01) Floating cities, the LEGO House and other architectural forms of the future – Bjarke Ingels
“Design gives form to the future, says architect Bjarke Ingels. In this worldwide tour of his team’s projects, journey to a waste-to-energy power plant (that doubles as an alpine ski slope) and the LEGO Home of the Brick in Denmark — and catch a glimpse of cutting-edge flood resilience infrastructure in New York City as well as an ambitious plan to create floating, sustainable cities that are adapted to climate change.”
“When Helle Schröder and Martin Janekovic (XTH-Berlin) signed a 199-year lease on some land along the old Berlin Wall, they had a permit to build a row house, but despite the two shared walls, they wanted something that felt airy and light-filled.
Solid glass and steel girders helped them avoid solid walls on the front and back of the home while inside they relied on drawbridges, slides and netting to keep floors and ceilings to a minimum.
The bedrooms are housed within two concrete elements, but even here one entire wall is a drawbridge that opens easily with hydraulics to allow light and air to flow smoothly. The top floor is a kitchen dining area lit from a huge skylight. A heat pump (pipes going 80 meters into the ground) heats the home and collected rainwater flushes the toilets.
01) Family wraps home in greenhouse to warm up Stockholm weather
“The average temperature in Stockholm in January is -3°C (27°F). For Marie Granmar and Charles Sacilotto it can be much warmer thanks to the greenhouse that blankets their home.
“For example at the end of January it can be -2°C outside and it can be 15 to 20°C upstairs,” explains Sacilotto. He was inspired to build a house-in-a-greenhouse through his relationship with architect Bengt Warne who began designing the first Naturhus (Nature House) in 1974*.
Originally Sacilotto looked for an empty lot to build an entirely new Naturhus, but he eventually settled on an old summer house on the Stockholm archipelago. Using Warne’s design, he covered the small summer house, plus an addition, in 4 millimeter glass. The footprint of the greenhouse is nearly double that of the home, leaving plenty of room for a wrap-around garden, and since inside the bubble it’s a Mediterranean climate, the couple now grow produce atypical for Sweden (e.g. figs, tomatoes, cucumbers).
The favorite spot is the glass-covered roof deck. Since there’s no longer need for a roof, the couple removed it and now have a large space for sunbathing, reading or playing with their son on swings and bikes.
The greenhouse isn’t the only novel point to the Granmar-Sacilotto home. They are also completely independent from city sewage. Built by Sacilotto- an engineer by training-, the sewage system begins with a urine-separating toilet and uses centrifuges, cisterns, grow beds and garden ponds to filter the water and compost the remains.
* In the video, Granmar mentions architect Bengt Warne’s influence in the 1990s since this is the date he reached a larger audience with his book release.
01) Stacked cargo containers in New Haven’s “LEGO” apartments
“Christian Salvati of Marengo Structures thinks shipping containers make great building blocks, and in time, he hopes it will become an affordable and quick method of building homes.
As full-scale R&D, in 2012, he built Connecticut’s first shipping container homes: a two-story duplex built from six containers. Two years later, he stacked higher using 27 containers to build a 6-unit apartment complex he hopes to rent to students in the New Haven area (the building is wedged between Yale and University of New Haven).
While containers are uniform, modular and easily sourced (Salivati buys from a depot in Newark, NJ), the building process is still slower and more expensive than it should be given the lack of codes for this type of building.
Salvati thinks that by sharing information, architects and builders can help improve both zoning issues and the currently steep learning curve that prevents containers from becoming a more universal modular alternative.
01) A peek into the family that shaped space-adapting furniture
“A half century ago the Colombo family took the ugly wall bed and remade it into something stylish, easy-to-use and a lot more than just a moving bed. In the 1970s they added a table to the pull-down bed, then a sofa and eventually began to remake all furniture in the home.
Today Clei creates morphing bunk beds, pop-up desks, slide-out tables, “bookish” open-out kitchens and even entire walls that open up to create pop-out, fully-furnished rooms.
We stopped for a visit with the family at their offices and showroom in the Brianza region of Northern Italy where “every corner” is a furniture company according to architect and designer Pierluigi Colombo who took us for a tour.
01) Incredible Dome Home Built with Earth Bags – Sustainable SuperAdobe House
“To learn more about Seb and Isa’s earth bag “ecodome” home, and their off-grid piece of paradise, check out their website here: http://www.eco-dome.ca/
They have solar power, propane, and a rocket stove, and they’re planting native trees, mushrooms, etc. along a path to create a permaculture food source on their property.
They also have a tipi and a yurt, in addition to the earthbag structure, where people can come to spend some time in nature, enjoy the trails they’ve set up, and learn different skills from basket weaving to building a rocket stove.
Seb and Isa are two very inspiring and hard working people who are a pleasure to be around. It’s also very nice to see people putting their beliefs and ideals into action. Their sustainable off grid project is called La Nature à l’état Pur.
