Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Pure Nonsense! It has been entirely too relaxing of a month. Enough of this "holiday" stuff; back to business. New posts up shortly!

Metropolis Magazine's NextGen Competition is back!

Our entire program at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts participated in this competition last year. Interior designers and industrial designers formed teams of 6 to solve the world's energy crisis. This year, the competition's theme is "ONE Design Fix for the Future".

"We’re looking for ONE design fix you can make now
in your designed environment—the products you use,
your home, your workplace, your city, or any commercial
application—that, in scale or as inspiration, can improve
our future."

I haven't entered a design competition in a couple of months... I think I'm up for the challenge. And hey, $10,000 for contributing a meaningful idea to society? Not bad. Not bad at all.

Graphic reminders

I absolutely love these graphic decals designed by London-based Hu2 Design. The stickers, which aim to remind the user of where their energy/water/power is coming from, are clever and chic. Love the concept, though sadly the stickers are made from vinyl. Vinyl isn't the most desirable material to have in your home, however it won't kill you... at least not today. But, I applaud the concept for its simplicity and forwardness.

embarrassing, but....

I hate to admit to this, but I've been watching "Launch My Line" on Bravo recently. Its a show where successful individuals pair with a fashion designer to design a clothing line. One of the contestants is an architect. He keeps saying something that is making me increasingly angry: "Fashion is a lot like architecture, they both start with a blank canvas." LIES. Architecture has a context you idiot! Or maybe he's as bad at designing buildings as he is at designing women's sportswear...

...OK, done ranting for the time being.

Uspenski Cathedral

Obviously, data centers emit massive amounts of heat. What do we do to deal with this heat? We use air conditioning, which requires ridiculous amounts of energy that is continuously wasted. What do the Finnish do to deal with the heat? They USE it. The Uspenski Cathedral in Helsinki, Finland has planned a data center in the bedrock beneath the existing cathedral. The heat emitted from the data center will be captured and directed to "city’s district heating network, a system of water-heated pipes that are used to warm homes in the city." (1)

I love this concept. So simple. Like Taryn Mead said... focus on the cyclical, not the linear. One process's waste is another's resource.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded... in progress.

So I've started reading Thomas L. Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". As a disclaimer, I have not read Friedman's previous books, nor was I searching for a read like this. It kind of fell into my lap (and by fell into my lap I mean it was a gift from a great organization called Creative Core when I was at Greenbuild). I haven't even broke 100 pages in the book yet, but I'm intrigued. Here's an excerpt from chapter two of the book:

"To put it another way, The Industrial Revolution
gave a whole new prominence to what Rochelle
Leftkowitz... calls "fuels from hell" - coal, oil
and natural gas. All these fuels from hell come
from underground, are exhaustible, and emit
CO2 and other pollutants when they are burned
for transportation, heating, and industrial use.
These fuels are in contrast to what Lefkowitz
calls "fuels from heaven" - wind, hydroelectric,
tidal, biomass, and solar power. These all come
from above ground, are endlessly renewable,
and produce no harmful emissions."

Just listen to the sound of that... "fuels from hell". What if we stopped looking at energy sources on a grayscale spectrum and just went black and white, good and evil? Would that simplify things for the average American? Would that make it easier for advocates of these "fuels from heaven" to convince the rest of us to adamantly reject "fuels from hell"? I'd like to know.

Greener than Oz?!

Talk about one step for man... one ginormous leap for biomimicry! Architecture giant HOK has partnered with a major car parts manufacturer to plan a city from the ground up in India based on the principles of biomimicry. By first acknowledging the context and culture, THEN addressing issues of space and aesthetics, this project is truly exciting (well, at least for us design nerds out there!)