Category: science
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Water Power
It was interesting, in some research for a project at work, I looked up the cost of water in Portland to calculate the additional cost of irrigation for expanded landscape area on a rooftop. The idea was that we needed to factor in the additional cost of 20000 gallons of water to be used for…
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Water Worlds
A range of projects featuring water not just as a theme, but a major design element… very disparate in scale and application, but with that common hydrological thread. For starters, one of the typologies of green roofs, discussed previously on L+U, is the concept of ‘blue roofs’ – which use water to provide cooling atop…
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Materiality: Concrete Solutions
Concrete is one of those amazingly malleable and adaptable materials. I’ve mentioned the concept of air purifying concrete, permable features, as well as interesting textures and board-forming techniques. Here’s a few new examples from around the globe. Starting off, I absolutely love the rough facade treatment (via Arch Daily), from Architect: Marcio Kogan in Sao…
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Unnatural Waters
This post stems from a fascinating post I spotted a while back on Treehugger. The topic was the Foreclosure Fish… a resultant reaction from the abandonment of homes, and more specifically swimming pools. “The mortgage crisis is not only wrecking peoples’ lives, it’s not doing much good for the environment, either. The swimming pools of…
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Stupid Plant Tricks
This site features a lot of great, inventive ways to use landscape materials in urban areas. On the flip side, there are a lot of very, very strange ways to use plants as well. Read on for a summary of some of the more ‘odd’ varieties of plant manipulations I’ve gleaned. Grass ‘photographs’ at Wimbledon,…
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High Density Growth
A fusion of vertical greening and urban agriculture, this interesting ‘product’ was spotted from Treehugger. A company by the name of Valcent Products developed this system for high-density gardening by, you guessed it, going upwards. Some images from the company’s El Paso facility: :: images via Valcent Products Via Valcent: “The HDVG system grows plants…
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The Power of Wind
Not particularly focused on landscape per se, but the idea of building integrated wind is fascinating, and there are a bunch of interesting examples I thought I would compile here, with some minimal explanation. Much like urban ag, wind is a hot topic, specifically small(er)-scale turbines technology. Check these out. A Portland project for a…
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Urban Ag: The Pulse
It’s been a while since I’ve done a significant post on urban agriculture. This is somewhat purposeful – for one everywhere you look the topic has caught fire. A quick summary shows recent articles in the LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, American City, CNN, San Francisco Chronicle, Globe & Mail, Granville, Dwell, Slate…
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SillyPads
Wow – this one has exploded in the past few weeks. I refer you to LilyPads by Vincent Callebaut Architectures. I was planning on including it in the last version of Veg.itecture #30 – but it seems as if this needs some of it’s own space to breathe. This project has been everywhere, and has…
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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…