Amazing Green Roof Art School in Singapore

January 23, 2008
by Ali Kriscenski

If art school was in our future we might opt to study under, or on top of, the amazing green roof at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This 5 story facility sweeps a wooded corner of the campus with an organic, vegetated form that blends landscape and structure, nature and high-tech and symbolizes the creativity it houses.

The glass façade provides a high performance building envelope that reduces solar gain and heat load while allowing the benefits of natural views and daylight into creative spaces. The glass walls provide a visual exchange between indoors and out allowing students and teachers to experience the building, the surrounding landscape and the interior plaza as fluid spaces. Diffused natural daylight is abundant throughout studios and classrooms, filtered through the surrounding foliage.

The curving green roofs distinguish the building from among the other structures on campus but the line between landscape and building is blurred. The roofs serve as informal gathering spaces challenging linear ideas and stirring perception. The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting.

Finishes are intentionally raw to act as a backdrop for the art, media and design projects. Concrete walls and columns, cement-sand screeded floors, timber railings and a neutral palette define the interior spaces which vary in shape and size. This amazing design seems to offer a new experience at every elevation or perspective fulfilling the intent that a school for art should inspire creativity.

+ CPG Consultants
+ Nanyang Technical University
+ Design Share Honor Award 2007

Via DesignFlute

Singapore’s Stunning Digital Cloud Skyscraper

Singapore’s Stunning Digital Cloud Skyscraper
by sharn

This incredible pixelated skyscraper by Singapore-based Design Act was a finalist in a competition to design a pavilion for the World Expo 2010. Entitled “My Dream, Our Vision”, the project uses permutated cubes to generate a spectacular modular sculpture that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Singapore as an efficient, dynamic, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking nation.

Simultaneously futuristic and traditional, the Singapore spirit 新 (xin, mandarin word for “new”) serves as a key metaphor for Design Act’s entry, which envisions Singapore as a progressive, re-inventive and innovative place.

The pavilion takes the form of an illuminated digital cloud hovering over an ever-changing “green” pasture. It invites you to enter a dark underground space with audio feeds alluding to the background services which serve the city, and catapults you into the bright and white digital cloud, where you are encouraged to post your dreams. Made of 3866 cubes of modular sizes with varying levels of transparency, the pavilion makes excellent use of natural light and is strategically sloped at the base to give visitors full view of the sights on display.

+ Design Act

+ World Expo 2010

M2E Charges Your Cell Phone With Kinetic Energy!

M2E Charges Your Cell Phone With Kinetic Energy!
by Adrianne Jeffries

Earlier this year we highlighted Idaho startup M2E Power’s push to develop motion-powered electronics for the military. Now M2E is emphasizing the commercial applications for their technology, with a specific goal: revolutionizing cell phone batteries. M2E will announce the development of an external charger later this month that will generate between 300 and 700 percent more energy than current kinetic energy technologies, and may eventually replace cell phone batteries altogether.

M2E’s technology is founded on the Faraday principle, wherein energy is produced from the motion of a magnet passing through a coil. M2E says they have designed a system that will generate between 300 percent and 700 percent more power than kinetic energy technologies currently available.

Their design consists of a tiny coil/magnet generator combined with traditional battery storage that will capture even low frequency kinetic energy, so that most daily human motion will be converted into electricity sufficient to power electronic devices like cell phones, PDAs or MP3 players.

M2E is looking to incorporate their technology into a variety of fields - their web site teases that “The impending impact of MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) will be both exciting and far ranging” and hints at applications for wind power, automotive power and small generators. M2E also hopes to eventually create motion-powered batteries that rival consumer-sized ones – D, AA and even AAA cells.

The company is planning to get its first motion-powered military product into the field before 2009, but it’ll take two or three years before we can expect our cell phones to charge themselves simply by being transferred from our pockets to our ears.

+ M2E Power

Via Earth2Tech

BLOOD POWER? Piezoelectric Nanowires Could Turn Your Body Into a Battery

BLOOD POWER? Piezoelectric Nanowires Could Turn Your Body Into a Battery
by Mike Chino

We’ve seen piezoelectric systems that harvest energy from roads, subways, and even umbrella— now researchers have announced that they are on the brink of unlocking an energy grid composed of capillaries, arteries, and veins. Heralded by advancements in piezoelectric nanowires, the development may one day harness the flow of blood to power ipods, cellphones and other portable electronics. How’s that for an alternative take on plasma power?

