February 22, 2013
When Australia’s weather watchers forecasted highs of 125 degrees Fahrenheight a few weeks back, the Bureau of Meteorology had to come up with a new color—electric purple—to add to the weather map. Meteorologists sweating through the Southern Hemisphere’s record-busting summer weren’t the only ones to find graphic inspiration in global warming. The more dire our climate circumstances become, it seems, the crazier we get with CAD. To expand on its experiments with algae-skinned bio-adaptive facades, Arup recently released its vision for buildings in 2050. Arup’s modular eco-tower functions as a self-contained ecosystem in itself, with co-working spaces, food-producing modules that grow meat and produce, health and education centers, gallery spaces, an underground transit network, and aerial cable cars knitting all the towers together. Oh, and the whole thing is built by robots. Read more!
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December 21, 2012
Product: This lightweight travel bag allows you to stash, store, and charge your tablet or smartphone on the go. The solar bag includes a battery that allows you to charge up anytime, anywhere.
Manufactured by: Voltaic Systems
Retail price: $129
Click through to learn how to enter!
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December 10, 2012
The genius of solar lighting is self-evident—you’ve got your zillion-lumens light source right there in the sky. It’s the medium that presents the challenge: how to direct and spread the light effectively? We’ve seen some great low-tech solar lamps manufactured for the developing world. The popular solar-LED-powered D.Lite, for instance, holds a charge from the sun or an electrical outlet. And the clever Liter of Light uses a water bottle ensconced in a roof tile to create an insta-skylamp.
To light an interior completely, though, requires more than a vending machine’s worth of Dasani strung together on the ceiling. We need serious optics for that! Enter the London-based venture Sunportal, which says it’s found an efficient way to pipe sunlight through a space, allowing you to light a building both efficiently and effectively. See how they do it!
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September 12, 2012
It’s been a long journey for James Ramsey and Dan Barasch, the creators of the Lowline. Since they first announced their admittedly zany idea over a year ago, they’ve spent that time dutifully shopping the project all over town, so to speak, meeting with investors, sponsors, tech companies, fabricators, and community board members. Read more.
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August 30, 2012
Photography © Adrià Goula Sarda
As part of the Smart City Expo in Barcelona, the Endesa pavilion is light, portable, and solar-powered. With a modular structure constructed of laminated wood and a photovoltaic roof, the building exists as a study of “distributed intelligence” and digital fabrication. Read more.
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March 20, 2012
The Playboy Mansion can save $4904 a year with solar panels!
Architect Alex Landau wants to make installing solar panels “as easy as ordering a pizza online.” This is the premise of SOLarchitect, a New Orleans-based startup that allows people to easily assess the solar potential of a building and design an accompanying solar system for free. According to Good Magazine, users of the online service will be able to drag and drop solar panels onto aerial images of their homes, as exemplified in the solarized Playboy Mansion above. SOLarchitect will then tie together the loose ends for you, breaking down the cost by and estimating the tax credit and the potential energy savings based on the location of the building. Moreover, the start-up will bring in bids from up to three specialized contractors in the area to install the panels.
The site is currently designed for industry professionals, but Landau hopes to launch a consumer-friendly platform later this year. In the meantime, we’ll continue using the internet to order pizzas, or to purchase one of these.
President Obama could offset 87 barrels of oil a year by installing solar panels on the White House.
[All images via SOLarchitect Studio]
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October 28, 2011
Today marks the deadline for the Bloomberg administration’s competition to design a new school of applied sciences in New York City. At stake: $400 million in land and infrastructure improvements, which is predicted to spur up to $6 billion in economic activity. The two names to look out for: Stanford and Cornell, both of whom have been anything but discreet about their respective plans to overhaul a chunk of Roosevelt Island. Read on.
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