Tag Archives: Green Design

Breathtaking residential building in Mexico comes with its own vertical forest and solar panels on its terrace

Posted on by

Living The Noom’s design is everything you want from a building – an unusually beautiful organic structure, covered with a lush tone of green brought about by the vertical forests running along its surface, and running almost entirely on renewable energy.

Designed by Mexico-based Sanzpont Arquitectura, ‘Living In The Noom’ puts you in the lap of nature and luxury. Its sanctuary-esque design focuses on three broad pillars – Wellness, Sustainability, and Flexibility. The community features multiple 4-storeyed houses with a uniquely alluring triangular shape, characterized by vertical bamboo channels and a vertical forest growing on the outer facade of the building. Finally, the structure culminates in a terrace on the fifth floor that has solar panels for harvesting energy, and an urban garden where the residents can grow their own food.

A winner of multiple architecture awards, the Noom project focuses on creating a community for people that focuses on their individual needs. This meant visualizing the entire project as something multi-faceted, rather than a building made of boxes that simply ‘contained’ their occupants. Aside from giving Noom’s residents a stellar home to live in, the project even comes with amenities like greenery (70% of the project’s area is covered in nature – the buildings occupy just 30% of the overall space), as well as rejuvenation centers, meditation areas, parks, pools, workshop-centers for art, and even the organic garden for healthy eating.

The project integrates bioclimatic and sustainable strategies such as rainwater harvesting, wastewater separation, wetland for greywater treatment, biodigesters, compost area, and more notably the vertical forest on the outside of each building, which aside from providing a touch of greenery, also filters/purifies the air coming through into the house, and helps reduce the temperature of homes – a phenomenon more commonly known as the Heat Island Effect.

The overall Noom community comprises 3 buildings of 5 stories each. The apartments on each floor are 120 and 60 square meters, having 1, 2, or 3 bedrooms. The unique layout allows each room to have access to ample indirect sunlight. The design of the house also promotes natural ventilation to renew the indoor air and ensure an optimal level of comfort. The architects at Sanzpont say that their unique layout helps reduce energy consumption (lights and air conditioning) by as much as 85%. For the rest, solar panels on the roof and a high-efficiency LED artificial lighting system helps power the buildings at night.

‘Living In The Noom’ is a Platinum Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Sanzpont Arquitectura and Pedrajo Mas Pedrajo Arquitectos

This self-driving electric car sets new landmark for automotive design by cleaning up air pollution!

Posted on by

Eco-friendly cars have many different faces: hybrid, electric, diesel, and biodiesel. Coming from the same studio that brought the Vessel to New York City’s Hudson Yards, Heatherwick Studio has conceptualized an autonomous electric car that goes further than reducing fossil fuel pollutants. Airo, Heatherwick Studio’s new concept electric car runs on electric power and actively cleans up the air when driven.

Airo comes complete with a state-of-the-art HEPA filtering system that removes fine particles from the air it drives through, edging the electric car’s green initiative even further. HEPA filters, or high-efficiency particulate air filters, are mechanical air filters that remove fine air particles measuring 0.3-microns in diameter. Airo’s HEPA filter is located in the vehicle’s undercarriage, where pollution from the air passes through and filters out, leaving the air around Airo that much cleaner.

In addition to its embedded air-filtering system, Airo’s interior has a versatile configuration that can be altered to form multi-functional spaces specifically designed for today’s progression toward a mobile lifestyle. Inside, Airo’s seats are fully rotational to form social spaces centered around the car’s four-leaf table that unfolds to create a lounge-like booth and folds away when driving. A collapsible screen can also morph the inside of the car into a pod for gaming after long drives. Settling into the night, Airo’s seats fully recline to form a cozy double bed, and the electric car’s transparent, glazed roof turns opaque when you’re ready for lights-out.

Slated for production in 2023, Airo is designed for IM Motors and runs as a fully electric vehicle equipped with autonomous and self-driving modes. Whenever you’d like to turn Airo’s interior into a dining booth or lounge area, the driving is taken care of through smart technology. Constructed from weathered steel, Heatherwick Studio designed a charging station for IM Motors that will become an integral piece of city infrastructure for the future of electric vehicles.

Designer: Heatherwick Studio

Airo’s smiling exterior combines a minimal grille with a sinuous design.

The electric car dons its roof and facades with a jet-black finish, while its wheels feature a radial scheme that echoes its front and rear.

With self-automated driving capabilities, Airo’s interior can be transformed into a social hub thanks to its fully rotational front seats.

When the driving day is done, Airo’s inside can morph into a spacious double bed that enhances any mobile lifestyle.

Planned as city infrastructure, Heatherwick Studio created charging stations that mimic the structure of foxtail agave plants and streetlamps.

The winning design of Volvo’s New Garage Challenge features a green curved roof and integrated solar panels!

Posted on by

In honor of the debut of Volvo’s first pure-electric vehicle, the new XC40 Recharge, Volvo Cars Canada, and the Interior Design Show Toronto have chosen a winner for their New Garage Design Challenge. Canadian designers were told to rethink the function and design of the garage to then be judged based on criteria gathered by Maru/Blue. Reimagining the garage space as an interactive family space and biophilic greenway, Montreal designer Tiam Maeiyat’s Parking Parc was chosen as the winning concept for merging clean design with sustainability.

Parking Parc was inspired by the pun in its own name– Maeiyat reinterpreted the garage as both a space for parking the vehicle and as an actual greenway that resembles a children’s park. Shaped like a rolling hillside, Parking Parc provides a storage area for parked vehicles that rests beneath the garage’s grassy, recreational exterior. As currently conceptualized, photovoltaic panels punctuate the taller regions of the garage’s exterior, providing clean energy for Volvo’s XC40 Recharge to well, recharge, and enough energy to sustain the rest of the garage’s inside operations. Describing the design in his own words, Maeiyat notes,

“The garage may be the last place in a house one might consider for gathering or entertainment, which is exactly why my design celebrates light and transparency and links the inside and outside of the garage. By doing so, there are new possibilities around quality family time, regardless of time or season.”

While the functionality of garages cannot be argued, they’ve largely stayed the same in design and structure while the vehicles that remain parked inside of them have changed drastically over the years. The New Garage Design Challenge aimed to introduce a new way of looking at garages that fits the contemporary and energy-efficient nature of today’s vehicles. Tiam Maeiyat’s reinterpretation of the traditional garage turns to biophilic design and green roofing to help maintain the home’s natural landscape and grassy surroundings.

Designer: Tiam Maeiyat

Inspired by the rounded edges of Volvo’s XC40 Recharge, Parking Parc’s shapes into a rolling hillside.

Parking Parc’s green roof collects rainwater, purifies the air, reduces the ambient temperature, and saves energy.

“My design upcycles the garage space into a new form of the family room,” notes Tiam Maeiyat.

 

Flexible solar panels line the top of Parking Parc, providing the garage’s inhabitants with energy.

The sustainable alternative to LEGO are these building blocks entirely carved from timber

Posted on by

Classic toys like LEGO building blocks never go out of style. A quick Google search even proves that there’s a whole web of online stores devoted to selling and buying rare, collectible pieces. There’s one standard 2×4 LEGO brick on the market, entirely made from gold, with a firm asking price of just under $15,000 – to each their own. Then, there’s Mokulock, an alternative type of building block. Carved entirely from sustainably sourced timber and not compatible with plastic building blocks, Mokulock works in the same way as LEGO bricks but is a couple of steps ahead on the road towards sustainable toy production.

Coming from a love for trees and the natural world, the designer behind Mokulock recognized the waste that manifests with forest thinning and decided to make use of the smaller trees that are too thin for architectural purposes or furniture-making. Prioritizing simplicity and organic structure over shiny paint jobs, the Mokulock building blocks maintain their original tree’s finish, without additional finishing oil, chemical paint, or glue. While the different timber species used to create the building blocks of Mokulock vary, a sanded finish that promises a soft feel and splinter-free play is guaranteed. Currently, Mokulock uses timber from Japanese Cherry, Japanese Zelkova, Japanese Bigleaf Magnolia, Birch, Hornbeam, and Maple trees to produce their building blocks, which provide different textures and shades of wood for either smooth gradient or color block building projects.

Mokulock was initially created as a means for preservation and sustainability, but the timber used in producing these building blocks offers some mental benefits for the user as well. In addition to supporting an endeavor that provides a sustainable alternative to a worldwide beloved toy, Mokulock utilizes the soft feel of wood to help enhance creativity, stabilize the autonomic nerves by lowering the blood pressure, regulate an otherwise abnormal pulse, and generally calm the nerves. Then again, we don’t need research to remind us of the comfort that comes when we immerse ourselves in nature and notice the solidity of its surrounding trees, the soothing scent of freshly cut timber, and the warm feel of tree bark.

Designer: Mokulock

Due to the tree’s natural coloring, Mokulock offers a wide array of shades for its building blocks.

A natural camouflage color scheme is achieved through the varying natural gradient of Mokulock’s building blocks.

Just like LEGO building blocks, Mokulock bricks can be used to create large-scale 3D scenes or smaller designs like automobiles or miniature pyramids.

Mokulock stays away from using any finishing oil, chemical paint, or glue in the making of their building blocks to maintain an organic finish.

Some of Mokulock’s building blocks come engraved with quirky scenes and characters for children to integrate into their buildings.

 

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest plastic polluter, is testing out the viability of paper bottles

Posted on by

It seems like the title of the world’s largest plastic polluter (for 4 years in a row) is finally beginning to get on the nerves of the executives at Coca-Cola. After making a statement only last year that they don’t intend on breaking free from plastic, the company’s slowly begun re-evaluating its supply chain and choice of materials.

