Milan Creates World’s First Vertical Forest

In an age where harmonious innovation is becoming more celebrated, sustainable designs to preserve the Earth and contribute to wellbeing are being implemented at a rapid rate. One such innovation to recently be accepted for development is a vertical forest designed by Stefan Boeri Architects.

The first ever vertical forest will soon be the greenest building in Milan. Because the average household in a city produces approximately 25-30 tons of CO2 per year, implementing greener architecture in highly populated areas cannot come soon enough.

“This stunning development is part of a vision presented by BioMilano which promises to incorporate 60 abandoned farms into a greenbelt surrounding the city. Part of the mission is to create a vertical forest building which boasts a stunning green façade planted with dense forest systems to provide microclimate and to filter out polluting dust particles. According to Inhabit, there are two buildings currently under construction.”

The greener architecture will help absorb CO2, oxygenate the air, moderate extreme temperatures, and lower noise pollution. The bio-canopy is not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it helps lower living costs.

In the vertical forest building, each apartment balcony will feature trees that will provide shade during the summer months and drop their leaves in winter and allow more sunlight. An estimated 900 trees are planned for planting between the two new buildings being constructed.

“A grey-water filtration system (which is used water which has gone down the sink or shower) will ensure the trees are adequately watered. Additionally, photovoltaic power generation will help provide sustainable energy to the building.”

Merging the hottest sustainable technologies with revolutionary design will not only help the environment, but help bring human beings and nature back into harmony.

courtesy of:  http://www.offgridquest.com/homes-dwellings/

Creative Wind Turbines Will Have You Rethinking

 A “wind tree” installed at the COP21 climate talks in Paris. Each tree produces enough energy to light 71 parking spaces (or power one average American home for four months). (Courtesy New Wind)

Although a lot of people are excited about wind energy, few are excited about the pinwheel-shaped machines that often produce it. Branded as noisy, blamed for spoiling bucolic views and proven deadly to some bats and migrating birds, the giant, white-bladed horizontal axis wind turbines that now dot the landscape of the American West have earned a fair number of detractors—even among environmentalists who generally favor renewable power.

But what if you turned the idea sideways, and created a turbine that could spin like a carousel? And what if you made a turbine small enough to sit on top of a building or inside an urban park? Could the result produce enough power to really matter?

The idea isn’t a new one—people have been playing with windmill designs and experimenting with alternatives to the horizontal axis turbine for almost a century now. But in the last two decades, a flurry of interest in expanding renewable energy in cities has attracted the attention of a large number of inventors and artists, many of whom see the vertical axis wind turbine as promising.

There is no single design for these upended wind catchers, but all share one key aspect: the blades turn around an axis that points skyward. And unlike their horizontal brethren, the components and associated generators of a vertical turbine are placed at its base, giving it a lower center of gravity. Most are also relatively small, and unlike horizontal units, they can be grouped very closely together to optimize efficiency.

In many large cities, including New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago, city officials and scientists have been studying vertical axis turbines and contemplating their use. Paris has embraced the notion with enthusiasm, even allowing two giant turbines of this type to be installed within the steel latticework of the Eiffel Tower, which might someday generate enough electricity to power the ground floor of the tourist attraction. Some private firms worldwide have begun integrating vertical axis turbines into architectural plans for commercial buildings …

read more, see pics —>  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/