Will The Skyscrapers Of The Future Be Made Out Of Wood?
Wood products that are nearly as strong as steel are going into more high-rises, locking up carbon. But can we grow enough trees to keep pace? A paradigm threatened by the very climate crisis that makes carbon-sucking buildings seem appealing.
How Chronic Renters Are Reshaping The Homeware Industry
It is clear that millennials and Gen Z are now renting at record rates, yet the appetite to make a house a home remains equally high. Young people are increasingly finding more temporary solutions to the challenge of making a rental home Instagram worthy without falling foul of their landlords.
Real Estate For The Apocalypse: My Journey Into A Survival Bunker
Doomsday luxury accommodation is a booming business, offering customers a chance to sit out global pandemics and nuclear wars in comfort – as long as they have the money to pay for it.
Solar-Powered Water Generator Extracts And Purifies Water From Air
Taiwanese startup Space Apes has designed a solar-powered, reusable and sustainable water generator that extracts, purifies and condenses water from the air to make it ready to drink. The unit produces between 11 and 15 liters of water a day, covering the drinking water needs of six to eight adults.
The Floating Utopia Of Salesforce Park
Salesforce Park, in downtown San Francisco, sits atop the Salesforce Transit Center. It is a lush, five-and-a-half-acre rooftop arcadia of rolling meadows and meticulously landscaped, climatically harmonious, drought-tolerant flora. San Francisco’s newest public space reflects Big Tech’s influence—and a city’s anxieties.
TRS Studio Envisions Shipping Containers As Affordable Housing In Peru
Two shipping containers are joined together and topped by an angular polycarbonate extension in this conceptual design for low-cost housing by Peruvian firm TRS Studio. TRS Studio designed the speculative dwellings for communities that struggle with housing issues and lack resources to devote to buying construction materials.
The Limits Of Clean Energy
Once we trade dirty fossil fuels for clean energy, there’s no reason we can’t keep expanding the economy forever. This narrative may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but there are good reasons to think twice about it. One of them has to do with clean energy itself.
‘We Have To Show People What’s Going On’
Climate change is making weather more extreme, and Noah Berger and Justin Sullivan, two veteran photojournalists, were on the frontlines in 2018.
Wikkelhouse: Pick Your Modular Segments & Click Them Together
The “Wikkelhouse”, or “wrap house”, is a truly customizable home composed of 5-meter-square (53-square-foot) modules that click together to create any-sized structure. Once “printed”, the basic units can be customized: kitted out as a bathroom, a kitchen or combined bunk rooms can create larger rooms.
How Air Conditioning Created The Modern City
The shopping mall would have been inconceivable without air conditioning, as would the deep-plan and glass-walled office block, as would computer servers. The expansion of tract housing in postwar suburban America relied on affordable domestic air conditioning units.
MIT’s Color-Changing Ink Lets You Jazz Up Your Art, Clothes, Car Every Day
If you’ve ever purchased two articles of the same clothing because you couldn’t decide on a color, here’s a game-changer: color-changing ink. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a “reprogrammable ink” that lets you change the color of objects whenever you wish by exposing them to light of various wavelengths.
XTU Architects Imagines Offshore Oil Rigs Transformed Into Radical Housing Of The Future
No stranger to an unconventional project, XTU Architects presents their latest fantastical proposal titled ‘x_lands’. The concept looks at life after oil, and in particular, what to do with all the offshore platforms that have been built in the last century to drill for the earth’s natural resources.
On Walkman’s 40th Anniversary, Sony Opens Retro Exhibition In Tokyo
Sony Corp. opened an exhibition Monday in Tokyo’s bustling Ginza district to mark the 40th anniversary of its signature Walkman. The handheld audio player debuted on July 1, 1979, offering portable music to ears across the world. In the years that followed, over 400 million units would be sold.
A Shocking Campaign Uses Graphic Images To Point Out The Damage That Plastic Pollution Has On The Ocean’s Wildlife
A simple plastic bag seems harmless, but it can represent extreme suffering – and even death. Depicting this unfortunate truth through strong images, Sea Shepherd, an NGO focused on the conservation of marine wildlife, is launching a plastic awareness campaign.
Small Cities, Big Challenges
From building in a crowded capital threatened by rising sea levels to creating modern housing alongside historic landmarks, this is how small cities around the world are overcoming some remarkable challenges.
Towing An Iceberg: One Captain’s Plan To Bring Drinking Water To 4 Million People
After three years of severe drought, Cape Town was at risk of becoming one of the first cities in the world to run out of municipal water. Nicholas Sloane has a fix for a country struggling with its supply.
As Warming Waters Make Shellfish Toxic, A Way Of Life Becomes Deadly For Alaskans
Coastal states have developed statewide systems to keep their recreational and subsistence harvesters safe from paralytic shellfish poisoning. Alaska has no such system. State environmental health officials say the sheer length of its coast makes monitoring shellfish for the toxin impossible.
A New Start-Up Wants To Use AI To Replace “Expensive, Architect-Designed” Homes
Tech start-up Higharc aims to “reinvent home design for the digital age.” The company uses iterative design to create “custom” 3D models and plans. Algorithmic design isn’t new to architecture, but it looks like Higharc seeks to do away with “expensive, architect-designed plans that take forever to produce.”
Korvaa Is The World’s First Headphones “Grown” From Bio-based Materials
Helsinki-based multidisciplinary design studio Aivan recently unveiled Korvaa, the world’s first headphones made exclusively from microbially grown materials. Created using synbio, Korvaa is the first physical implementation of the technology and marks a potential shift away from a fossil fuel-based economy.
How The Bauhaus Kept The Nazis at Bay, Until It Couldn’t
There are few symbols of Modernist design and architecture more iconic than the Bauhaus building in Dessau. The art school’s brief run in Germany shows not a simple dichotomy, but rather how, to varying degrees of bravery, individuals tried to survive under tyranny.
Sustainable Rice Packaging Becomes An Artistic Tissue Box In Afterlife
To showcase Thung Kula Ronghai’s efforts of growing gorgeous grain, a designer reimagined the packaging as a tribute to the process with a purpose that went beyond preserving rice. The eco-friendly and recyclable box can be used as a tissue box after it has served its purpose of storing rice.