time flies . . . here it is four years later, another summer olympics, another february 29th. the leap day of the leap year - sort of like a bonus - an extra day to spend with my class, my family . . . . and it's snowing outside which makes the inside of my home that much more welcoming!
over the course of my web-wandering i come across sites that act as little creative rescues, reinvigorating that part of me that needs to see and experience the cleverness of people and especially those ideas that step outside of the box and affirm the dignity of the human race which is taking a fairly good beating these days with the many consequences of our selfish actions becoming so very apparent.
here then are links to places that underscore some of the magic of being human in this world.
aluna is a very cool large scale and long term project proposed to be the world’s first tidal powered moon clock. larger than stonehenge, aluna will be forty metres wide, five storeys high and will be made up of three concentric translucent recycled glass rings.
the idea is that by looking at how each ring is illuminated, you can follow the moon’s movements, its current phase and the ebb and flow of the tides. the designer is terming this animation of light “alunatime”.
what takes this well into the realm of cleverness is that alunatime will be powered directly by the tides using turbines.
images rendered by mark glean.
another long term project - and this is very long term, is the thousand year forest.
the escapement is designed as an immense timepiece, carved into twenty long avenues separated by raised soil beds. in "year 1" twenty seedlings, from a variety of species native to the region, will be planted in a row. n year 2, a second row of twenty seedlings will be planted to join their older, taller siblings. and so on. each year another row is added, and each year a small forest of trees, from large to small, will make their way down the escapement.
visualizing such a project is difficult and so the developers have generously submitted a flash simulation of what it might look like over the course of its journey through the centuries. interestingly the surrounding countryscape and cityscape doesn’t change. picky picky.
johnny c., the boy over at the hole in the head blog just did the world a huge favour by uploading a scanned edition of the “art of living with yourself and others”. published by the mental health association of chicago for the western electric company, it’s really good reading so you should head over and give it a look. here’s a couple of tickles just to get you interested.
green building is a newish term for a practice that can be traced back as far and probably further than the hanging gardens of babylon. indeed, you could say that it has always been with us but is a practice that has become marginalized due to the nature and scale of buildings being constructed. contrary to the thinking you might expect from such a term, the essential idea of a green building is not simply clothing a building in something that hides its purpose as much as to treat a structure in which people live or work or play as a living entity and so in itself, an element of the broader ecology of which it is nominally a part.
given that buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — create by-products such as heat, air, and noise pollution, waste, and garbage, and interfere with the dispersal of natural elements such as light, and precipitation, and wind, it is critical that future design engage definitively with the need to reduce the impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — in short, to address and account for the complete building life cycle.
this article makes for informative reading. to read about and see an example of sustainable living then visit the technology for life page on a sustainable house developed by spanish architect/designer luis de garrido named the r4house.
the larger considerations of where the green building ethos fits into an overall philosophy of urban design is addressed very briefly and concisely here.
this program endeavours to address this whole perspective and to offer some hope for the immediate future that this sort of thinking, these kinds of expectations, will be met.
kqed is a public broadcasting company based in san francisco, california. the following program comes courtesy of kqed.
green buildings
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