Ever wish if a particular product was biodegradable so that you could use it without guilt? How about a biodegradable cell phone? Well, that and many more such innovative products are opening up new avenues.
Technorati Tags: biodegradable, environment, product design
Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are reinventing the look and feel of skylines, bridges, facades and other architectural surfaces around the globe. The light bulb is being unscrewed by energy-efficient LEDs that are both environmentally friendly and cost-effective. The $10.2 billion industry is growing to provide new design options for architects and planners. [source]
Light plays an important role not just in photography or historic preservation but also in regular design. Of course, playing with sunlight is a better course of action but when the sun goes down, technology takes over. And to an admirable effect too.
A street plan of Opolis, an imaginary city, has been laid out on the floor of the Flux main space. Individual city blocks have been claimed by individual artists. They have designed the buildings and environments that fill the city blocks (apartment buildings, libraries, factories, parks, junkyards, skyscrapers, bars, office buildings, theaters, etc), and have invented characters to populate these environments. The artists have created the work in such a way that as the viewer walks around the block, the buildings (or images in or on the buildings) function as comic strip panels that resolve into a story.
Opolis: A Comix Flucture is trying out the age-old idea of placing the viewer in a Lilliputian city, letting him walk the streets, touch the buildings and basically get a sense of the place that you wouldn’t by staring continuously at a plan drawing for a few hours. The man on the street has always related better to real stories and images than abstract conceptions that architects often resort to. Winning awards is one thing but building an experience-rich place requires taking all those inane and otherwise-mundane stories and weaving them into a conceptual storyline. An interesting experiment, I might say.
WorldChanging rightly points out that, we need to be building better cities, but since we can’t build what we can’t imagine, the first thing we need to be doing is imagining and portraying better cities. Often artistic ability or capacity limited thinkers from expressing their ideas for a better city. City planners like Ebenezer and Corbusier were few of those who transcended their abilities and managed to translate their visions into reality.
We shall not engage in a debate on the relevance of their thoughts but rather marvel at the availability of technology to do so in a better fashion. Graphic simulation and virtual walkthroughs have made expression of thoughts to the layperson far easier and lucid. Video games that incorporate such walkthroughs or even more relevant games like SimCity revealed how such translation of thought into actual realities was easy. Now only, if we could come up with a technological solution that would incorporate weather, demographic, traffic, and other infrastructural data into the model then implementation or at least visualization would be a cake walk. Geoff Manaugh writes on the use of cinematic expression i.e. “using short films as means to communicate ideas about urban design and architecture.” These can later be edited to add your visions and thoughts enhanced with even music and voice0vers to make excellent promotional material for your city.
In our Planning Theory and History class last semester, we were asked to write about our ideal city in generic terms and ideologies. I penned down my thoughts on a green and sustainable city that could be home to like-minded people with a conservation bent in the short term and almost everyone in the long term. I’ll post that essay on here sometime.
Land scarcity in downtowns in large metropolitan areas is often the cause for lack of open public space. The green spaces that have been created earlier on have not expanded or modified to reflect the changes in urbanity. Hence there is a need to create open spaces better if they are green wherever you might find the opportunity. Planners and urban designers often overlook the small lots or even smaller spaces within lots as a feasible option for green space. Citizens do not discriminate against the size of the open space although larger spaces may be more beneficial but availability of a space is better than nothing at all. Thinking on similar lines, the Rebar Group developed the concept of PARK(ing) that was completed last November and successfully tested for usability.
PARK(ing) is an investigation into reprogramming a typical unit of private vehicular space by leasing a metered parking spot for public recreational activity.
We identified a site in an area of downtown San Francisco that is underserved by public outdoor space and is in an ideal, sunny location between the hours of noon and 2 p.m.
There we installed a small, temporary public park that provided nature, seating, and shade. Our goal was to transform a parking spot into a PARK(ing) space, thereby temporarily expanding the public realm and improving the quality of urban human habitat, at least until the meter ran out.
Thus, PARK(ing) operated within available resources and made best use of what otherwise would have been an opportunity cost. I am sure with the growing amount of parking in otherwise dead downtowns, we could do with a little spot of green. Heck, we might be even willing to pay for it, as the PARK(ing) project seems to imply.
An amazing compact apartment that used an interlocking system to maximize space in an urban apartment.
Citizen participation has always been a much sought-after measure in urban planning. Arnstein (1969) describes the ‘ladder’ to explain different levels of citizen participation. Ranging from mere information-providing to the ultimate citizen-control processes, various strategies have been employed to include the residents in planning process. After all, why not include them; they are ultimately going to end up living and using the spaces they design. I was briefly involved in a grant that suggested using charettes in small towns to streamline the redevelopment process and was quite enthused by the scope and extent of such an endeavor. However, the limitation of ‘participation fatigue’ or plain apathy has always kept such methods from succeeding. The trouble of getting them down to the city hall and making them ask questions and offer creative suggestions for planning the space they live in is considered insurmountable. So why not reverse the process? Why not go to their homes instead of calling them elsewhere? Will that work?
Of course, ‘going into their homes’ in a figurative sense; I wouldn’t want to be chased down their driveway with bullets from their shotgun whizzing past my posterior – how’s that for payback for involving the citizens. Information technology and the Internet has taken social networking to a new surreal level and people who haven’t seen each other are becoming acquaintances, or good friends, or even getting married. We aren’t going that way but ultimately, what counts in a citizen participatory process is their inputs, however bizarre or irrelevant they might appear to be. IBM is offering us an opportunity to ‘jam’ with the citizens; taking town hall meetings and letters to city hall to a new virtual level.
“A jam is an Internet discussion, held for several days and focused on a major topic, usually with several subtopics. Anyone can log on and contribute, and the discussions are meant to be freewheeling. (Translation: people can say anything they want, from the inane to the inspired.) In most cases, there are some experts watching over the discussions and, where appropriate, offering facts and context.” [source: Otis White’s Notebook @ Governing.com]
The way it differs from an ordinary chat room is that the ‘jam session’ is conducted over a limited period of time; much like a town hall meeting or a forum. People rant, rave, offer suggestions, criticize, or simply sit back and observe over a short period of time that the jam session runs. IBM then steps in with its technology and sifts through the mountain of posted information and categorizes them into key themes and points of discussion for your leisurely perusal. In fact, IBM is doing a test run by organizing a Habitat Jam where experts, practioners, students, and residents join in to offer solutions for sustainability and share experiences of successful ventures in their respective countries. I am one of the 100,000 people who have signed up. Feel free to jump in but hurry, the jam session ends on Dec.5, 2005.
If you have ever staggered into the bathroom late at night, you will definitely find this water “cool”
Tree Houses! What’s more, they are prefab.