Developed by a research team headed by Zhong Lin Wang, the technique utilizes zinc oxide piezoelectric nanowires that generate an electric current when subjected to mechanical stress. The wires measure 1/5,000th to 1/25th the diameter of a human hair and are capable of harvesting energy from low-frequency vibrations such as the wind or the flow of currents. Although similar kinetic energy generators have been developed in the past, the miniscule size of nanowires may one day lend them to applications in subdermal implants - imagine biosensors and portable electronics that are powered by simple movements such as walking, or the beating of a heart.

Zhong Lin Wang has stated that “This research will have a major impact on defense technology, environmental monitoring, biomedical sciences, and even personal electronics.” Skin crawling yet? Although certainly a novel idea, implementation is still a long way off.

+ Zong L Wang’s Nano Research Group

Via Engadget and Livescience

OVOPUR: Eco-friendly Water Filter

OVOPUR: Eco-friendly Water Filter
by Moe Beitiks

Design firm Aquaovo have created a whole new reason for water cooler talk with the OVOPUR, an environmentally-friendly water-filter. Shaped like a sleek egg, the OVOPUR uses an Aquacristal filter, made of activated carbon, quartz, copper and zinc. The filter last four months and can clean about 530 gallons of water. The oval dispenser holds 3 gallons at a time and is made of white lead-free glazed porcelain and recyclable and non-toxic parts like silicone and polypropylene. The unit can also be used without the filter as a simple drink dispenser — and is sure to be a conversation starter on any occasion.

The water cooler: straight up conversation piece, right? It might be the place to hang out at the office or the daisy flowered thing at your grandma’s pool parties. The sustaina-liscious kicker of the OVOPUR is its egg-like shape. It’s actually designed to revitalize water using its own natural flow-y curves, à la the theories of Viktor Shauberger. So the liquid in OVOPUR does not stagnate, and it might actually improve the taste of grandma’s iced tea - who knows? At least she won’t have to buy it in a bottle.

Is a Hydrogen Powered House Really Green?

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04. 3.09

Ron Monahan is trying build an energy efficient subdivision in Aiken, South Carolina, and a few weeks ago announced that he was going to build between one and four Net Zero houses, (homes create as much energy as they use over the course of the year) in the development. However, when I looked at the site plan and the size of the houses with their two car snouts, I really wondered what was the point, given the amount of energy it was going to take just to get there.

So he has cranked up the volume to get a little more attention: He is going to power one of them with hydrogen.

The local news video gets it all hilariously wrong, calling it "Greenest Subdivision In America" and calling it the first hydrogen powered house (it's not) and saying that the house is powered by water (it's not) but the facts are more interesting. According to the press release:

Photovoltaic cells on the roofs of the homes – now being designed in much more efficient and attractive models – will run electricity through an electrolizer – a scientific bucket of water – which easily separates the oxygen from the hydrogen. Oxygen and water vapor are the only emissions and are beneficially released to the atmosphere. The hydrogen is captured in the hydrogen fuel cell to run the house, along with the solar power.

There is only one other house known in the United States that uses this revolutionary, simple and very safe system to power a home, and that was done by an enterprising engineer who retrofitted his north-eastern farm home. The Ridge at Chukker Creek will be the first housing development anywhere in the world to offer this option for sale to people who care deeply about their environment and want to live in a home that generates all of its own power – naturally and for free – without having to build it themselves.

Scientific American

Right. Scientific American covered that enterprising engineer, Mike Strizki, and his house last year. This is what his back yard looks like as he stores the hydrogen. This is not how they are storing the gas in this particular house:

"The use of hydrogen to store energy in residential applications at the Ridge is certainly unique,” said Dr Greenway. “And the highly-efficient system design using metal hydride hydrogen storage is one-of-a-kind. This truly demonstrates Ron Monahan's vision. Greenway Energy is excited to design and integrate this system."

This is what his controls look like. It is a wonderful science project and Mike Strzki did an admirable job. No doubt Dr. Scott Greenway of Greenway Engineering will be just as admirable and put into a smaller package.

But people who "deeply about their environment" would realize that this is not a solution to our problems, to drive your Prius to a house with hundreds of thousands of dollars (they say it is a fifty thousand dollar option and I don't believe it) of technology stuck on it just so you can call it Net Zero. This is what you do in space stations, not houses. We need simple, replicable and affordable solutions.

Mr. Monahan was much closer to the mark in the earlier press release, where they wrote:

Some of the strategies are quite simple, such as siting a home the way people did for centuries to take advantage of the angle of the sun, trees for shading and the prevailing breezes. Others are high tech, such as blowing in foam insulation under the roof, walls and the floor, [and] using an EnergyStar door fan test to find and seal every air leak.