2013-02-24 ~ Sustainable Diary

Photo credit © Uncharted Play

1 mar 2013

The only hotel in the world without rooms: Faktum Hotel

Today we want to tell the story Faktum Hotel, the only hotel in the world without rooms. It is located in Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. With just $ 10 you can book a night in one of 10 different places at your disposal: a forest, an abandoned building, a park bench. These are all en-plein-air, so you can try to sleep as a homeless man.

A description of the hotel's "rooms" tells you everything you need to know: "A stay at the Skeppsbron wharf assures you a waterside vista in the heart of the city."

One of every six homeless people in Sweden live in Gothenburg, they are 3.400 circa. Most of them find a roof over their heads with a friend or at a refuge, but some sleep in the open air.

The brainchild of Faktum magazine editor-in-chief Aaron Israelson, the hotel plans to give its profits to support the magazine's charity work, aimed at raising awareness of Sweden's homeless population. Aaron told: “We don’t think politicians do enough. This is a reminder of poverty and a way to get involved in an easy manner."

There are a tonne of ways to think about Charity Campaigns, but this one is just a tad different.

There have been about 1,000 bookings so far. You can book one for yourself, or as a gift for somebody else. Either way the money goes to the work for homeless and socially vulnerable people.

More info

website Faktum Hotel

Photo credit © Håkan Ludwigson - Faktum Hotel

28 feb 2013

Junk food kill more people than pistols

These are days when you continue to talk in the media of food scandals, horse meat masquerading as beef, donkey's meat in hamburgers, fake biological chicken eggs, etc. .. so when we found ourselves in front of the video Food Fight, by Earth Amplified we launched a large whistle!

The video is a urban gangster movie turned on its head.— instead of street thugs coming in to steal money and groceries, this films shows guys in suits put things on the shelf. It is the story of a young boy who lives in a world where the food at the local corner store is killing his neighborhood, literally. The real damage to the kids and America is from these men at the top; the crimes of Big Ag at a convenience stores is so much worse than what anyone could ever do during a stickup. Obesity and poverty co-existing side-by-side and a food industry that fights hard to keep us in the dark about the correlation between cancer and our diet.

It is a powerful and hard hitting reminder to us all that gun violence is just one symptom of a deeply dysfunctional economic system. And it's an argument that's making its rounds of the internet in a hard-hitting hip hop video that compares the food industry to gangsters and drug dealers.

Sugar is as addictive as cocaine. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Last but not least: support the movement for thriving communities by getting this into schools and donating to SoS Juice. SOS Juice, is a solar-powered for-profit/non-profit hybrid that will sell juice, smoothies, and compost in order to improve health, promote sustainable agriculture, and create green jobs for low-income youth and the formerly incarcerated individuals.

More info

website Earth Amplified

27 feb 2013

A poetic concept: making bikes from junked cars

The Spanish design studio Lola Madrid, owned by creative agency Lowe & Partners, has launched few days ago the platform LOLA Hace (LOLA Make), in order to design and manufacture products that make life easier for people or emotionally in touch with them. The first product that they have conceived is Bicycled.

Bicycled is new making bikes project that utilizes recycled cars as the main source for material. It is such a poetic concept, fewer cars and more bikes is a probably a dream for cyclists everywhere, in an effort to create the most efficient, ecological and healthy means of transportation.

Even though the line is not yet complete, Lola Madrid has just launched a video about the process of transformation and creation of models: the exclusive use of car wrecks different gives a unique look to any bike, which makes anyone proud owns one! Each hand-made bike is based on a consumer insight - which reflects on the emotional attachment from wrecked vehicles. Body metal is used for the bike frame, brake lights turn into reflectors, door handles become seat post clamps and so on.

Bicycled looks like a great way to give cars a second life, while also reducing the demand for new material for bikes. Add in that each creation is closer to art than a mass produced product and they seem to have a winning combination.

