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.

Jeans for insulation

Ford is recycling clothes for the acoustical insulation of its cars. Apparently for 1 car you need 2 recycled jeans. Considering the amount of cars produced by Ford, the impact of this recycling can be substantial.

Insulating render based on aerogels

The Swiss Research Center EMPA developed a highly insulating render based on aerogels that can be used for renovation of buildings.

Architectural membrane with aerogel

Birdair, a company specialized in tensile architecture, developed an insulated translucent membrane roofing system (Tensotherm) with a material based on aerogel to be used in architectural membranes. The aerogel is applied between two layers of glass fibers/PTFE. The material is very light and can be used as thermal and acoustical insulation. One of the advantages is also that it is translucent and therefore can reduce the energy consumption for artifical lighting.

Daylight design lamp by Ross Lovegrove

Source: Velux

I am glad to see that more and more attention is paid by designers to develop applications that make use of daylight for the lighting of interiors. A beautiful example is the designer lamp by Ross Lovegrove for VELUX, based on the VELUX Sun Tunnel. It is purely daylight. The design won already several awards.
Ross Lovegrove himself explains his vision and design in a small video.

Biomimicry in architecture

A TED talk by Michael Pawylyn on biomimicry in architecture: using nature's genius in architecture
Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture Video on TED.com