I love this bicycle! It’s made completely from cardboard. It can handle a hefty 308 pounds. It’s waterproof and it’s cheap. The bike costs only $60 for the standard model, or $90 if you opt for the extra attachments like a removable motor. With a production costs of only $9-12, this eco-friendly bike could be the next solution to transportation woes for both developing nations and hipsters alike.
100 projects combatting environmental issues with innovative design
The intersection of sustainability and design is one that brings to bear problems and solutions wherein the problems can be life-threatening and the solutions critical. “Vitamin Green” is a massive, comprehensive snapshot of the design world’s response to urban agriculture, ecological sustainability and energy efficiency. The collection of 100 green projects records an up-to-the-minute anthology of innovative responses to nature’s most pressing issues.
As Amara Holstein writes in the introduction, “From the macro to the micro, projects are fomenting and coming together as designers begin seriously to reinvent and reimagine sustainability in the built environment. With need as the impetus, and nature as our inspiration, we might actually stand a chance of learning to live in harmony with our planet. We’re at a tipping point of design. It’s time to decide which way the professionalism will go.” The sense of urgency is not mired in government regulations and perceived difficulty—rather, it is demonstrated by a series of successful creations that forge a path to better living. While “Vitamin Green” encompasses a broad swath of environmental design, we were especially taken by the examples of urban agricultural efforts. The selections go beyond the theorizing of solo designers to show communities of people working towards a greener future.
One such project, Edible Estates condemns the lawn and sets out to replace America’s largest crop—and its most wasteful—with functional vegetable gardens. The company has been creating prototypes around the world since 2005, adorning completed gardens with a plaque that reads: “The empty front lawn requiring mowing, watering and weeding previously on this location has been removed.” While the project has been met with hostility from community regulations that seek to keep pristine and uniform lawns, the opposition hasn’t deterred Edible Estates ringleader Fritz Haeg from seeing out his mission.
Started in the Summer of 2011, the Lapin Kulta Solar Restaurant serves up food cooked in open-air aluminum solar dishes. Using no energy outside of the sun’s glorious rays, the restaurant has solved their most obvious dilemma by serving up sashimi and salads on cloudy days. The space is described as an “eatery and artistic installation,” and is headed by Martí Guixé. Their solar dishes—which take a mere five hours to create—heat everything from uniquely textured barbecue to pots of percolated coffee.
The “Living Wall” at the Musée du Quai Branly is a massive vertical garden in Paris that coats the museum wall. Botanist Patrick Blanc developed a custom system for the wall after concluding that plants have a tendency to grow in nearly any moist environment. Two layers of polyamide felt are stapled to PVC and act as the growing surface, with a drip irrigation system delivering diluted fertilizer to fuel plant growth.
In response to rapid urbanization and a growing disparity between city and rural income demographics, the Quinmo Village Project was established to educate the inhabitants of China’s Quinmo Village in self-sufficiency. Part school, part eco-household architecture program, the project has succeeded in creating a complete ecological cycle on-site: food waste serves as livestock feed, and manure is turned into fertilizer to restart the process.
Following the near destruction of the Vietnamese neighborhood in New Orleans East during Hurricane Katrina, the Mare Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corporation (MQVN CDC) was established. Their effort, the Viet Village Urban Farm aims to replace the pre-existing network of gardens that had been operated by Vietnamese immigrants for decades. The proposed 28-acre site will be hedged in bamboo walls to separate it from residential areas, and plans have been made for the design, systems, funding and labor. To prevent future flooding and ensure responsible water use, the farm is connected to two off-site retention ponds as well as an artificial wetland to clean spent water.
Wading through the in-depth analysis of significant efforts, we came across a slew of projects that we have covered over the years. Sustainable objects like the Andrea Air Purifier, the Biolite Stove, the DBA 98 biodegradable pen, Freitag bags, the Plastiki sailboat made from recycled materials, Plumen‘s 001 light bulb and the Sayl Chair by Yves Behar remind us that eco-conscious designers are not alone. Architectural and community projects such as the Halley VI Scientific Research Station, Design Indaba‘s 10×10 Housing Project and NYC’s High Line brought us back as well. But in the end, even we had much to discover and even more to learn, the staggeringly ambitious projects in “Vitamin Green” inciting something beyond surface-level inspiration.