More info

website Bicycled

website Lola Madrid

Photo credit © Lola Madrid

26 feb 2013

Bring butterflies back into the city, with Ettore Favini

Today, until Friday 5 April 2013, the Pastificio Cerere Foundation in Rome will present the exhibition project by Ettore Favini Verdecuratoda…voi (which forms part of the vaster project Verdecuratoda begun in 2005) curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

Favini’s research explores man’s relationship to nature and time, reading the social context in all of its complexity. For this new project, the artist rereads the subject of ecology from a contemporary perspective, involving spectators in a “game” that binds them to an act of responsibility toward themselves and the environment.

Verdecuratoda…voi, presents an opportunity to trigger a real environmental metamorphosis. In addition to prompting the urban forestation of green species, this phase of the project aims to bring butterflies back into the city, thus restoring an important marker of air quality to urban areas.

The show is structured around several intercommunicating devices.

The space will contain a vending-sculpture from which attendees will be able to withdraw, using a €1 coin, spheres containing the seeds of plants, bushes and flowers useful to the sustenance and reproduction of butterflies. Users will have the opportunity to become actively involved in the artistic process by following the instructions contained inside the spheres, and planting the seeds. The aim is to build the world’s largest vegetable sculpture. This intervention the first in a series of similar events that will be organized across a number of countries.

In the courtyard, the artist will build a display using the various plant species whose seeds are contained in the vending-sculpture spheres.

The ex-silos space will feature a projection of La Verde Utopia, a conversation between Ettore Favini, Alessandra Sandrolini and Gilles Clément – gardener, landscapist, theorist of the Third Landscape and the Plantary Garden, and supporter of biodiversity. This video addresses the main issues at the heart of Clément’s research: from the analysis of diversity in economic, ecological and social terms, to his project for a “realizable” utopia.

The project further anticipates the launch of a website where participants will be able to point out the exact location of the seeds they have planted, and upload the photos of the plants, thus contributing to the mapping of the vegetable sculpture.

In addition to purchasing seeds, participants will also be able to contribute to the development of the project by making a donation to the Banca Etica, in return for which they will receive a limited edition object created by the artist in collaboration with Canedicoda.

At the inauguration of the project will be presented in collaboration with the Roman study of architecture IaN +, invited by Emilia Giorgi, has designed the concept for the vending machines that will be located in the following areas of institutions, foundations, museums interested in joining the initiative Verdecuratoda.

An individual action can produce substantial changes only if it is repeated countless times, while countless micro-changes on a local scale can, if united, give life to large-scale transformation.

It would be great that the next spring, Rome is invaded by clouds of butterflies!

More info

website verdecuratoda

website Ettore Favini

Facebookpage

Photo credit © Ettore Favini

25 feb 2013

Tree Houses: Fairy Tale Castles in the Air

Today we talk about Tree Houses, buildings that stimulate our imagination, to live in symbiosis with trees. "The idea of climbing a tree for shelter, or just to see the earth from another perspective, is surely as old as humanity. Tree houses are chronicled in ancient civilizations and their lore crosses through the history of every part of the world where trees grow."

It is a couple of weeks ago that in Sagron Mis, near Dolomites, there will be the first Italian village of tree houses.

Among the deciduous and coniferous trees at the foot of Mount Piz Sagron will be built the village of tree houses, made using only natural and bio-compatible materials.

On 2 February, in the Hall of the Community of Primiero of Tonadico, there was the presentation of the project, the idea was born two years ago, when the council of the small town of Sagron Mis, located in the eastern part of Trentino Alto Adige, welcomes the proposal of the Study of architecture MQAA, to create a permanent laboratory of architecture 'rampant': "To develop new ideas and living spaces more environmentally friendly."

During 2013, some projects will result in a series of early prototypes to be achieved by the year in the municipal area, the meditative retreat to the shelter rampant.

Tree Houses Village, Sagron Mis, model of the final project

And, coincidentally, on this subject came out a couple of days ago a Taschen's new book Tree Houses: Fairy Tale Castles in the Air features stunning images of 50 of the world's most amazing tree house designs. Structures range from traditional A-frame homes in miniature, to bulbous, futuristic dwellings that cling to behemoth branches. There is a true wealth of images to be savored in the glossy photos captured of each arboreal abode in Taschen's 352 page book.

More info

website MQAA

24 feb 2013

Sunday's tale - A portrait of happiness: Balloons of Bhutan by Jonathan Harris