainable, flexible and locally embedded one family house for a specific location in Ghana. The modular construction should be suitable for local implementation and affordable for its future owners. The winning design(s) will be built in Ghana.
Tag sustainability
May 13, 2009
Architecture and Entropy
Category: architecture+ english+ sustainability
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
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.
March 5, 2009
New interesting post about “ecobulevar project” in the a+t magazine blog.
January 26, 2009
Sustainability After Zero
Category: architecture+ english+ sustainability
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.
December 18, 2008
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 2, 2008
Here Comes the Sun
Category: english+ sustainability
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.
November 6, 2008
The Vertical Farm
Category: architecture+ english+ sustainability
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
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.
During the last Biannale of Architecture 08 in Venice, Enric Ruiz-Geli and Jeremy Rifkin promoted this manifesto: Revolutionizing Architecture to Address the Global Energy Crisis and Climate Change.
We, the architects of the world, recognize that the increase in energy costs is leading to a slow down in the global economy and creating hardships for families everywhere;
October 28, 2008
Eleven international scientific experts, members of the 2008 Altran Foundation’s Jury, got together to evaluate the 28 applications short-listed for the international scientific Award. This year, the theme is “Reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere: our technological challenge”. During this meeting, 6 Finalists (3 French, 1 Spanish, 1 Dutch, 1 Italian)
September 29, 2008
SymbioCity promotes holistic and sustainable urban development – finding potential synergies in urban functions and unlocking their efficiency and profitability.
September 22, 2008
Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) recently revealed a free plug-in for Google SketchUp that will allow anyone to perform energy modeling on projects.
September 10, 2008
As we know, the natural sunlight is an indispensable source of life for the living organisms; for the man,
however, it plays various roles with remarkable psychological effects not exclusively bound to the quality of the vision of individuals, but for their well-being as well: the feeling of a well aired place, the perception of the true natural colours, the regulation of the biological cycles. The abstention from its benefits for long periods is the principal cause of some depressing pathologies.
July 30, 2008
Ever thought about buying your own country?
July 15, 2008
July 10, 2008
The Passive House (www.passivhauskurs.de) is the world’s leading standard in energy efficient construction: Energy saved on heating is 80% compared to conventional standards of new buildings. The energy requirement for heating is lower than 10 to 20 kWh/(m²a) (depending on climate), adding up to a low cost of 10 to 25 € per month. Therefore high energy prices are no longer a threat to Passive House occupants.
June 30, 2008
eutv: Ken Yeang – Architect
Category: architecture+ english+ eutv+ sustainability+ video
June 24, 2008
ECO SKYSCRAPER – YEANG, KEN
Category: architecture+ english+ sustainability
For many, ecoskyscrapers are synonymous with Ken Yeang. In more than three decades of practice, Ken Yeang has almost single-handedly pioneered and developed this building genre.
June 13, 2008
In this week’s post I would like to continue my reflections on sustainability by asking where we actually stand ourselves in the face of climate change? How are we prepared to accept neccesary restrictions and unavoidable change?
Well, the majority of people still do very little. Yet this should not make them feel guilty because a real change in climate change is not about guilt and expiation. On the contrary, mistakes and errors are natural milestones in the search for new solutions, they show us what we have overlooked and what we could do better and more intelligently.
May 28, 2008
May 20, 2008
May 19, 2008
Think to a Plaid in the middle of a field, a sunny day and some musical Nerds with their laptops that generate sweet electronic melodies: not a sound from a generator, no stinky fuel but only the sound of the music and the smell of just cut grass.
Play on Plaid is also the occasion to record tracks produced with solar energy and make out of them records with out being totally slaves of oil.
March 8, 2008
First realized as an Industrial Design Thesis project at Pratt Institute in Spring 2005 by Samuel Cabot Cochran, GROW.1 employs thin film photovoltaics with piezoelectric generators and screen printed conductive ink encapsulated in ETFE fluoropolymer lamination.
February 19, 2008
BIOECOLAB is promoted by Provincia di Modena, Comune di Modena, and Promo (Modena Economical Promotion Society ).
It is thought as a place of information, training, research and experience; it interests and involves both the town-planning and housing operetors, and the final user ( the citizen).
It is also thought as a point of reference for the operators of the “sustainable planning and building” trend.
