Treehotel

Satisfy the boy's dream inside you. How about complete isolation, in a near zero-emission resort, in rooms designed by Scandanavia’s leading architects? “Treehotel offers a unique hotel experience: treerooms with contemporary design in the middle of unspoiled nature,” say the creators. “Here you can forget about the time constraints of everyday life, enjoy the serenity, and rejuvenate in a sophisticated yet familiar environment.”




The hotel has a total of 24 rooms with five unique designs, all of which complement their natural surroundings in very different ways.













The Mirrorcube is the first and arguably most striking of the five designs. Hidden deep in the forest and camouflaged by mirrored walls that reflect the surroundings, the room is built around a tree trunk and is supported by an aluminium frame covered with reflective glass.







If the other rooms try to integrate with their natural surroundings, the UFO aims to stand out from the crowd. Thirty square metres of cosy interior covered by durable composite metal, the UFO provides plenty of living space and extra modern furnishings in its hull.









The Bird’s Nest is a room of contrasts: from outside, a stack of twigs, bleak and uncompromising. The interior, however, is familiar and warm with space for two adults and two children.









The Cabin was developed to exhibit the best views over the Lule River Valley. The roof terrace also means you can eat your dinner under the Northern Lights.









The ironically-titled Blue Cone (it’s red) is the quintessence of simplicity and accessibility. The room is a traditional wooden structure with three foundations in the ground to give a sense of height and lightness, but also stability.


No Scandinavian hot spot would be complete without a Scandinavian hot spot, so Tree Sauna is the perfect way to sweat those metropolitan worries away.

More at http://www.treehotel.se/

via http://amazingstuff.co.uk

Pavegen

We have seen many different "green" solutions for energy production. This is a new one, creating energy from simple footsteps. It seems that we are making progress...

Giant Dust Storms

Here are some frightening huge dust storms, from all over the world. Dust storms like these can be cross-continental events, eating up everything in their path for hundreds of miles. If they make it into the upper atmosphere, they have been known to travel to the other side of the world, carrying with them all manner of viruses and respiratory ailments. They are called apocalyptic dust storms.

Zhangye Danxia

    It seems that the day when the Earth decided to create this landscape, it was celebrating a party. This is a real landscape located at Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in Gansu Province, a remote region in northern central China.Even for the undeniably powerful Mother Nature, creating something this arty wasn’t easy. It in fact took 24 million years of painstakingly laying down mineral deposits to form these rocks, like pouring different colours of sand into a jar. Over time these weighty layers were compressed into rock, and then a slight and unthinkably slow ripple from the collision of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates rumpled the landscape into those magnificent undulations to complete the effect (meanwhile also giving rise to the Himalayas). Thus the amazingness of Zhangye Danxia was formed.

Chengdu Tianfu District Great City

Great City, outside Chengdu, China, is envisioned as a prototype satellite city to be replicated in other locations throughout the country. The development is intended to respond to the problem of overburdened infrastructure in many of China’s major urban centers without contributing to the high energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with suburban sprawl.



Great City will be home to about 30,000 families totaling 80,000 people, many of whom will also have opportunities to work within the development. The distance from any location in the city to any other location will be walkable within about 15 minutes, all but eliminating the need for most automobiles. The city will also be connected to Chengdu and surrounding areas via mass transit to be accessed at a regional transit hub at the Great City center.

Great City will use 48% less energy and 58% less water than a conventional development of similar population. It will also produce 89% less landfill waste and generate 60% less carbon dioxide.



The project has been designed to conserve existing farmland, with more than 60% of the 800-acre site area preserved for agriculture and open space. The 320-acre urbanized area will be surrounded by a 480-acre buffer landscape, whose natural topography—including valleys and bodies of water—will be integrated into the city itself. Within the city, 15% of the land will be devoted to parks and landscaped space, while 60% will be parcelized for construction. The remaining 25% will be devoted to infrastructure, roads and pedestrian streets.



The city’s perimeter is defined by a clear edge, from which the city center can be reached on foot within 10 minutes. An extended recreation system connects the pedestrian network to trails that run through the green buffer and surrounding farmland. The infrastructure and public-realm networks include electric shuttles, plazas, parks and links to the recreation system. As a primarily pedestrian city, only half of the road area is allocated to motorized vehicles. All residential units will be within a two-minute walk of a public park.



In addition to improved efficiencies within buildings, the city will use seasonal energy storage to use waste summer heat to provide winter heating, and a power generation plant will employ the latest co-generation technology to provide both electricity and hot water. AS+GG has worked with the infrastructure consultant Mott MacDonald on plans for an Eco-Park located on the northwest edge of the city will integrate waste water treatment, solid waste treatment and power generation.

More at http://smithgill.com/work/great_city/ 

Saphon Energy

Saphon has changed the way of thinking about using wind to produce electricity. They use sails instead of turbines, that move in a 3D direction in order to be more effective. Could this be the future of wind power?

Power Supply Problem Solved

An amazing bridge concept has been presented in “Solar Park South” international competition, on a highway between Bagnera and Scilla in Italy. The design harnesses solar energy through a grid of solar cells embedded in the road surface, while wind turbines integrated into the spaces between the bridge’s pillars would be used to generate electricity from the crosswinds.

The road surface would replace traditional asphalt with 12.4 miles of “solar roadways” consisting of a dense grid of solar cells coated with a transparent and durable plastic coating providing 11.2 million kWh per year. The designers say this system, combined with the 26 wind turbines integrated underneath the bridge generating 36 million kWh per year, would provide enough electricity to power approximately 15,000 homes.

via http://informationfarm.blogspot.gr/

Waterlife

Any enviromental concerns? How about water, the most precious element in our lives? Waterlife is a flash site, offering a preview of the documentary of the same name, giving it's audience a wonderful experience of the lust cinematography and rich storytelling found in the film. Well designed and really informative. Great playback, too.

 Check it out:  http://waterlife.nfb.ca/