We’ve seen vertical gardens on the side of buildings before — but never one this, um, HUGE.
Architects and federal officials are planning a series of 250-foot-tall trellises designed to shade the west side of the remodeled Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. The added greenery is just part of a $135 million project that will also feature elevators that generate electricity on the way down, solar arrays on the roof, smart lighting systems that adjust to the daylight available, among other advances. From the article,
Eggleston’s firm, SERA Architects, is working on some questions that weekend gardeners never have to figure out: what plants will grow readily at more than 200 feet in the air and how to water, fertilize, weed and prune at that height. The pruning might be done in much the same way windows are washed, he said, with workers hoisted and lowered on platforms. Rainwater collected on the roof, supplemented by city water, will be piped for irrigating the green wall, he said.
Construction is expected to take 30 to 40 months.
This will truly be a stunning addition to the Portland cityscape if constructed as planned — and we’re thrilled to see other buildings adopt vertical gardens, as well as sustainable features. Check out the full article for more!
Photo credit: Scott Baumberge
A lot of people are comparing this beautiful treehouse in Portland, Oregon to a hobbit dwelling. Personally, add a little black paint and it looks like something Darth Vader would retreat to when things get a little to hectic on the Death Star. It also looks like it would double as a swanky TIE fighter. From the architect,
Located on a flag lot, a steep sloping grade provided the opportunity to bring the main level of the house into the tree canopy to evoke the feeling of being in a tree house. A lover of music, the client wanted a house that not only became part of the natural landscape but also addressed the flow of music. This house evades the mechanics of the camera; it is difficult to capture the way the interior space flows seamlessly through to the exterior. One must actually stroll through the house to grasp its complexities and its connection to the exterior. One example is a natural wood ceiling, floating on curved laminated wood beams, passing through a generous glass wall which wraps around the main living room.
Check out some more pics here.
Wilkinson House via Boing Boing
We love raucous festivals like Burning Man and music jamborees like Bonaroo, but we’ve never heard of one that combines the spirit of these events with the mission to actually accomplish something. Like building a build a micro wind turbine farm.
Such is the idea behind “Villages in the Sky: DIY World Change” — a a family-friendly renewable energy and sustainability celebration located in the Ozarks and scheduled for June 2010. Unlike gatherings that strive to leave things the way they were before anyone arrived, Villages in the Sky is looking to take advantage of crowd sourcing to create a better place than existed before. Participants will help build a micro wind turbine farm and bio-mass systems as well as giant play structures (zip lines, tree houses, ropes courses, etc). The entire event is internally cash free event which promotes a volunteer ethic and strangers working cooperatively for a shared goal. In fact, the main goal is to leave behind the beginnings of a locally self sufficient eco-village. Perhaps even one inspired by the Ewoks. From the website,
“Villages in the Sky is about more than wind mills and climate change. It is a full celebration of the element of air. Everything from paper airplane contests, to bubble blowing, to frisbees, to zip lines, to tree house villages complete with connecting bridges are being considered and encouraged.”
The VIS site is a 40 acre portion of the over 1000 acres owned by host East Wind Community in the Ozark mountains of south western Missouri. In other words, bring your GPS.
Right now, the event organizers are looking for help with funding and currently are in the hunt a $5K grant over at Brighter Planet. You can check out more details on the proposed plans — and help vote them through here!
2010 will most likely go down as the year electric cars were (once again) made available to the public through Big Auto. Both Nissan and Chevy have plans to release the Leaf and Volt respectively — and both focus on getting energy from being plugged in. (Although the Volt can charge its battery utilizing its small “range-extender engine”, but then what’s the point of having an electric car?)
If you’ve got the deep pockets for one, the most conventional way of charging the vehicle will be to simply plug it into an ordinary wall socket. Charging a Nissan Leaf would take up to 16 hours, and charging a Volt would take eight. If you’re in a hurry, however, the best thing to have on-hand in the garage is a “quick charger” — which pushes a much more considerable amount of juice to your car. Instead of 8 hours, you can now have a fully charged Volt in under 2.5 hours.
Unfortunately, having a quick charger installed in your garage is not something just anyone can do. From CNN Money,
“The equipment has to be fully approved, installed by a competent professional, and in most cases, a city or state inspector will have to approve it all.”
In some instances, users had to jump through hoops that amounted to a month or more of waiting for the right installer/inspector to visit their home. “But the broader market of car buyers are likely to be turned off by any additional hassles”, said Charlie Vogelheim, executive editor of Intellichoice.com to CNN. “They all become detriments to making the sale,” he said. “That’s the type of thing that slows it down going into the mainstream.”
Companies like Nissan and Chevy are attempting to alleviate such potential issues by working with city and state governments now — so that later in 2010, when new customers attempt to order quick chargers and get them inspected, they’re not met with blank stares. As Sebastian Blanco, editor of Autobloggreen added, “Little setbacks will not be enough to hold back the tide of people who really want these cars.”