Vitamin Green ships 12 May 2012 and is available for pre-order from Phaidon and on Amazon. Find more images of the book in our slideshow.
Approaches to sustainable agriculture in several of the world’s largest cities
More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, but when it comes to feeding them, trucking in the necessary amount of food isn’t a sustainable process for any metropolis. Growing out of the need for better solutions, urban farming is becoming an increasingly common approach, whether resourceful groups and individuals are planting vegetables in a container on their back porch or are harvesting land as part of the burgeoning agricultural community.
With Earth Day around the corner, we decided to check in with seven farms in cities from Hong Kong to Cairo to learn more about their methods, and their outlook on the future of the industry.
The Brooklyn Grange Apiary Project will soon open with 30 hives, led by beekeepers Chase Emmons, director of special projects for the expanding Brooklyn Grange empire and Tim O’Neal of Borough Bees. Emmons and O’Neal will have a team of 12 apprentices working under a pay-it-forward program, wherein they’ll each take on an apprentice of their own to train the following season. Located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the forthcoming commercial apiary marks an expansion of the Grange’s four existing hives used to pollinate their acre of crops at the flagship farm in Long Island City. According to communications manager Anastasia Plakias, “bees can exponentially increase crop yield and quality, and the honey we harvested was a delicious added benefit.”
So delicious were the results that the Apiary was born, which aims to meet the demand for local honey and, says Plakias, “provide the city’s beekeepers with a local source of bees more acclimated to New York’s environment.” The challenges of loading hives in close city quarters increases the risk for their handlers being stung, but their hard work pays off for the rest of us—urban honey is known to pack a distinctly tasty flavor. Look out for the sweet stuff at their two weekly farmstands, Smorgasburg on Saturdays and in the Brooklyn Grange building lobby on Wednesday afternoons from 16 May.
Lufa Farms is based around a strong desire to provide local produce to the urban community of Montreal, founded by Mohamed Hage after he discovered the difficulty of finding fresh fruits and vegetables in a large metropolis. As a solution he built a 31,000-square-foot prototype farm on the roof of an office building where all produce is grown organically and chemical-free, and will be the first of many if Hage gets his way. Lufa currently grows tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and 22 other varieties of vegetables, including new additions like white pickling cucumber and kohlrabi, but the selection changes regularly.
Beyond the physical location Lufa offers a unique distribution program. Similar to Community Supported Agriculture programs that bring food from farmers outside an urban center, Lufa grows its food on an urban farm and then directly distributes its produce to recipients at drop-off locations in the city. This leads to a situation where, the company promises, “everything for customer baskets is harvested the same day as it’s delivered and is delivered directly to consumers at drop-off points,” for a system that truly embodies the most direct farm-to-table system possible in an urban space.
Riverpark Farm grows out of Alexandria Center in New York City, utilizing all 15,000 square feet of their available space to accommodate a year-round growing season. Riverpark Restaurant serves up the farm’s bounty under the vision of chef Sisha Ortúzar, and chefs commune with farmers to get a huge variety of seasonal ingredients from soil to plate. While still a fledgling effort, the union has produced a cornucopia of foodstuffs from shishito peppers and watermelon to pickling cucumber and tri-star strawberries. Challenged with space and a fickle clime, Riverpark uses space-saving techniques such as intercropping and advanced seeding to increase yield.
Noting that the team is mostly composed of urbanites, Riverpark is nevertheless ready to employ the materials at hand. “We compost using our clean food scraps from the kitchen along with egg shells, oyster shells and coffee grounds, using both traditional hot and vermi-composting systems.”
Sweet Water Organics started with the humble lettuce sprout. The exponentially growing outfit now farms four acres that sprawl over an old crane factory and adjacent land in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee. While very much focused on greens (they produce 15,000 pounds per year), the farm also grows mushrooms and other produce in the summer months. The fruits of their labor is peddled off to co-ops, restaurants, groceries and sold at the local farmers’ market.
“Our main systems are aquaponic raft set-ups,” explains Todd Leech. “We also used raised beds, and coir medium sprout planting.” Sweet Water is dedicated to staying “as native as possible with all plants,” TK says, providing local consumers with crops outside of the standard fare. The farm also produces fish, a native species of perch acting as star of the operation.
