Picture: Invention of color, by Hélio Oiticica. Photo by Carol Reis for Inhotim.
The amazing Cultural Institute Inhotim is a museum complex formed by a set of galleries (pavilions) in the middle of a botanical garden. It's located at Brumadinho, a town 450 kilometers (279 miles) from Sao Paulo and 320 (199 miles) from Rio de Janeiro, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
James Russell, architecture critic for Bloomberg, should have been at the Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design after the age of Oil conference last week, because he certainly has the right idea. He concurs with this writer that the solutions for building in a world with expensive oil won't be high tech but simple and logical, things we have known for centuries and have just ignored. He writes:
We have been showing some of the work of students at London's Architectural Association School of Architecture, where they were looking at models for integrating food production into the fabric of the city.
Taebeom Kim envisions a Gastronomic Garden. Pruned writes:
A former hippie haven in Haight-Ashbury is renovated by Casper Mork-Ulnes, designer of the prefab Modern Cabana line.
The New York Times writes:
"Salvaged lumber was glued together to form the butcher-block treads of the parlor staircase; chips and nail holes were left exposed. The railing is made of shower-door glass and industrial hardware."
...
Sixty miles down a dirt road in the Alaskan Wilderness, sits a cutting-edge green building nestled in the mountains.
An educational landmark for visitors and a starting point and shelter for backcountry hikers, the LEED platinum Eielson Center in Alaska's Denali National Park sports some of the greenest features yet produced by federal funds.
...
It may have slipped by your news reader during the dog days of summer, but don’t think for a second that the AFT’s recent adoption of a green schools and colleges resolution is anything less than a landmark event; because with 1,400,000 members the AFT has the membership muscle to back up their call for greener schools in America....
This lovely 9,800 square foot gem has been called "One of the Greenest Luxury Homes Ever Built" and " shows
that high-end real estate can have a small environmental footprint."
A year ago, Preston at JetsonGreen asked "Are we confusing the words "green," "sustainable," "energy efficient," and "small footprint"? You tell me, is this green? Since then, the answer has become even more obvious.
...
If you’re as interested in seeing our schools cutting energy costs and their total carbon footprint as Sen. Clinton and the United States Green Building Council are then there’s no doubt you’ll want to get involved with their upcoming series of webinars aimed to help schools across the country get a better idea of just how valuable some simple investments in green infrastructure can...
Architects and designers love flat roofs; they not only look cool but if you design them properly they can permit high-level ventilation and keep the house cool. This one, designed by Studio Dror, "creates a wind tunnel circulating breezes in the summer heat."
Indeed, but who wants all that ventilation in winter and what about snow loads?
...
We were delighted when Casa Decor, one of the leading interior design shows taking place in cities like London, Miami, Milan, Madrid or Lisbon, chose sustainability as this year’s theme for the Barcelona edition. After more than 38 exhibitions all around the world, presenting the latest in interior design, decoration and art, the Barcelona team has made an effort to motivate this year’s exhibiting designers to go green, under the slogan Pathway to a Sustainable Environment or Rumbo Sostenible in Spanish. But have they managed we wonder?
Skylights are wonderful things; they bring in natural light for free and can be part of a passive solar heating design. Or, they can be kilowatt-sucking imitations of the real thing "displaying terabytes of HD content in the structure of a full-size faux skylight, SkyV presents the essence of nature’s sky-events in vivid sequences."
More on virtual skylights, plus a roundup of other ridiculous stuff, below the fold. ...
What is that thing in the middle at the top of the proposed Anara tower in Dubai? In most of the renderings it looks like a wind turbine integrated into the building, but when you look closely (image below) you can see that the hub is inhabited and that it is supported by the three blades. So now architects don't even bother with the real thing, they just borrow the imagery and put fake turbine-like things on the top of their buildings because they look cool. ...
Natural processes was the third theme of the Biomimicry in Design course at Schumacher College last week. This built on Part 1 - Natural Forms and Part 2 - Natural Systems by taking us deep into the biological processes which can help us re-evaluate traditional engineering methods.
In the market for $10,000 cash, an all-expense trip for two to NYC and the opportunity to pitch your ideas to Fortune 500 business leaders? Then you’re in luck! ...
Image courtesy of Paul Villecourt - http://paul.villecourt.com/photos
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Technorati