The number of Americans dropping meat is growing, albeit at a small rate. According to an online poll conducted by The Vegetarian Resource Group, three percent of U.S. adults indicated they never eat meat, poultry and fish/seafood. About one-third to one-fourth of those vegetarians (one percent of the U.S. adult population) also never eat dairy, eggs and honey, and are classified as vegan. Additionally, eight percent of the respondents say they never eat red meat.
These numbers are up from a 2006 poll in which 2.3 percent of Americans classified themselves as vegetarians, with 6.7% not eating red meat.
In addition to the TVR poll, a survey conducted by the National Restaurant Association found that meatless/vegetarian dishes will continue to grow in 2010. Of the 1,854 American Culinary Federation chefs surveyed on trends in the industry, meatless/vegetarian entrees came in number 11 in the “Main Dishes/Center of the Plate” category, and vegan entrees ranked 13, with 52% and 48% respectively.
The big winner? Locally Grown Produced ranked number 1 in Top 20 Trends.
via The Vegetarian Resource Group
Environmentally-conscious PC owners beware! There’s a fairly recent spyware virus out there that takes advantage of the green movement to promote an entirely different agenda.
Called “Eco Antivirus”, the app poses as green security software — offering to help conserve the energy your computer consumes while searching for malicious bugs. Unfortunately, the app is a malicious program itself that “bombards the screen with a series of fake security warnings, deceiving scans and aggressive marketing designed to persuade the user to visit the Eco AntiVirus website to purchase the malicious software.”
While those infected have reported it being something of a nightmare to remove the spyware, there are now legit apps to handle this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Lesson here? Don’t download suspicious software without first doing a bit of googling to pull back the curtain on any BS green claims. Even software can greenwash.
Bottled water is surely one of the biggest jokes ever played on humanity. With plentiful supplies of clean water, first world countries still spends a horrifying amount of money on boutique water — some sourced from half-way around the globe.
The image above is but a piece of a stunning infographic from Online Education detailing the damaging effects of bottled water on our planet — and wallets. Check out the full image after the jump below:
Read more »
Google is ramping up their efforts to help conservation organizations monitor deforestation around the world.
The search engine giant announced during the Copenhagen Climate Conference a new “cloud-based” online technology that will allow global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth’s forests. The service will be provided to the world as a not-for-profit service, the company stated. From Eweek,
The technology uses the help satellite imagery to track deforestation over a period of time and measure the level of loss. While it is possible to view levels of deforestation at different times, Google.org’s engineering managers, Rebecca Moore and Dr. Amy Luers, said there hasn’t been a way to calculate how quickly the world’s forests are disappearing. “With this technology, it’s now possible for scientists to analyze raw satellite imagery data and extract meaningful information about the world’s forests, such as locations and measurements of deforestation or even regeneration of a forest,” they wrote on the company’s blog.
The system will take advantage of Google Earth imagery and overlay the data analysis tech on top. “On a top-of-the-line desktop computer, it can take days or weeks to analyze deforestation over the Amazon,” the Google blog states. “Using our cloud-based computing power, we can reduce that time to seconds. Being able to detect illegal logging activities faster can help support local law enforcement and prevent further deforestation from happening.”
Google expects to roll out the new monitoring tech sometime next year. For more, hit their official announcement here.
A 12-mile-long massive iceberg (twice the size of Hong Kong island) is headed towards Australia in what scientists are calling a “once-in-a-century event.”
The 54 square-mile ice slab known as B17B, is currently about 1,000 miles south of the continent. Initially three times as big, it broke off of the Antarctic about 10 years ago and has been slowly floating around. It’s current path north is unusual — and incredibly rare. “I’m guessing you would probably have to go back to the times of the clipper ships,” one glaciologist told USA Today.
B17B is expected to break up into smaller, but still hazardous chunks as it enters warmer waters and moves closer to Australia. It joins two other large icebergs currently floating down under — as well as several hundred currently infesting the waters around New Zealand.
Researchers warn that as global warming effects the colder regions of our planet, icebergs of this size are likely to occur more often.
How’s this for a shocking twist? Tomatoes, long thought to be peaceful delicious denizens of our vegetable gardens, may actually be a giant red threat to insects. Scientists say that the tomato and potato are among 325 new species suspected of harboring an appetite for flesh, including the potato, ornamental tobacco plants and petunia flowers. (Ed note: I always knew petunias were up to no good.)
Unlike more obvious carnivorous plants, like the Venus Fly Trap, tomatoes do not have the physical means to digest their victims. Instead, they ensnare small insects in sticky hairs on their stems, wait for them to fall to the ground dead, and absorb the nutrients via their root system. Self-fertilization! From UK Telegraph,
It is thought that the technique was developed in the wild in order to supplement the nutrients in poor quality soil – but even domestic varieties grown in your vegetable patch retain the ability. The killer plants have been identified as among a host of species that are thought to have been overlooked by botanists and explorers searching the world’s remotest regions for carnivorous species.
The number of carnivorous plants is thought to have been underestimated by up to 50 per cent and many of them have until now been regarded as among the most benign of plants.
Said one researcher, “We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think.”
via UK Telegraph
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