I’m excited to be share with y’all a cool project/adventure a friend of mine is taking on. Cindy Gilbert is the director of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s Sustainable Design online programs. I’ve gotten to know her a bit over the months as she’s brought me on to the faculty to lead an...
Zem Joaquin is the founder of EcoFabulous, a popular green website geared towards stylish individuals who want to affect environmental change while staying true to their most authentic (and fashionable) selves. In this interview, Zem shares some helpful tips to guide parents in making more ecologically conscientious decisions while gaining much coveted “cool mom” status....
The Sustainable Rooftop Agriculture Guide is derived from a research thesis by Joshua Foss, Aaron Quesnel and Nina Danielsson at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden in the spring of 2011. This guide should act as a general resource to help city stakeholders better understand the role rooftop agriculture (RA) can play in...
Blonde babes on bicycles and exceptional eco-design… arguably my two favorite things on planet Earth. This being said, I’ve been a pretty happy camper the past 9 months as I’ve been living in Sweden, home to an abundance of both these glorious entities. As much as I’d like to write about stylish ladies cruising around...
Going green is about to get deadly. Strap into your seat and get ready to learn all about the art of dying sustainably. Hear me out, this will be hauntingly interesting stuff! So I recently came across an intriguing article entitled “Planning for the Disposal of the Dead” in a journal issue of the American...
Current society caters to motion; drive-thrus being perfect examples. Meals, marriages, and medications can be acquired on the go, in a box, without standing up. Since their dawn of creation, automobiles have been accompanied by mottos and slogans verbalizing freedom and the wild wind in your hair. However, what these slogans do not articulate is...
So anyone who knows me is fully aware that I’ve drunk a whole lot of green Kool-Aid the past several years. Every day I wake up and ask myself, ‘what’s up with this crazy world, and what can I do to help make it a little less crazy, or at least a better crazy?’ I...
So there’s a good ol’ fashioned social experiment going on in Sweden right now. Sure, we may be aware of this in the shape of beautiful blonde people enjoying all the bounties that a fully functioning social democracy can provide… rich culture, great infrastructure, fully covered programs like healthcare and higher education, extensive ecosystem preservation,...
Greets y’all! So I’m hanging out in Milwaukee right now, gearing up for my second speaking gig of the day at the NARI Home Improvement Show… I am excited to share my new presentation of the year, Smart Design Trends for 2011. I cover a lot of ground in it, from ambitious projects in Hawaii...
So to celebrate this Chinese New Year, the year of the rabbit, I will share a post on a wicked project from a couple of years back… It has nothing to do with bunnies… rather bugs.. but it is in the Chinese city in Shenzhen, so maybe that’s enough of a connection? The ‘Bug Dome’...
Wow… it’s been a fair while since I’ve been on this ol’ blog here… apologies for being a bit distant! Well I’ve got a rockin’ new theme going which has me enthused to start writing again. And… saying that I’ve been a bit distant is actually not a complete lie… the past 5 months or...
Let’s all set aside a moment and just go with the flow… actually, let’s kick it up a notch and double the flow to a level of Flow 2… Now what in the world is Flow 2, and why in our right mind would we want to go there? Well friends, it happens to be...
As we continuously develop a cleaner future, alternative forms of transportation will gain more and more attention. Bicycles, as primitive a technology as they are, will play an increasingly integral role in the shaping of our 21st century communities. Truth is though, not everyone digs on the bikes. Many feel they are a step backwards...
If you’re dialed into the transit scene here in America, you’d probably know that Minneapolis is where it’s at for bikers. Bicycling magazine recently named the City of Lakes the #1 bike-friendly city in the country, dethroning the strong bike scene in Portland, Oregon. Portland still maintains the highest percentage of commuters that ride, but...
So a couple weeks back on a beautiful sunny midwest afternoon, I had the pleasure of touring one of the most energy efficient homes in the country. Called the Passive House in the Woods (PHitW), the single-family residence is humbly striving towards carbon neutrality… it will actually produce more energy than it will use when...
