Category Archives: Other Stuff
Well, homes with gardens on their roofs are a pretty sight and aren’t really an innovation that could be termed as groundbreaking. Since quite a while now, people living in urban concrete jungles, looking for green spaces, have begun planting gardens on their roofs. This obviously has lots of advantages, including a regular supply of home-grown food as well as better air quality. What caught our eye lately however, are these green roofs, which have found a home on top of public transport vehicles! Landscape artist Marc Granen came up with the idea and a system christened PhytoKinetic that uses condensation from the vehicle’s air conditioning system to water the roof.
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While many would agree that solar panels are indeed an eye-sore and don’t generally help in increasing the aesthetic beauty of a home, there are ways in which solar juice can be harvested, without causing a disturbance to a façade. Take the Lux Gloria installation for example. Designed and developed by Sarah Hall, this eye-catching stained glass installation by the Toronto artist has found a home at the Cathedral of the Holy Family in Saskatoon. To develop this, stained glass was used with embedded with solar panels for a fantastically beautiful effect.
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Summer is the best time of year to spend hour after hour in your garden, soaking up the sun while relaxing and forgetting all your troubles (if you have any, of course). However, if you look at your back yard and see that it’s been neglected because of the unusually cold spring and winter which came before it, you might feel that you’re going to have to spend more time indoors, right?
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A little town in Norway has shed some light on a new way to light up, literally, and is now making use of mirrors to light up its town square instead of having electricity-powered lighting installations! The town called Rjukan usually spends five whole months in darkness during the winter season. One spot in the town will remain illuminated without electricity however, the town square. For this, huge mirrors will be installed on the neighboring mountains which in turn will light up the town center by using the principals of reflection!
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The heat wave sure seems to be causing a lot of havoc in the United States, particularly in the city of New York where residents are facing soaring temperatures since quite a while now. Besides turning the city’s population grumpy and sweaty, the heat wave has also led to a record-breaking energy usage by New York. On Friday, at about 5 p.m. EDT, New York City and neighboring Westchester County’s energy usage touched a whopping 13,322 Megawatts (MW)!
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The NSA does seem to have lost favor with the masses off-late and has been desperately trying to wipe out the black spots it has had tarnishing its image since a month now. We’ve come across reports that won’t work in the favor of the NSA however, given the fact that the government agency has managed to leave hundreds of Utah residents displeased. Here’s why. A new NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah, will begin operations in September and will use a whopping 1.7 million gallons of water each day to cool down its servers.
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Everyone knows by now the implications smoking can have on health. Whether it’s through direct smoking or the effects of second-hand smoke, there is lots of information out there about the impact smoking has on the human body.
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China has begun taking its environment a little more seriously than the rest of the world and has taken up a shocking way to reduce environmental harm. The country, also the world’s biggest and fastest growing economy, will now begin handing out death sentences and execution punishments to those breaking environmental regulations and polluting the environment.
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Previously, he has been glorified for designing the tallest building in Europe, better known as London’s Shard. Italian architect Renzo Piano has done the opposite recently and has pulled the veil off this extremely tiny home, a project he has also wished to complete. Christened the Diogene and named after the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who gave up the luxuries of the world to live in a large ceramic jar, this tiny home is self-sufficient and eco-friendly!
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Dubai is swinging towards the greener side and most recently, London-based Baharash Architecture was roped in to sketch the 2nd phase of what will be the Dubai Sustainable City development, a one-of-a-kind green residential community that will stun the world. With the master plan by Stringa Planning Studio in place, this 46-hectare city will generate nearly 50% of its own energy.
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