The Blue Economy

The Blue Economy is going a step further than the Green Economy. 
According to Gunther Pauli, founder of Ecover and author of 'The Blue Economy', the Green Economy leads to green solutions that are more expensive than the traditional ones, thus only feasible for the happy few (the rich ones).
The Blue Economy aims at looking for solutions that are both sustainable and affordable.
The Zero Energy Research Institute (ZERI) has been set up as a world wide network of researchers and entrepreneurs searching for this kind of solutions. Already 99 cases have been collected and every week a new case is presented.

 

Intelligent building façade

Homeostatic façade system (source: www.fastcodesign.com)

The homeostatic façade system is a very nice example of an intelligent building façade system to control the solar gains in a building (still a prototype), based on the principle of dielectric elastomers. But it is not clear to me if the material of which this prototype is made is so sustainable.