Category: materials
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A Trio of Bikes = A Tricycle?
A couple of landscape-related bicycle designs encompassing the crossover potential for design into transportation and even ecology. One of the winners of the competition for the competition results for the Design 21: Power to the Pedal contest is entitled Bloom : peddling green by Society Creative llc. Designers Matthew Boyko, Christina Ng envision a bike-mounted…
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Landscape House sans Landscape
Ok, maybe this is a conceptual gap or just landscape architectural griping (similar to the use of the term ‘architectural plantings’, or ‘value engineering’ perhaps) but there’s nothing remotely ‘landscape’ about the Landscape House for an Ecologist, seen via Inhabitat. Designed by Raphaelle and Alfredo Maul, of Maul Dwellings in San Sebastian, Spain, the project…
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Why Architects Shouldn’t Design Outdoor Furnishings
Everything from Steven Holl lately seems to evoke ‘porosity‘ not just in concept buy also in name. A new furniture addition to this is the ‘Porosity Bench’ – seen a number of places recently on the web. This prototype was destined for Design Miami/Basel where it was shown to the masses. It’s like a little…
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Hydrological Black Out
These images appeared recently relating to a project in Los Angeles, related to the restoration of water reservoir levels of bromate. A past post outlined similar situations in Silver and Elysian Lakes and the use of phytoremediation to eliminate levels. A new approach is the use of sun-block, in the form of plastic balls, that…
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Local Aquaculture
The decentralization of agriculture offers a range of potential options for food production, but usually we think of this. City Farmer featured a home-scaled aquaculture as a means to produce high amounts of food, in this case 2000 lbs in a year (38 lbs per week). :: image via City Farmer Tilapia is a common…
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Hot Seat
I did some posts on the High Line in NYC back in March (along with it’s fine French predecessor) – and have been tracking it for a bit. There’s been some movement in construction, which I will get to in a bit, for now – I just love this one too much not to post…
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The Power of Plants
It never ceases to amaze me the wonder of plants in all of their many forms and functions. A few night back I caught the end of a special on Nova about the search for the ‘First Flower’ – which highlighted the story of Archaefructus liaoningensis, the “…ancient plant discovered in the fossil beds of…
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New Vertical Materiality
It’s been some time since I’ve delved into materials – specifically looking at inventive facades (of the non-vegetated type). A few recent examples are pretty good examples of materials that provide some unique articulation and function – that could also be adapted readily to a number of alternative uses. The first provides a LED media…
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Veg.itecture #24
I decided to clean out the archives of great vegetated architecture – partly from necessity and partly spurred a special Architectural Element feature on Vertical Gardens from A Daily Dose of Architecture and by the recent coverage in the NY Times Design & Living 2008 special mag, featuring the likes of Ann Demeulemeester’s vegetated Seoul…
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AIA 2008 COTE Top-10
The recently announced winners of the 2008 AIA COTE Top Ten Winners unearthed some fantastic projects – and a whole lot of sustainable features and some Vegetated Architecture as well. In honor of Earth Day 2008, we thought it appropriate to showcase those verdant and green selections here. The Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery…