GOOD GREENS

Sustaining the environment.

[goodgreens]

Shanghai's business district features a unique green space with a 110-degree incline, designed for ergonomic comfort and resembling a reclining chair.

[goodgreens]

How a Colombian City Cooled Dramatically in Just Three Years

With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

[goodgreens]

[lynxmuse]

Rajkumari Ratnavati Girl’s School by Diana Kellogg Architects

[itscolossal]

Seeds Embedded into 3D-Printed Earthen Architecture Produce Living Green Walls

[solarpunks]

Innovative Project Is Growing Crops Beneath Solar Panels in Kenya

The project, officially called “Harvesting the sun twice,” is designed to assess whether or not agrivoltaic systems could be successfully used in rural East Africa. 

By combining the land dedicated to solar panels with the land dedicated to agriculture, it is possible to avoid some of these pitfalls. Growing plants beneath elevated solar panels protects them from the sun in hot, dry places and helps the soil retain moisture, the University of Sheffield explained. The strategy has worked successfully in Global North countries like France, Germany and the U.S., but has not been tested in the Global South, according to SEI and The Guardian.So far, the results have been promising,  The Guardian reported. 

In Kajiado, cabbages cultivated under 180, 345-watt solar panels were a third larger and healthier than the control group. Eggplants, lettuce and corn also fared better in the panels’ shade.  

[maxxgardeningonly-blog]

[sixpenceee]

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland Ohio, a.k.a. “The burning river”, prior to the formation of the EPA and passing of the Clean Water Act. 

[futurebydesign]

So much smart in this photo

[donnycopacabana]

[genqueue]

Rare Ili Pika Photographed for the First Time in 20 Years

Discovered in 1983 and formally described three years later, the species had to wait another 10 years to be properly studied in its cliff-face homeland atop China’s Tian Shan Mountains in the northwest province of Xinjiang. In its 32 years on the record, just 29 individuals have been spotted, and it’s thought that the 2,000 or so adults estimated to exist back in the early 1990s has dwindled to less than half this, due to habitat loss and severely fragmented populations. A survey carried out between 2002 and 2003 turned up zero Ili pikas in 57 percent of the locations they’d been known to inhabit 20 years previously.

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Photo credit: Li Wei-Dong

[sociology-of-space]

Someone’s Built a Giant Urban Treehouse in Turin.

[mymodernmet]

According to architect Vincent Callebaut, the Paris of 2050 could look very different from the city we know today. The architect recently unveiled plans to transform the metropolis into a futuristic “smart” city.

[nevver]

Solar-Powered Glow-in-the-dark Bike Path, Studio Roosegaarde

[androblogon]

The Gateway Center at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) was covered in the AIA’s EcoBuilding Magazine as part of their coverage of the 2014 AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten award winners. The intensive, 10,000 square foot green roof designed to accommodate rare plant communities from New York state is currently being monitored by faculty and students to track plant colonization, insect density, soil moisture, temperature, and humidity.

[snowce]

Alexander Gronsky, Norilsk is an industrial city in Russia north of the Arctic Circle. Built in 1935 by forced labourers of the Stalinist regime to exploit the mines of the region, it is now ranked among the most polluted places in the world.

[goodgreens]

Family in Norway builds a cob house with a solar dome crown. It’s warm in winter and cool in summer and the curved structure means little maintenance in winter. Ingrid says:

“It is fascinating to see the rain flow in a large curve around us. Every time the weather is bad I know why we did this.”