The eco dome is built using plans for a SuperAdobe home, which they learned how to build in California at the CalEarth Institute. You can check out their website here to learn about their courses and programs: http://www.calearth.org/
CalEarth was founded by architect Nader Khalili:
“Cal-Earth, the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture, is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to providing solutions to the human need for shelter through research, development, and education in earth architecture. We envision a world in which every person is empowered to build a safe and sustainable home with their own hands, using the earth under their feet.”
01) Man Living Off-Grid in His Incredible Self-Built Cabin
“This man built a beautiful off-grid cabin with the help of friends for $65,000 CAD including the cost of the land. There was no road access to his lot so he had to bring in all of the building materials using a 4-wheeler with a small trailer, and then load them on a material elevator to bring them up a cliff to where he wanted to build his home.
The cabin can collect and store 3,000 litres of rainwater from the roof. One of the water tanks is inside the house to prevent the water from freezing during the winter, and the other two are in a shed that is attached to the cabin so that warm air can be circulated with fans to prevent the other two tanks from freezing as well.
For heat, he has a wood stove, and he brings the firewood up to the cabin using the material elevator.
For power, he has a solar power system and a backup generator for cloudy days.
This micro cabin has two lofts, one is a living room, and one is the bedroom. On the main floor is a kitchen with propane 2-burner cooktop and 110 volt fridge, a bathroom with a sink and a bath (but no toilet because he prefers to have the toilet outside), and a spacious living area with the wood stove and dining table.
He lives in the tiny house with his girlfriend and enjoys the simple lifestyle and the challenge of living sustainably.
01) Use Natural Climate Solutions To Protect Nature – Extinction Rebellion
“Right now, we are ignoring #NaturalClimateSolutions. We spend 1000 times more on global fossil fuel subsidies than on natural based solutions. This is your money, it is your taxes, and your savings.” – @GretaThunberg
Recent research has indicated that living ecosystems like forests, mangroves, swamps and seabeds can pull enormous quantities of carbon from the air and store them safely. Estimates have found that protecting these natural systems could provide more than a third of the emissions reductions needed to keep to global heating below 1.5 degrees Celsius while also enhancing the resilience of people and nature across the world to climate change.
Despite this promise, Natural Climate Solutions receive only around 2% of the funding spent on climate change mitigation globally, and few have heard about it. This short, independent film was made to make nature a part of the climate conservation.
Mr. Monbiot, a political journalist, author and activist who founded the Natural Climate Solutions campaign earlier this year, stated, “The beautiful thing about Natural Climate Solutions is that they simultaneously repair the climate and our damaged ecosystems. They offer real hope where hope was scarce before. But they are not a substitute for leaving fossil fuels in the ground. We need to do both to avert climate breakdown.”
Produced by Gripping Films Ltd., an independent London-based science and nature film company that specializes in telling positive stories to change the world, the film is High Impact/Low Carbon footprint. The film team minimized their carbon footprint by using public transportation to travel from London to Sweden to film Greta and electric vehicles to film George. The film was mainly composed from recycled and donated Creative-Commons licensed footage. The remaining carbon footprint was offset through NCS investments.
The film’s production costs were covered with sponsorship from Conservation International, The Food and Land Use Coalition, and a donation from Gower Street. Musician and performance artist Rone donated use of his track, Motion, to the film.
Tom Mustill, head of Gripping Films, an independent production company specialising in stories of where people and nature meet, said: “One of the things that made me want to immediately make this film, gave me hope that we can make something quickly and that people would find it interesting and listen, was the success of Extinction Rebellion. Being part of that and seeing how many people of all generations can be engaged with it, gave me the courage to step out of the normal way of making films which is to get funding first and then get someone to broadcast it. We just thought, let’s go for it, and hopefully people will want to see it.”
01) This country isn’t just carbon neutral — it’s carbon negative
“Deep in the Himalayas, on the border between China and India, lies the Kingdom of Bhutan, which has pledged to remain carbon neutral for all time. In this illuminating talk, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay shares his country’s mission to put happiness before economic growth and set a world standard for environmental preservation.”
01) Wikkelhouse: pick your modular segments & click them together
“After a couple decades creating theater sets in Amsterdam, Oep Schilling and his company of makers Fiction Factory, put their CNC expertise and resources into building a prefab tiny house, using cardboard as the main structural element. Relying on a proprietary machine that can wrap corrugated sheets around a mold, they could create high strength cardboard that serves as both support and insulation.
The “Wikkelhouse”, or “wrap house”, is a truly customizable home composed of 5-meter-square (53-square-foot) modules that click together to create any-sized structure. The 1.2-metre-deep segments (3.9 feet) are first built up from 24 layers of cardboard moulded around a house-shaped frame. Once “printed”, the basic units can be customized: cut with one or two spherical windows, kitted out as a bathroom, a kitchen or even a narrow bunk room or two or three can be combined to create larger rooms.
Schilling says 20% of the orders have been for 8 segment shelters (often for nature cabins), though they have sold a lot of 4, 5 and 6 unit structures as well. “I hope to sell a three because I like it really tiny,” he explains. “Three could work, but it’s a bit like a hotel room, but of course you have the sky, you have a garden. I’ve lived in smaller spaces, compared to a caravan this is like a villa.”