Thanks to a partnership with Danish company Paboco (Paper Bottle Company), Coca-Cola has now unveiled its first ‘paper bottle’. Available for a limited online trial in Hungary, Coca-Cola is planning a run of 2,000 bottles of the plant-based beverage AdeZ. It’s barely anything to begin with, but it is a start… and it gives Paboco, the company behind the bottle’s design, a much-needed boost.

Paboco’s paper bottle comes with an inner bio-polymer lining to provide a waterproof barrier (so that the paper doesn’t get soggy). The outer layer is made from a Nordic wood-pulp-based paper, and provides the perfect substrate for printing on, eliminating the need for a label. The bottle itself can be molded quite like plastic bottles are, paving the way for the use of forms, textures, and patterns to help the product stand-out… and the necks of the bottle can be threaded too, allowing for the use of a paper cap (with the option of the crimped metal caps too). While the bottle is biodegradable, Coca-Cola hopes to develop a design and supply chain that allows bottles to be recycled just like paper. “Our vision is to create a paper bottle that can be recycled like any other type of paper, and this prototype is the first step on the way to achieving this,” said Stijn Franssen, EMEA R&D Packaging Innovation Manager at Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola’s limited run should be met with a bit of skepticism (after all, 2000 bottles isn’t enough, is it?) but the challenges faced by the company are understandable. Bottles can easily get crushed or damaged when transported in large volumes, a complication that exponentially increases with CO2-filled pressurized beverage containers. AdeZ, however, seems to be the perfect candidate for this trial run, given that it’s a thick, dairy-free smoothie that contains seeds, fruit juices, and vitamins. If successful, Coca-Cola may look to gradually expand on this approach, helping it achieve the company’s “World Without Waste” sustainable packaging goal of substantially reducing its waste footprint and developing solutions for easily recycling its bottles and cans, and shifting to using only 100% recyclable packaging materials by the year 2030.

Designers: Paboco & Coca-Cola

Images via Coca Cola and Paboco

NASA plans to use mushrooms to build sustainable housing on Mars like this one!

Posted on by

Let’s accept it – climate change is the biggest design problem of our lifetime. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, every brand from fashion to mental health and even construction is incorporating sustainable solutions in their work. In fact, a recent exhibition in Somerset, London was dedicated entirely to “the remarkable mushroom” showcasing its versatility. I am curious how mushrooms are used for construction given that that particular industry contributes to 39% of the world’s carbon footprint and we know a fun-guy (get it?!) who might have a solution.

The construction industry emits 4 times more CO2 than the aviation industry and that is enough proof they must focus on ecodesign to reduce their colossal impact especially when sustainable materials, like mycelium composites, already exist! This material is created by growing mycelium–the thread-like main body of a fungus–of certain mushroom-producing fungi on agricultural wastes. The mycelia are composed of a network of filaments called “hyphae,” which are natural binders and they also are self-adhesive to the surface they grow on. The entire process is based on biological elements that also help in upcycling waste and reducing dependency on toxic fossil fuels. Mycelium composite manufacturing can also be a catalyst in developing new bioindustries in rural areas, generating sustainable economic growth while creating new jobs.

This mushroom material is biodegradable, sustainable and a low-cost alternative to construction materials while also possessing thermal and fire-resistant properties. The Living has designed an organic 42 feet tall mycelium tower to show the potential of using mushrooms for stable structures which is just one of many such projects. Mycelium materials are also being tested for being acoustic absorber, packaging materials, and building insulation. Even NASA is currently researching using mycelium to build sustainable habitable dwellings on Mars – if we have to move into a mushroom house, might as well test it on Earth first, right? The construction industry has to act now if they want to build in/a future.

Designer: The Living

Cement alone is responsible for a massive 8% of global CO₂ emissions and the construction industry has to start using alternative materials to transition smoothly into a more sustainable future.

Energy used to heat, cool, and light buildings account for 28% of these emissions while the remaining 11% of buildings’ carbon emissions consist of those associated with construction and building materials.

Mycelium composite is formed when “mycelia” digest the nutrients from agricultural waste and bonds to the surface of the waste material by also serving as a natural self-assembling glue.

The materials are low-density, and therefore very light when compared to other construction materials while still being able to provide structural stability as shown in various architectural projects.

Solar Bag can purify water while it’s being transported

Posted on by
Asmita Prasad:

In the developing world, access to safe drinking water is a major concern and people often have to walk many miles per day to bring potable water back to their homes and families. According to reports, water-borne diseases kill more people in Africa than war and violence which is a very telling sign of the scarcity of pure water in the region. Water purification using UV rays is one of the more popular methods these days though most such apparatus are not geared to meet the challenges faced by people who need to walk several miles per day to get water. Created by Marcus Triest and Ryan Lynch, the Solar Bag is one creation that seeks to tackle the problem of water purification while it is being transported from the source to homes by the locals.

Solar Bag purifies water while you walk
Solar Bag purifies water while you walk

Continue reading →