david gale studios
fine art and ideology since 1978
Design for sustainability 2.0
Designing to expand adaptive capacity means creating objects, templates and platforms that allow people and systems to survive and even thrive in a complex and uncertain planet. In a world increasingly shaped by peak oil, global warming, economic uncertainty and environmental disasters (Deep Water Horizon, Pakistani floods, Fukushima), designers are coming to grips with how to help users createlocal resilience and self-reliance. In fact, the concept of resilience has become an important term that designers are just now grappling with. An emergent property of systems that is related to the “longevity” tenet of sustainability but qualitatively different from its “no impact” focus, resilience is concerned with cycles of change and positive adaptation. Resilience thinking integrates social and environmental factors into a holistic framework that helps users prepare for —or even take advantage of—shocks to a system.
via core77
Eco-friendly
According to the Ecolabel Index, there are currently 349 seals and certifications for marketing green products worldwide, with 88 used in North America alone.
A Brighter Shade of Green
A so-called passive home like the one the Landaus are now building is so purposefully designed and built — from its orientation toward the sun and superthick insulation to its algorithmic design and virtually unbroken air envelope — that it requires minimal heating, even in chilly New England. Contrary to some naysayers’ concerns, the Landaus’ timber-frame home will be neither stuffy nor, at 2,000 square feet, oppressively small.
A Home for the Future
Virginia Tech’s Lumenhaus, a solar-powered home that won the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe, provides a glimpse into future living. Take a tour through the home and listen to Joe Wheeler, one of three primary faculty members who worked on the project with more than 200 students, explain the home’s features and how it may change the way we live and use energy.
Where Is Apple's iPad Taking Gadget Design?
Can such rapidly advancing technology and consumerism ever be part of a sustainable future if companies like Apple, who have seemingly limitless clout in the consumer electronics market, are designing gadgets that make everyone go gaga, but that do little to change the direction of not simply greener, but sustainable design?
via Treehugger
20-minute neighborhoods
Fast Company interview with Portland mayor Sam Adams, on working to make every section of Portland a complete 20-minute neighborhood to strengthen the local economy.
