Office building Baumschlager-Eberle: a building without heating

Source: Detail; photo: Jakob Schoof

The architects from Baumschlager-Eberle have built a very special office building in Lustenau, Austria, partly for their own office, partly to be rented.
Although it was not their intention to build a building according to passive standard, it has become a real passive building, since the building has no heating system (and no mechanical ventilation).
More details can be found in Detail and at their website.

Living Building Challenge: green building certificate

Living Building Challenge is another green building certification programme, but it aims at going much further than BREEAM or LEED. It considers 8 performance areas: site, water, energy, health, materials, equity, beauty and process. It has been launched in 2006 and is supported by the Living Building Institute since 2009.
A document with the Living Building Challenge Standard, extended descriptions of case studies and further information can be found on their website.

Design for empathy

A different way of looking at sustainable design:
A very inspiring toolkit, developed by Artefact, to help you to design for empathy. It might be helpful in the search for ways to integrate sustainability in your design, especially social aspects of sustainability.

Playscapes, wonderful playground design

I just discovered Playscapes, the blog of Arcady, an American woman collecting examples of non-commercial playground design. It contains a lot of wonderful examples from real artistic designed playgrounds over natural designed playgrounds to very inventive low cost playground design for a favela. Inspiring to stroll around in this blog. I would have liked to be much younger...

Source: Playscapes

Source: Playscapes

Green design by Pia Wustenberg



Credits: Pia Wustenberg


Pia Wustenberg is a German designer who lives in England. On her website you find some very nice and poetic examples of design products that make use of sustainable materials that are commonly available around us like moss and paper. Take a look at her Garden Rug and her lamps and tables made of processed paper. Don't forget to watch the video on how the processed paper is made! The result is wonderful!

Studio H and the student-built farmer's market pavilion

Farmer's market pavilion (source: The Smart Planet)

Studio H tries to use design and construction of public architecture by high school students as a way to educate these students and at the same time to empower the poorest rural communities in America.
A nice recent example of what they realise is the farmer's market pavilion in Bertie County, North-Carolina.
The curriculum concept of Studio H is freely online available.

I posted earlier the inspiring TED talk with one of the founders of Studio H, Emily Pilloton.

Why light needs darkness

An inspiring TED talk by the Dutch light designer Rogier van der Heide on the importance of darkness to create beautiful and enjoyable environments with daylight. His talk is full of inspiring examples.

Shelter with green roof

Source: ecodemica

In a provincial parc domain near Leuven, Belgium you can find this nice example of a shelter with a green roof. It has been designed by Brick, an architect office from Antwerp specialised in ecological design.

Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal

Ask Nature is a free, open source project of the Biomimicry Institute. It is established as an online inspiration source on biomimicry. You can find many cases, quite extensively explained.

R2B2: kitchen appliances that do not need electricity

Christoph Thetard is a German designer who designed the R2B2. It is a set of 3 kitchen appliances which are powered by muscular strength.
On his website you also find the design of heatable outside furniture that does not produces CO2.

If you are interested in or want to contribute into making environmentally friendly household devices, take a look at http://www.areyouwheel.com/

Solar Wind Bridge: a design to harness wind and solar energy

The Solar Wind Bridge: an amazing design for a large bridge to harness wind energy and solar energy. Will this design by Italian designers for a competition become reality once?

Flow: a beautiful and eco friendly concept for street lights on wind energy

Source: Igen Design

As mentioned on Webecoist: true innovation comes from seeing a problem and coming up with a solution that is both simple and creative.
A very nice example of true innovation is the Flow, a design by Igen Design of bamboo street lights working on wind energy. It is not only eco-friendly, but also very beautiful.

On the Igendesign Blog, a video can be found on the making of the Flow lamp.

More examples of biomimetic design

Habitat 2020, China (image via Webecoist)

Webecoist collected 12 more examples of biomimetic design, this time inspired by the leafs of plants. Many of the examples are related to buildings. But once again, although these nice examples are inspired by nature, this does not mean that they are intrinsically sustainable.

Design inspired by nature



Lighter and stronger building materials
inspired by bird skulls (source: Webecoist)


Once again Webecoist presents a collection of 14 nice examples of inventions and design inspired by nature and 13 examples of design inspired by the sea

Biomimetic design

10 nice examples of biomimetic design inspired by insects collected by Webecoist, but biomimetic is not necessarily sustainable.

Interview with architect and C2C author William McDonough

Inhabitat did an interview with the green architect and founder and co-author of Cradle to cradle William McDonough on his approach to sustainable design.

The Designer's Atlas for Sustainability

The Designer's Atlas for Sustainability: a book by Ann Thorpe for designers on sustainable design: both background information and information on how to teach sustainable design.
In addition, an online discussion group SUSDESIGNTEACH has been started on how to teach sustainable design. Subscription is needed.

The Designer Accord

The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators and bussiness leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.

Design for Sustainability Guide

EDF, the Australian EcoDesign Foundation made a Design for Sustainability Guide: a 10 steps introduction guide to sustainable design for all design disciplines, but mostly product design

D4S Design for sustainability

D4S is a joint publication of the UNEP and Delft University of Technology with a practical approach for sustainable design. Mainly focused on product innovation and on developing countries