Elsa ZaldÃvar just won a Rolex award for her work turning loofahs, a sponge-like cucumber that I thought grew underwater but apparently doesn’t, and recycled plastic into a sustainable building material: You can read more on the awards page here. I eagerly await the promised how-to video; any readers able to find her specific recipes […]
Last week, Mister Jalopy started out to write another one of is fine entries on D+R about “shackitecture” and ended up penning a proposal for an “Urban Homesteading Act,” a new generation of homesteading laws. As discussed on D+R previously, the local zoning and building departments represent an impregnable, byzantine bureaucracy so difficult to navigate […]
LitraCon hopes to be selling light transmitting concrete later this year. Amazing looking stuff. Via optics.org “Thousands of optical glass fibers form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block,” explained its inventor Ãron Losonczi. “Shadows on the lighter side will appear with sharp outlines on the […]
Over on Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy has been enthusiastically blogging about nifty small buildings, backyard offices, rural getaways, i.e. “shackitecture.” Definitely worth checking out if Lilliputian dwelling is your idea of fun. Shackitecture
Phuaalvin happened to be visiting the Taipei 101 on May 12, when the Great Sichuan Earthquake occurred. It must have been terrifying to see that damper moving like that; according to Wikipedia, the damper weighs 660 metric tons, and is suspended from the 92nd to the 88th floor. A tuned mass damper is designed to […]
I can’t imagine losing my home to an act of God, but all of my neighbors, my entire town losing theirs at the same time, is just beyond comprehension. That’s what happened to Greensburg, KS on May 4th of last year when it was hit by a Cat 5 tornado. 95% of the town was […]
