ArchiAfrika Magazine #2 – this second issue covers a wide range of topics, from the cover story on musician Hugh Masakela to African architects at Milan Design Week (shown here) to recycling practices in 6 African cities to community-built compressed-earth block schools in the Dogon to informal housing in Accra …
New Cooling Technology for Buildings Works In the Full Heat of a Sunny Day – electrical engineers at Stanford have discovered a “metal-dielectric photonic structure” that acts like a mirror to solar light reflecting the Sun’s energy, emits what it reflects within a specific range of …
Daimler envisions the future of car technology – car-maker Daimler recently sponsored a Future Talk event to imagine the “evolving role of vehicles in the future.” All of the ideas for using vehicles to make our lives safer and easier reuse some already-existing aspect of cars (GPS, waste heat) and apply them …
How Healthcare Uses Water – page on the website of Practice Greenhealth with statistics on water use in health care facilities and links at the bottom to further information on how to reduce water use in hospital and other medical environments. Healthcare facilities consistently fall within the top ten consumers …
A Building Not Just Green, but Practically Self-Sustaining – the about-to-open Bullitt Center in Seattle hopes to be “the world’s greenest” office building. It’s aiming for certification with the Living Building Challenge, “the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard” and which requires 12 months of continuous occupancy to qualify. The article …
Old Gas Tower to Become Futuristic Data Center – Swedish internet service provider Bahnhof and it’s CEO Jon Karlung are planning to transform this 1893 gas tower, the Stockholm Gasometer, into a state-of-the-art data center. Bahnhof is known for its unusual data center design as in the ‘James Bond Villain’ data …
First Large Wave Power Generator Installed in Lysekil, Sweden – Uppsala University is installing the first generator of what will become the first large-scale wave power farm for producing electricity. “The generator will be the first in the world not to use permanent magnets. The materials in …
New textile technologies developed for emergencies – a Spanish technology transfer group, Tecnalia Research & Innovation, has developed a smart textile with the ability to change shapes. Verstiff is a flexible textile that, when subjected to a vacuum, becomes as hard as conventional plastic. Releasing the vacuum reverts the textile to …
Silicon Valley Tech Giants Plan Super-Green Campuses – a number of high tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Samsung, Nvidia) are planning corporate campuses in California that, in addition to being designed by big name architects, go beyond the standard requirements for sustainability in new buildings. Apple’s campus, designed by …
The Sistine Chapel is much in the news these days. Even though you can’t get in to see it because of the papal election process taking place right now inside the Chapel, there are ways to explore the space and its famous frescoes virtually. Try, for instance, this 360 degree image of …
Cool Blue Roofs May Be The Secret To Energy Savings – on the amount of energy savings that could be realized if more buildings had ‘cool’ roofs, roofs that reflect rather than absorb sunlight. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Heat Island Group says a national campaign could save …
Biomimicry used as a guiding force to design Lavasa Township – post on World Architecture News’ Metroblogs about HOK’s award-winning masterplan for 12,500-acre town of Lavasa, near Mumbai. The development is expected to [be] complete in the year 2020 and will include five planned urban villages that can accommodate …
Earthen Architecture: A Technique of the Past Helping Us Toward a Greener Future – UNESCO and Building Green Futures are working together to build a women’s center in Palestine made out of earth, or mudbrick, an ancient tradition that’s excellent at conserving energy. … over one third of the world’s population lives …
Learn more about Bjarke Ingels (B.I.G) – Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, of Bjarke Ingels Gruppe, talks about his work in this collection of 8 videos. A couple of TED talks, one on sustainability, on the design process, the Escher Tower. They’ve got a nice website, too.
IRENA – Global Atlas for Solar & Wind – from the International Renewable Agency, an atlas showing potential for renewable energy around the world with supporting data. Image shown here is Concentrated Solar (DNI), Multiple countries 40 km by NREL. Via CleanTechnia Delivering On Renewable Energy Around The World: How …
Two from Data Center Knowledge: The Evolution of Facebook’s Data Center Cooling (Dec 4, 2012) – Facebook is making changes in a phase of its fresh air cooling system that manages humidity and heat removal. In the first building of its data center campus in North Carolina, Facebook used …
The Power of a Hot Body – catchy title, and a good idea. Why waste the heat generated by hundreds of people waiting in a subway station and the friction of trains on tracks? This NYTimes opinion piece cites examples from Paris, Minnesota, and Sweden. Idly mingling, a human …
Here’s a start on collections of ‘the best’ of 2012. Check back for more, suggest your favorites – this a live list. PSFK’s Top 20 of 2012 – with source of image Best of the best of 2012 science and tech articles – from the BBC; thanks to Oleg Kravtsov …