Prinzessinnengärten is a 6,000-square-meter farm in the middle of Berlin focused on the aspect of biodiversity. “We have a lot of old and rare varieties, for example, 16 varieties of potatoes that you will not find on the market any more,” co-founder Marco Clausen tells us. “This we do also to make people aware of the problems of global industrialized farming, of monopolies of seed distribution and the rapid decline of diversity.” Plants grow in industrial vessels like recycled crates and rice bags, in a vertical garden or potentially soon, an aquaponic system.
For Clausen and the 20-person Prinzessinnengärten team, urban farming isn’t so much a solution for the demand for food, it’s more of a place for social learning. They feel the farm “functions as a catalyst of cultural change”, and by showing practical alternatives, they can “make people living in the city aware of the food production system they depend on.”
Schaduf is comprised of seven small, vegetable-focused rooftop farms in Cairo, run collectively by brothers Sherif and Tarek Hosny. Using hydroponic and aquaponic systems, their five-person team grows leafy greens—they’ve produced about 2,000 heads of lettuce in the past year—strawberries, red cabbage, local peppermint and a foreign variety of chicory endives, among other crops. While they do sell at local farmers markets, their greater goal is to move low-income individuals out of poverty by providing them the opportunity to own a profitable rooftop farm. Each is roughly 6×6 meters square, the micro farms allow them to detect problems more easily, and more carefully manage the irrigation systems. “It’s crucial that we do not have any water leakages to the rooftop,” Sherif explains.
Concerned with Egypt’s rapidly increasing water shortage, they use a no-soil system that consumes less water than traditional agriculture methods. They are also developing another system “based on permaculture techniques and philosophies”, says Sherif, that they will share with families already growing livestock on rooftops—a popular method in Cairo. Sherif affirms, “We want to try to integrate that existing practice with growing healthy vegetables.”
HK Farm is a flourishing new community-driven urban farming collective founded in March 2012 by former Brooklyn Grange farmer Michael Leung and a team of aspiring farmers, artists and designers. Focusing on rooftop farming and the important benefits of locally grown food, HK Farms is in the process of expanding the presence of urban farms in Hong Kong. Currently operated by a team of three, their 4,000-square-foot farm is getting off the ground growing a variety of herbs, with plans to expand with new vegetables to the lineup.
With a strong focus on DIY projects, all the growing containers were designed and built by the staff and ecologically conscious elements are being installed from the start, including a rainwater collection system. But as with any labor of love it is a long and extensive process according to the founders, “It was extremely hard work to accomplish the initial building of the farm, whilst balancing our own personal work and projects, and normal lives….We don’t consider ourselves farmers (yet).”
See more images of the farms in the gallery below.
Ethical selections for the globally minded from our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide
Since this is the season for giving, we have selected various items from our 2011 Holiday Gift Guide that benefit communities and charitable organizations around the world. Particularly pleasing for the folks that have everything and want to share the wealth, or anyone with a sharing spirit, the following items represent the most rewarding gifts one can give.
Support global artisans and chic winter accessories with the purchase of a Lemlem scarf. Handmade in Ethiopia, the bold hues and beautiful color combinations are block-printed and inspired by traditional Ethiopian paintings.
Ethically sourced from women from Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, these handmade paper flowers are a welcome alternative to humdrum commercial tree ornaments.
These laser-cut velum paper mobiles are perfect for newborns and adults alike. The goods are made in Europe from factories that employ 300 mentally challenged people, a concept borne by Swiss designers Briggita and Benedict Martig-Imhof of Tät-Tat.
The altruistic friends behind Krochet Kids International hope to empower the women of Africa and now Lima, Peru by teaching them a skill to provide for their families: crocheting. Each limited-edition, hand-crocheted beanie comes in a variety of styles and colors, all made of wool and acrylic-blend that bears the name of the women who stitched it.
A small donation to Heifer International will purchase a flock of chickens for a needy family in Heifer International’s global outreach program. Producing up to 200 eggs per year, your donated bird will help fill a child’s belly with essential protein.
As a way to support his charity tutoring program 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers of McSweeney’s started a pirate supply store in the heart of San Francisco. The money goes to helping local youth develop their writing skills, and the lucky someone on your list gets a pair of pirate-inspired socks.
