Each self-contained capsule is made of biodegradable plastic, and it melts away when wet, allowing the seedling within to flourish. Although it's not creating a heaven on earth at a subatomic level, it's a great start. Drop a few dozen planeloads of these babies, and it's goodbye desertification!
Scouring the Web, we found the 10 best examples of green future cities from design visionaries, each one encompassing innovative and sustainable construction techniques, green energy technology, and creativity from your wildest dreams.
The idea of a living wall conjures up all sorts of images, but in reality it is nothing more than a wall completely covered in vegetation. In order to create a living wall pre-vegetated or fabric panels containing plastic containers, or geotextiles, as well as irrigation systems and vegetation are attached to the wall or supporting structure. This form of urban gardening is often designed as an art form to decorate buildings in cities and has been hailed as one way to make cities more enjoyable, healthier and ultimately greener places.
(Via Reality Carnival.)
The old rig would be transformed from environmental hazard into something of an environmental savior through the use of wind, wave and solar power, all easily integrated into the existing structure.
"The big idea is that an icon of non-renewable energy will be powered by totally clean and renewable power," said Douglas Oliver, Director of Design at Morris Architects.
A play upon the symbiotic nature of organisms thriving in the rainforest, TROPICOOL @ KL envisions a series of symbiotic energy-generating skyscrapers modeled after mushrooms. These tropical trees of life provide housing and recreational facilities while mimicking the five layers found within a tropical rainforest: the overstory, the canopy, the understory, the shrub layer, and the forest floor.
Designed to test the feasibility of a fully self-sustaining, floating community, Waterpod is a triple-domed island fashioned from reclaimed wood, metal and plastic and affixed to an eighty by twenty-five-foot surplus barge. Organizers say the primary power sources will be passive and active solar systems combined with a wind turbine which together will power all on-board systems including "rotating art installations and a permanent projector illuminating the Waterpod dome each night."
Appearing for all the world like a brick of sod outfitted with a keypad, Je-Hyun Kim’s Natural Year Phone concept carefully considers the life cycle of cellular phones, which are all too frequently disposed of due to obsolescence and the constant cycling of two-year contracts. Designed to last only for the length of its functional life cycle, the grassy green phone biodegrades and pieces apart for easy recycling after two years are up.
On Thursday, NTT announced that they had made this strange water-filled, electricity-generating sneaker-sandal. Every step you take puts pressure on the liquid-filled sole, which in turn triggers a small turbine generator and can create up to 1.2 watts of electricity--enough to power an iPod continuously while you take your daily stroll.
It's not a car and it's not quite a scooter. Peugeot's HYmotion3 compressor concept vehicle is an original mix of previously seen design elements - a semi-enclosed shell akin to BMW's C1 or the Benelli Adiva and the carving 3-wheel layout of Piaggio's MP3 - with hybrid drivetrain technology added to produce a 2-person vehicle that promises low CO2 emissions Green-Business-Travel as well as greater safety and weather protection than conventional scooters.
At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Love and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can be used to prevent forest fires. A sensor system taps into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with a battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire.
The Peugeot 888 is billed as the "personal vehicle for the future Metropolis." For designer Oskar Johansen from Norway, that means a car with space for two with room for luggage, as well as a nifty shape-shifting body. On the highway, the Peugeot 888 stretches itself out flat so that it's stable and aerodynamic. In the city, however, it scrunches up for easier parking and taking up less of the road in general.
(Via The Keyhoe Report.)
Talk about bringing solar power to the palm of your hand! The World’s Smallest Solar Racing Car is a tiny, fully-functional solar powered vehicle topped with a minuscule photovoltaic panel.
If we told you that a free-flying kite could provide enough energy to power your house, you might consider us crazy. How about all the homes on your block, or even an entire city? Scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently tested just such a technology, tethering a 10 square meter kite to a generator to produce 10 kilowatts of power (enough energy for 10 homes). They are currently planning to scale the experiment with a 50 kilowatt kite and a 100 megawatt array called the Laddermill that could potentially power 100,000 homes!
It sounds implausibly weird, but then much of the world we're moving into is likely to sound that way at first. Our ideas of what's normal, or even what's possible, will not outlast the next decade, and it'll be the people who think in (what are by today's standards) abnormal, impossible ways who may just do the most good.
In the 1970's a plan was drawn up by NASA for the possibility of orbital sunlight "harvesting", but it was deemed too expensive with a hefty price tag of at least $1 trillion. There was no country in the world that could commit to such a plan. But as we slowly approach an era of cheaper space travel, this cost has been slashed, and the orbital solar energy case file has been re-opened.
