[breyn-i-keyn] Brainstorming on a Higher Level
The Grand Daddy Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa just added a rooftop trailer park, with each classic Airstream customized by local artists. PSFK writes that “Each of the polished chrome trailers sleep two people, and are embellished with design themes that include, among others, polka dots and The Three Bears. The customisation is worked […]
click here to go to video. Image BBC
TreeHugger has referred to Archigram, the group of British Architects and students out of the AA (Architectural Association School) that came up with plug-in cities, walking cities, blow-up cities and other ideas that are all the rage again. Now the BBC has picked up on it, […]
Only those three last bastions of freedom and the right to choose, the United States, Liberia, and Burma, still do not use the Metric System. Until now, one could justify this on the basis that the Imperial American system was human scaled, based on our body’s dimensions and things we naturally understood. (Like 0 is […]
Pyatt Studios
Many older cities have infrastructures with back lanes, relics of an era when streets were for people, and you kept the horses and the cars in the rear. It worked well; you could put the houses on narrower lots, and the garages were useful for a lot more than just vehicles. It also provides […]
Paleo-future
Over-the-top architect Morris Lapidus (where Mies said “less is more”, Lapidus said “too much is never enough”) also noted about cities that “a car never bought anything.”. Others also thought that the way to save our cities was to get the cars off the streets and turn them into pedestrian malls. In the wonderful comic […]
Image credit: Autoblog Green
Upgrade Makes EV Viable for 95% of All Journeys
So a DIY car powered on walnut shells is not your thing - what about an electric car? While UK electric vehicle retailer NICE may have been hit by the financial crisis, and while the Norwegian electric car manufacturer THINK! …
-10% for 2008
Hybrid cars have suffered from a power 1-2 combo punch in recent months. First, the global economic meltdown (housing bubble bursting, credit crunch, etc) sharply reduce car sales overall, and then oil prices fell like a rock, reducing the pain at the pump. This resulted in a year with a 10% drop in […]
Coconuts in the Trunk
Researchers from Baylor University have figured out a way to make trunk liners, floorboards, and car-door interior covers using using fibers from the outer husks of coconuts. Usually these are made from synthetic polyester fibers. This sounds like a (small) win, though we have some reservations. Read on for more….
The test will be conducted off of South Georgia Island, pictured here. Photo: NASA via Wikipedia
TreeHugger has covered plans for ocean iron fertilization a number of times and the basic premise goes like this: By fertilizing parts of the ocean with iron filings you can increase the rate of photosynthesis in phytoplankton, increasing the amount […]
Coconuts in the Trunk
Researchers from Baylor University have figured out a way to make trunk liners, floorboards, and car-door interior covers using using fibers from the outer husks of coconuts. Usually these are made from synthetic polyester fibers. This sounds like a (small) win, though we have some reservations. Read on for more….