Jawbone has joined forces with charity:water to help support staff and operations in bringing clean, safe drinking water to billions living without it. With each purchase of the powerful little bluetooth speaker, Jawbone will donate $50 to support charity:water.
Give a lady some responsible style with these bracelets, whose proceeds go to support UNICEF’s programs around the world. The accessories are made from durable rosewood and polished brass in India.
A duet of Buckminster Fuller’s timeless inventions
To complement the wave of events at Art Basel last week, the Miami Design District played host to a program that included trendy popup boutiques and transient cultural exhibitions. The highlight of the series for us was the resurrection of two creations from famed American architect-inventor Buckminster Fuller, whose futurist designs decorated the Palm Lot in Miami.
Fuller’s “Fly’s Eye Dome” is a 24 foot structure designed in 1967 as a pre-fabricated and low-cost solution to housing. Made of 50 individual fiberglass pieces, the unit was meant to be air-deployable for use in remote locales. The dome takes into consideration material preservation, manufacturing cost and sustainable energy usage, making it relevant nearly 50 years later. The dwelling weighs about as much as an automobile despite it’s impressive size, and was lit by LED lights in the recent display.
Nestled beside the dome was Fuller’s Dymaxion 4 Car, a prototype for omni-directional transport system that was recently reconstructed by British architect Norman Foster. Fuller anticipated the availability of lighter materials that would eventually allow his car to accomplish vertical takeoff in the manner of a jump jet. While the Dymaxion’s production halted abruptly after a fatal accident the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, the design influenced a slew of later vehicles, most notably the 1955 Fiat 600.
This marks the first time in decades that these landmarks of 20th century invention will be displayed together. Watch this exclusive time-lapse video of the installation coming together last week.
Design duo brings elegance and responsibility to etched jewelry
Jewelry and accessories designer Vivienne Ridley and print designer Susannah Dowse teamed up on Ridley and Dowse and in just three years have collaborated with the likes of Topman, Boxfresh, Harrods, Ted Baker and the enigmatic Wayne Hemingway. The design duo has made a deliberate effort to keep operations in the U.K. under an unwavering commitment to low-impact production and social consciousness. Dowse explains, “We’re very concerned with creating beautiful things with as little cost to human rights and the environment as possible.”
Recently, the designers have taken an industrial approach to their jewelry with a new line of etched pieces in steel and brass—hard metals that allow for sharper detail than something more malleable. Besides jewelry, the young brand’s repertoire encompasses paper goods, home and holiday decorations and more. The duo also recently styled a new room at the Pelirocco Hotel in Brighton, England, a self-professed “saucy stopover” for which Ridley and Douse applied varied skills to a grander canvas.
As the designers continues to flex their creative muscle into new design categories—their website indicates handbags are in the works—we can only anticipate more thrilling collaborations and crossover projects to come. Their current stock of etched accessories is available through the Ridley and Dowse e-shop.
A lo-tech air harvester aims to alleviate the effect of drought on agriculture
Dependent on regional agriculture for sustenance and economic security, rural communities are often the hardest hit by droughts. Following a twelve-year spell in southeastern Australia’s Murray Darling basin, Edward Linnacre saw the need for a lo-tech solution to maintain agriculture in particularly arid climates. The Swinburne University of Technology student created the Airdrop, an “air harvester” that collects and distributes critical moisture to crops during droughts, and earning him this year’s James Dyson Award.
With a deceptively modest design, Airdrop filters hot environmental air through a turbine, feeding it through a copper tubing system—with copper wool to maximize surface area—and into the earth where it cools and releases moisture. The dry air is then re-released into the atmosphere and the collected water pumped through semi-porous hoses to the plant roots. In his initial prototype, which was much smaller than the current design, Linnacre was able to produce a liter of water per day.
The Airdrop’s wind turbine takes its inspiration from everyday rooftop turbines and can be powered through a solar panel in low-wind conditions. Critical to Linnacre’s design was simplicity—the Airdrop was created to be used by anybody, anywhere. As Linnacre explains, “A lo-tech solution is perfect for rural farmers. Something that they can install. Something that they can maintain themselves.” According to his research, even the driest air can produce 11.5 millimeters of water per cubic meter, and Airdrop’s low energy solution to irrigation is a sustainable alternative to other methods like desalinization.
