Create without destroying: Carmina Campus, a fashion sustainable initiative

These are the days of the Milan Fashion Week, one of the things that has attracted the attention of Sustainable diary is Carmina Campus, a collection of handbags, jewels and furniture successfully combining the idea of ethical fashion and sustainable eco-friendly, with the great traditional Italian craftsmanship. The brand was founded in 2006 by Ilaria Venturini Fendi, who explains "With Carmina Campus I tried to fashion a new approach, enriching the body of knowledge derived from my family history with values such as respect for the environment and the implementation of work projects aimed at social development" The creations included in the collections are under the sign of reuse and upcycle, as Carbags line, bags made with seat...

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10-meter high of Plastic Bags, by Pascale Marthine Tayou

The installation Plastic Bags occupies since last spring, the Hall of the historic part of the MACRO - the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, interacting with the Odile Decq's architecture. This is the space for free passage of MACRO, which is used by the locals to move from one street to another district, just like a square from the global village. Plastic Bags is a large installation shaped like a giant beehive, almost ten meters high by the Cameroon artist Pascale Marthine Tayou. It is made entirely from plastic bags that evoke in their simplicity, the many stories of our daily lives. They offers a colorful critique of capitalism, consumerism and widespread plastic pollution. Everyday objects, useful as insidious, the bags have...

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Urban agriculture on ship in Antwerp, by art collective Time Circus

In this day of snow in Milan, is back again to talk about urban garden, this time the project enters (or leaving?) directly from the art world. We know that urban gardens can bloom in the weirdest of places, also on an old unused ship crane docked at Bonapartedok, the Belgian port city of Antwerp. Here the Belgian art collective Time Circus, built their great green space, and outfitted with a tree-house made out of recycled materials and a chicken coop. Another cute feature from the floating garden is a glazed greenhouse. Commissioned by the Antwerp’s MAS Museum, the floating Welvaert Welton garden is designed to engage locals and visitors with sustainable urban farming practices, through community workshops on composting and...

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Walkonomics mobile app, walking forward in the 21st Century

After talking for two days of food sustainability (monday, tuesday) now it's time to go for a nice walk. The quality and amount of walking as an everyday activity, in any given area, is an established and unique primary indicator of the quality of life. And when I read yesterday of the launch of the new Walkonomics app for iPhone and iPad I thought that was a fantastic development after the Android version. The free Walkonomics mobile app maps and rates the pedestrian-friendliness of every street in San Francisco, New York and England, yes we miss Milan and the rest of the world but let's hope it will arrive in the soon future. Walkonomics provides 5 star ratings for each street in the following 8 main criteria: Road safety: How...

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UFU (Urban Farming Unit) by Damien Chivialle, for re-thinking cities

Yesterday on the diary there was the fabulous story of Todmorden, a town in UK where inhabitants grow in the green public area almost all the vegetables that need. Today we write on another project of re-thinking cities, food production and consumption, UFU (UrbanFarming Unit) a solution for who that don't have a adapted places and conditions. UFU is a farming experiment inside shipping containers created by French designer Damien Chivialle. Organic fish, fruits and vegetables are produced in the street, avoiding unnecessary travels and providing meaning to food consumption in downtown cities. All prototypes are based on circular agriculture techniques. Normally, such a container is found in industry, but with UFU it is used to test...

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Incredible Edible in Todmorden: the town that grows all its vegetables

  In England, in the county of West Yorkshire there is a small town whose people decided they were worried about climate change, food security in Africa and their children's future . It is Todmorden, a town of 14.000 inhabitants, which in 2008 started what has become the "Incredible Edible" movement. They started growing vegetables and herbs in flower beds, the aims are to make use of 
underused areas of the community and public spaces to grow food for all to eat. The people wants “to get closer to the food we eat, education and community involvement”. Their growing around town is organized by their community growers’ group, they are all volunteers. Most of their growing around town is done in raised beds. That means they...

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Sunday's Tale - Nature integration into urban culture: Flower cushion in Bucheon City, Korea

Sunday's Tale: a post from the past "Flower cushion" was presented in October 2012 after 2 months of work, for "Artistic Factory", a public art project by Kyonggi Art Foundation. It was initially planned as two separate commissions, one by seoul-based interdisciplinary artist Jeong Hwa Choi and the other by Korean architecture Mass Studies but, following the site visit, both decided to collaborate on single project to have a stronger impact with relatively small means. "Flower Cushion" is located at the Piloti space at block 1 of Technopark, in Bucheon City, Korea. The existing Piloti space with an high ceiling was not well used despite of its generous size and prominent location in this highrise factory block. Therefore, they propose...

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