Charlie Davidson’s Hasta la Pasta is part of the redesign (tagline: for designers who don’t want to make landfill) Lighten Up collection of lamps that have vastly reduced environmental impact. Making products out of food - like these spoons and these espresso cups - guarantees that they compost well and affords alternative uses - especially when you’re really, really hungry. But this example - being a non-food-related item - helps bring home another point: all materials could considered in terms of food equivalent; both socially (who gets designer furniture vs. who doesn’t get to eat) and environmentally (how much energy goes towards making food vs. how much goes toward making stuff). Next to living in a gingerbread house, making our furnishings from food brings us a little closer to home.

via

A while ago we took a look at an effort to visualize the relationships and patterns of influence that emerged between authors.  Earlier this year, Anonymous Prof created a 3D model of the interconnections that appear in the history of classical music.  Beginning with medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen and running through the present, the basic network (shown above) depicts 444 composers as spheres within a web of colored lines showing direct influence.  Larger spheres reflect a greater number of artistic disciples, while the shift from red to blue lines denotes movement across time to more recent artists.  Moving beyond the basic visualization, the data reveal the lasting significance of earlier composers when indirect influences are diagrammed, and filters allow users to explore geographic clusters.

In addition to the visualization itself, a quick video tour, and a discussion of methodology, Anonymous Prof provides links to the Charles Smith’s Classical Music Navigator, an earlier effort to explore both patterns of influence and “points of familiarity” among composers that provided the data for the striking model of musical influence.

Hiroshi pointed me to this BusinessWeek investigation on microchip counterfeiting, which explains how electronic waste recycling is profitable: used circuit boards are baked over coal fires to loosen precious microchips. These are rinsed in the local river and sorted according to manufacturer. The chips can be re-sold as is, or their markings can be sanded off to apply newer - and in some cases, completely different - logos and product names. This story focuses on how all of this is worth the trouble, because some of the chips can be re-marked as military-grade and sold for substantially higher prices. While this may be troubling for the technologically advanced superpowers, it also points to an encouraging side story about the fact that some of the precious materials encased in microchips are able to receive extended use through painstaking labor (some might call it ‘up-cycling‘).

Watch the video here.

Enzo Mari’s 1974 Autoprogettazioni (Design and build-it-yourself projects) are simple schemes for tables and chairs that can be made from scrap wood in a variety of proportions and configurations. You can follow the designs or even buy complete kits, but you don’t have to: just looking at these images allows the designs to be freely copied, shared and modified.

via

via

via

via

via

via

A recent BBC news story detailed plans in England and Wales requiring landlords in Wales and England to give tenants summaries of the energy efficiency and carbon emissions of rental properties.  Energy Performance Certificates evaluate a range of factors, including everything from drafty windows, the quality of insulation, and HVAC performance.  Awarding a score from A to G (with most buildings currently in the D range), the system givers potential renters a quick overview of efficiency and expenses, and allows them to factor energy costs into the decision making process along with rent and subjective considerations such as location.

Officials in the Communities Ministry hope that this regulation will serve as a form of moral suasion. While the regulation included a fine for noncompliance, the threat of renters turning up their noses at poorly rated properties has the potential to force landlords to either reduce rents or allow apartments and houses to stand empty, providing a financial prod to participate in the program.  The National Landlords Association agrees, stating that the threat of empty properties will encourage owners apply for certificates and begin upgrades quickly.  Fortunately, the assessment process includes suggestions for improvement and an analysis of costs and low-term financial effects of improving energy efficiency.

The rental property rating program stands as part of a larger program to encourage efficiency and sustainability in architecture and household management. Similar regulations require anyone wishing to sell a home to provide information on energy efficiency, and beginning in October 2008 all new buildings must participate in the program. and a plan to mandate the evaluation system for all new construction.

The tangible representation of light as material makes it fun - and intuitive - to add it and to take it away. We saw an adult version of modular light blocks at this year’s Salone Satellite; now a children’s bedside lamp by beingblease that allows the child to configure colorful magnetic tubes that bend and shape light through conductive connectors. Modular design has advantages for making products more (potentially) durable and - in many cases - fun.

via

The idea has proven tremendously successful.  More than 90 percent of the programs funded by Ashoka have been adopted by other nonprofit groups or government agencies, and over 70 percent of the fellows have seen their ideas lead to changes in national policy.  While fellows serve as the public face of the program, Ashoka hopes to increase the synergy of social change by promoting reform-oriented knowledge networks.  Fellows share their ideas and models, creating a repository which others can reference, and participate in direct collaboration with other reformers.  Ashoka uses these efforts to find new models of change, synthesizing new approaches to social problems:

As a result of global collaborations, Ashoka is able to distill the most effective patterns and unify them into a “mosaic”— a synthesis of the commonalities and intersections of key principles that guide Fellows’ individual solutions. These overarching mosaics are then disseminated globally, and form the basis of our programmatic initiatives specific to each field of work, such as youth development or the environment.

Earth’s Natural Wealth: an Audit explores the depletion of exotic materials necessary for manufacturing high-tech products through a series of intense infographics. The lesson is that some of our most desirable elements (Indium for LCD screens, Gallium for lasers and LEDs) are set to become completely extinct with ten or twenty years with no substitute and - most importantly - no way to recover them from the countless computer components they are a part of. Either we can prepare to go without displays or we need to design them in a way that their precious components can be readily restored and re-used.

Opening on 27 September 2008, the new home of San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences will stand as the largest green public  installation on earth.  While every phase of the facility’s development has incorporated sustainable design, the new roof updates a familiar idea in a way that will make the site more efficient while reflecting the area’s landscape.

Architect Renzo Piano imagined the structure as a whole sliding into the earth, creating an area that blends seamlessly with its surroundings and serves as a corridor for wildlife.  A 2.5 acre living roof serves as the centerpiece of this vision, sheltering the site and hosting a wide variety of plants native to California.  Similar in basic concept to green roofs used for small-scale gardening and to offset the environmental effects of cities, Piano and consultants Visual Acuity used the surface of the roof to create a set of artificial hills.  The shape of the roof itself changes the flow of air moving over the building, drawing air into the exhibit areas .  This feature–working in conjunction with a set of mechanized skylights that monitor internal light and temperature–will eliminate the need for air conditioning and create a space incorporating natural ambient light.  While allowing the Academy to operate more efficiently, the roof will blend into the topography of the area, reducing the visual impact of the site while paradoxically creating a monument to green design.

Last year Ambient released an umbrella with a handle that glows if you should take it with you - a lot of electronics for a disposable water defender (especially when you consider the resources required to make a single computer chip). A much more elegant solution: umbrellatoday.com, the same simple suggestion without all the complicated circuits.

via