Southtown GreenBound
In 2010, Hilary Scruggs led her team to design and build a prototype for sustainable and affordable living in San Antonio, Texas. With inquisitive looks from passers-by, two aluminum encased homes rose out of a small plot in the Southtown neighborhood. This is the Biering Project. Supplementing the project is the following short documentary, Southtown...
Project Aura Lightin’ Up
I pride myself on minimizing the number of wants in my life, but damn… I WANT this!… in fact, I NEED this! It’s a want for the ridiculous amount of style that oozes from it, and it’s a need for its functional purpose of promoting safety… this thing truly embodies the power of design, and...
Ridin’ the Talk
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...
Sustainable Rooftop Agriculture Guide
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...
Livin’ the One Tonne Life
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,...
Smart Design Trends for 2011
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...
Bug Dome in Shenzhen
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’...
I’m Blu (da bad dee)
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...
Flow 2 the Kitchen
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...
Green Hotel Dealz
It’s that time of year when peops all across the land are putting together plans for their big summer vacations. Generally, travel and bein’ green go together like mint toothpaste and orange juice , but the folks at Travelzoo are making it a bit easier by offering great deals on LEED Certified hotels throughout the...
Thriving in Theo Wirth
Greetings Metro Hipstas!.. To date, I’ve had all sorts of fun sharing innovate eco-solutions and ideas with you, but have kept most my posts and updates relatively impersonal. I realized the other day that it might be beneficial to share a bit more of what I do on a daily basis, which is run Thrive...
Log Cabin Melodies
Hans Liberg has got himself one of the coolest recording studios on planet Earth! Take a look at this woody gem of a cabin, located in the town of Hilversum, The Netherlands. Put together by his pal, an established furniture designer by the name of Piet Hein Eek, the structure features an absolutely fabulous facade...
Dieter Rams’ Top 10
Dieter Rams is a man, not a myth, but indeed a legend. The German industrial designer has had a storied career at consumer products company, Braun, serving as its head of design from 1961 to 1995. He made Braun a household name in the 50′s, producing coffee makers, calculators, radios, audio/visual equipment, consumer appliances and...
Foggy Bottom Food
Last week I was out in the District (of Columbia) helping my brother Asa conceptualize a design for his recently acquired row home in the oh-so-cozy Mount Pleasant neighborhood. It looks to be a pretty rockin’ project, with LEED Platinum Certification locked in as its target. He is hoping to set up a blog in...
Dual Flush This!
It’s all about the H2O my friends… we think water is an unlimited resource since the planet is covered in two-thirds of the stuff. Truth of the matter is less than one half of a single percent (.4%) is accessible for human use… The United Nations claims that 1/6th of the world’s population is already...