As part of the award, Linnacre will receive £10,000—and his university receives an additional £10,000 prize—for further research and development on the Airdrop, which is still in prototype mode.
All-natural cleanliness with 100% chemical-free products for home and pets
Nearly every brand in the cleaning business offers an “eco-friendly” alternative to the harsh chemicals found in conventional disinfectants, but few can make this their main premise and even fewer do it with the discerning standards found at Eco-Me. Robin Kay Levine and Jennifer Mihajlov—childhood friends and the duo behind the line—pack each effective cleaning product with nothing more than food-grade ingredients and essential oils.
The contents are so simple, you could actually make many of the solutions at home. Eco-Me not only understands this, but began by selling DIY kits containing vinegar, baking soda and olive oil. When numerous customers asked for a ready-made product, the Pasadena, CA-based company began packaging the formulas in PET-1 plastic, and soon in PCR (post-consumer recycled) bottles. Both women are as personally passionate about decreasing the amount of toxins polluting the air as they are professionally invested in the business. Sitting on the board of the Natural Products Association, they proudly push for stronger regulations that would require brands like Seventh Generation, Mrs. Meyers and Method to become 100% chemical-free.
Eco-Me’s range of preservative-free products spans toilet-bowl cleaners to dish soap, as well as a line of pet products. We’ve tried out several—including the concentrated laundry soap ($13), foaming hand soap ($5) and all-purpose spray ($6)—and found that they really do stand up to the classic cleaning products found under most sinks. For the denim-obsessed, the detergent cleans without fading jeans, much like a Woolite powder.
The EPA confirms that impurities in the air indoors can be more harmful on your health than those occurring outside, so Eco-Me cleaners are an easy way to eliminate some common pollutants in the home. The full family of products sells online and at most Whole Foods or health stores.
Furniture with built-in blueprints hints at the localized future of manufacturing
One of the design leaders in the movement to erase boundaries between digital and physical worlds, John Kestner’s company Supermechanical recently brought its first product to market. Kestner, a MIT Media Lab alumni who we first profiled for his earlier interactive projects and went on to include in our Audi Icon series, has created Rev–>Table, which rejects the modern model of hard goods consumption by empowering the owner to become the manufacturer.
Each Rev–>Table has the CAD file etched into the surface; if something breaks, smartphones can simply read the code to access the complete design schematic. Using that file, you can modify the design or use the information to create your own replacement parts. As we progress toward a future of nearly-disposable luxury electronics, inherent to Kestner’s concept is nostalgia for a time when things were made to last—yet it’s unlike anything we’ve seen previously. With longevity in mind, Kestner harnessed digital technology to create a sustainable product that can be continually regenerated by the user. A truly holistic approach, his thinking hints at innovations in quality-goods manufacturing at the local level, as well as a future of high-tech production far from the factory line.
The Rev–>Table is available for a limited time at an introductory discount price of $500 from Curisma (another MIT startup).
A new book looks at marrying design and sustainable living in diminutive dwellings
Reaching beyond the simply small, Nano House: Innovations for Smaller Dwellings seeks out shelters that combine sustainability, economy and portability. For proponents of nano architecture, the 40 houses in the book represent the future of human living. Instead of resembling coffin-like sleeping pods, each house, in harmony with its surroundings, is filled with charm and natural light.
Designs range from basic to futuristic, taking advantage of the best of modern manufacturing with traditional materials and familiar geometry. Author Phyllis Richardson’s collection is the culmination of more than a decade of research and three previous publications on small-scale architecture, and the selection is proof of the architecture and design writer’s supremely discerning eye.
One of the quirkier designs from the collection is the aptly-named Blob. The ultra-mobile structure transcends the invasive nature of permanent shelters, easily placed and ready to use in any environment. It may look like George Jetson’s set trailer, but the Blob manages to integrate seamlessly into nature, with modern convenience in tow.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Soe Ker Tie Houses were designed specifically with disaster relief in mind. Resembling ultra-chic bungalows, the functional, above-ground structures are easily assembled, constructed from both local and pre-fabricated building materials. A far cry from the meager tents associated with displaced people worldwide, these houses are meant to provide their inhabitants with a sense of community and humanity, in addition to basic necessities.
Nano House is available from Amazon and Powell’s.
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