architecture
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Forget foam — now we can grow better takeout containers
Bricks that grow themselves, plastic made of mushrooms ... the future is a weird and wonderful place.
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Geek legend hacks together an off-grid smart home
Loren Amelang is a pioneer in C++ programming, and his homebrewed live/work space is a monument to sustainable geekery.
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This house is so tiny, it’s practically two-dimensional
Here's a house that's like a wall with some empty spaces in which you can eat, cook, and sleep.
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Your next house could be made of pot
This North Carolina house is made of eco-friendly hemp-based bricks, and the company that makes them wants to start building a similar house in California. Throw in a natty hemp suit and Cheech and Chong’s marijuana-resin car, and you’ve got most of the recipe for an entirely pot-based suburban idyll.
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Meet the skyscrapers of the future: Band-Aids, balloon forests, and underwater spheres
This theoretical skyscraper, the winner of eVolo’s annual skyscraper design competition, would collect, purify, and store water in the Himalayas, helping to conserve and regulate it. It looks like a half pack of cigarettes in fancy holders, but it’s not even the weirdest-looking skyscraper, not by a long shot. Below are some of the strange […]
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Frank Lloyd Wright goes solar, posthumously
Taliesin West, the iconic desert home created by Frank Lloyd Wright, is about to go net-zero, which means it will produce as much energy as it consumes.
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Building blocks: What LEGOs can teach us about rebuilding cities
In the Lego room at the National Building Room in Washington, D.C., a seasoned designer gets a lesson in creativity from a 5-year-old girl.
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Pop-up Starbucks made of shipping containers
Recycling shipping containers into houses and environmental centers has been the new architectural hotness for a while, but what good are houses and environmental centers when you can’t get coffee? This four-carton Starbucks near Seattle (go fig) offers a recycled alternative to your strip-mall Starbucks.
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Pre-fab yurt is the FEMA trailer of our post-optimism future
Homelessness, extreme weather, civil unrest — the 21st century is going to give us a lot of reasons to house people as cheaply as possible. So hobbyist Malcom White came up with a way to create a 118-square-foot "yurt" that can be prefabricated and then transported via flatbed truck to wherever it's needed. Total cost? […]