This gorgeous crystalline structure is the new home of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. Designed by Krueck + Sexton Architects, the building’s layout is focused around the use of natural light, and its contemporary design sets it apart from the surrounding 19th Century masonry buildings. A beautiful multifaceted facade symbolizes the institute’s mission and logo, which features a flame accompanied by the phrase yehi, which means “let there be light”.
Drumroll please! Today is the first day of December, and you know what that means! The gift-giving season is kicking off and Inhabitat is here to help green your holidays with our GREEN HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE >
We’ve got you covered with the greatest Green Gift Guide around! Our busy little elves have been hard at work pulling together an incredible assortment of ways to give green, and with 15 categories and more than 150 gift ideas, this year’s guide is bigger and better than ever before. From sleek gadgety gifts to crafty homemade how-tos and gifts on a budget, from pets, moms and dads, and boys and girls, you’re sure to find a sustainable source of holiday cheer for everyone on your list. Check out our full guide after the jump!
Recently Gensler broke ground on a soaring sustainably skyscraper that is set to become the tallest tower in China. The slender, elegantly spiraling Shanghai Tower will rise 632 meters, making it the latest super-tall to spring up in China’s rapidly developing Luijiazui Finance and Trade Zone. A beacon for a more sustainable future, the skyscraper will feature a high-performance façade that shelters no fewer than nine sky gardens, a rainwater recycling system, and a series of wind turbines perched beneath its parapet.
Timbuk2 built its base among the bike messenger set, where their bags are revered for their tough-as-nails construction, cycle-friendly ergonomics, and and on-the-go ease of use. We’re excited to announce that the San Francisco-based company recently updated their lineup with a variety of sustainable and eco-friendly fabrics, and we had a chance to try out their custom Bag Builder first hand! Read on for our first-hand impressions as we run a Lex Pack through the ringer.
Christiane Diehl is a multi-faceted designer with one foot in jewelry, one in landscaping and (err…) one more in photography. Her unique line of jewelry features necklaces, bracelets and rings– all made from recycled rubber from bicycle tubes and air mattresses. From her Hanover, Germany studio, Christiane cuts tiny shapes out of these reclaimed materials and strings them together in to create these multi-dimensional and dynamic wonders.
It appears that global warming has finally created its own version of the Wounded Veteran. Sitting in a puddle of himself in Buenos Aires’ Plaza Francia, a young man from Red Cross Argentina issued pleas to passers-by: not for spare change, but for action against climate change.
Talk about subliminal advertising. HSBC Bank hired advertising agency Oglivy & Mather in Mumbai to create a campaign for their website, www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.in, designed to call the public’s attention to the reality of global warming. The campaign entailed placing a bird’s eye view of New York City’s skyline at the bottom of a pool located in India’s financial capital, Mumbai. Aimed to capture the attention of unsuspecting swimmers, the stunt is an elegantly simple idea of what climate change could mean for some of the world’s coastal cities.
Enterprising young artists in the London scene are usually presented with the dilemma of having to rent extremely expensive studio space in order to be able to work. This led furniture designer Auro Foxcroft to a rather ingenious and environmentally conscious solution. What was it? Take old subway cars, mount them on a rooftop, and use them for office space! A bit sparse? Sure! But these recycled subway cars are sure to inspire other green-minded, socially conscious artistic efforts.
Emergency shelters have rightly become a fad in the design world. In the aftermath of the hurricanes and other natural disasters in the last few years, it became clear we had a ways to go in providing safe and sturdy emergency shelters for victims. We’ve covered Paul Villinski’s Emergency Response Studio– a traveling artist studio that became a model for emergency shelters. And now, Michael Daniel, a Senior Designer at Frog Design’s Austin Studio, has designed, Reaction Housing, a line of dependable shelters that can be quickly and easily deployed and built– ready in time for the emergency.
Thanksgiving is a great holiday - and not only because of the delicious food and the chance to catch up with loved ones. We love it when November rolls around, because Thanksgiving reminds us of the importance of gratitude and appreciation for our lives. Despite volatile times and some bad economic news recently, we have a lot to be thankful for this year. Read on for Inhabitat’s Top Ten Things to be Thankful for in 2008!
Photographer Matthew Carden’s incredible “Small World” food photography offer an entirely new perspective one the foods we consume, interspersing tiny figures amid towering broccoli treetops, massive mushroom forests, and colossal candied yams. His work aims to “make viewers more aware of what they eat, and to think about food as an integral part of our world.” Each edible landscape is a provocative close-up investigation of the foods that sustain us. With the Thanksgiving holiday and all the gluttony that it entails now upon us, Carden’s work feels especially relevant. Before you dive into your turkey and sweet potatoes, take a fresh look at food and the way we consume it with Matthew Carden’s innovative art.
Calling all New Yorkers who believe design can change the world! Product design nonprofit Project H Design is hosting a GIFTING FOR GOOD holiday party at Cornichon in Brooklyn next Friday, December 5th. The event will help support their New York Chapter and a local Women In Need family shelter, so come on down! Local designers will be selling their wares from jewelry to accessories, ceramics, papergoods and t-shirts, with $1 for every $5 spent going to fund household items for the women at the shelter.
The Biomimicry Institute recently teamed up with Autodesk to launch AskNature.org, an incredible source of information for the growing community of professionals researching and applying the principles of biomimicry. The solutions that animals and nature have come up with have been tried and tested for millions of years (certainly longer than humans have been designing), so why reinvent the wheel? Why not learn from nature to make our designs more efficient, elegant, and sustainable?
A former North Carolina mailman was recently fined $3,000 and ordered to do 500 hours of community service for cutting out the junk mail. For over seven years, no one on Steven Padgett’s route received a single pizza flyer, ‘Current Resident’ catalog or sweepstakes entry - now that’s something to be thankful for. Unfortunately, this mailman couldn’t put an end to the production of junk mail, leaving much of it in his backyard or garage, but you can. 100 million trees are chopped, processed, glossed and stuffed into US mailboxes every year. Fight back with one of the many opt out services below!
Appearing for all the world like a habitable version of Chicago’s Cloud Gate, Lovegrove Studios‘ futuristic Alpine Capsule is designed to blend in with nature, reflecting and complementing its immediate environment. Powered by solar panels and a vertical axis wind turbine, the off-grid alpine retreat features a shimmering glass skin with a reflective coating that allows individuals to sleep under the stars while admiring a 360 degree panorama of the beautiful landscape.
Here at Inhabitat we love wind powered vehicles for their inspired approaches towards sustainable transportation - after all what could be simpler than sailing along on a breeze? Designed by Tsun-Ho Wang, Min-Gyu Jung, and Sung-Je Do, this futuristic Wind Light Vehicle is an electric concept car that can deploy a wing-like device to propel it along like a windsurfing board or even a kite!
Kids grow up quickly, which often leaves parents scurrying to find storage space for outgrown cradles, high chairs, and other children’s items. This chic convertible stroller by Kid Kustoms runs laps around your standard baby buggy by converting into a tricycle as your child grows. The result is an inspired transportation option for tots that saves space, material and money with an extended product life-cycle. It also doesn’t hurt that these slick strollers feature streamlined detailing reminiscent of classic cars.
Recently the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States! This groundbreaking development heralds a nine-step plan that includes everything from buying fully electric vehicles for all government transportation to expediting the approval of charging outlets throughout the bay area, including those located on the street. The creation of this essential infrastructure marks a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuel.
It is not everyday that a well-known car manufacturer releases a concept vehicle that makes everyone’s head turn, but that’s exactly what Honda did last week at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The FC Sport is a hydrogen fuel cell three seater based on the same technology deployed in the FCX Clarity. Hardly your run-of-the mill hydrogen-powered vehicle, the FC Sport is a high-powered sports car designed to show that new greener technologies can compete against any fossil-fuel powered engine.
Students are not always known for their green-mindedness. Facing habitual late nights and juggling multiple deadlines, it can be hard balance an eco lifestyle with a studious one. Fortunately, Harvard is joining the ranks of colleges that are trying to incorporate green design right into the campus. The famed Ivy League university commissioned Kyu Sung Woo Architects to design a new graduate student residence that aims to achieve a high level of LEED Certification. The 115,000-square-foot project is aimed to provide housing for 50 percent of the school’s graduate, professional, and doctoral students.
San Francisco residents looking to deck their halls with green holiday decor will be excited to hear that for a limited time the SF Environment Department is teaming up with Friends of the Urban Forest to offer living Christmas trees that will be replanted in neighborhoods after the holidays! Although they’re not your classic x-mas evergreens, these adopted saplings offer an excellent alternative to clear-cut trees, and will live on as a gift to the community long after the holiday season.
Drywall is the number three producer of greenhouse gasses among building materials, trailing just behind cement and steel. Its production generates 200 million tons of carbon dioxide gas, a host of gypsum mines, and immense amounts of energy are required to fire the 500 degree kilns in which it is produced. But a ‘game-changer’ is on the horizon: EcoRock. This innovative material requires no gypsum, no ovens to produce, is made from 85 percent industrial by-products and is fully recyclable!
Bruce Munro’s gorgeous fiber optic ‘Field of Light‘ installation is inspired by the beautiful displays of flowers that burst forth from Australia’s desert landscape. The UK based lighting designer conceived of the installation 15 years ago while driving across Stuart Highway on a road trip through Australia. Every night he would stop to rest at roadside campsite, where green grass and surreal sculptures struck a stark contrast to the surrounding red desert. Munro was fascinated by these oases, and how dormant desert seeds would burst into beautiful flowers when it rained. The idea followed Munro for years all the way back to the UK until he could finally bring it to life in a brilliant installation at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
There is perhaps no better wardrobe investment for Winter 2008, than a super stylish pair of eco chic boots. Shoes and accessories should carry over from year-to-year, so it really pays to do your homework when selecting covet-able footwear that will keep you looking fab for more than just one season. We have picked out a few of this season’s cutest vegan and ethical fashion finds so that you can easily ‘boot up’ in sustainable style while also keeping the wintry slush at bay.
There is something idyllic and old-worldish about Isobel Davies‘ collection of knitwear. Which seems fitting considering its beginnings. Several years ago, Davies discovered two harsh realities in the world of sheep: first, that sheep in Britain were slaughtered for being lame, too small, or missing a pregnancy, etc. and the second, farmers were burning wool rather than selling it because it wouldn’t make any profit. Davies wondered how the industry that helped to push British industrialization had practically been eliminated. So in 2002, she saved her first 4 sheep, and since then has worked to build a business focused on animal friendliness and sustainable practices. Today, Davies’ UK-based label, Izzy Lane, offers wonderfully classic, yet still contemporary, knitwear collections that are also oh so ethically conscious.
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