design
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Levitt to Beaver: Suburbia gets a mixed-use makeover
Designers set out to make Levittown, N.Y. -- the original suburban gold standard -- more livable and less car-dependent.
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How old is your phone? I bet mine is older
Planned obsolescence is morphing into desired obsolescence: Customers want gadgets to wear out so they'll have a good excuse to buy a new one. But some of us cheapskates aren't playing along.
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Add this foldable canoe to your climate change survival plan
Are you concerned about apocalyptic floods? (Uh, you maybe should be.) Alternately, do you like to hike or bike to places that are good for canoeing? OR BOTH? Either in the short term or the long term, you're probably going to want this foldable canoe, which weighs less than nine pounds and folds to fit […]
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Barbie Dream House has solar panels, low-flow toilets, four stories, giraffe
The American Institute of Architects has picked a winning design in its Barbie Dream House contest, and it's green as well as pink. The four-story edifice, presumably built with input from Architect Barbie, features solar panels, low-flow toilets, EnergyStar appliances, a greenhouse, eco-friendly bamboo flooring, and "decidedly NO parking garages and driveways." It also has a meditation space, a home gym, and a 1,500 square foot entertainment area. It's hard to reconcile green design with a client so into overconsuming that she's actually a plastic toy.
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Here's a food label people can understand at a glance
Designer Renee Walker's food labels, which just won the Rethink the Food Label contest, are elegantly simple. They're dominated by a color-coded box that shows the breakdown of ingredients, including unappetizing shades of gray for additives and preservatives. So in one glance you can tell, say, which of these peanut butters has added filler and which one is mostly ground-up nuts.
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Your next plastic cup could be made out of fish
Plastic is actually a pretty revolutionary material — we wouldn't want to go back to a time before it existed (just a time before people started throwing it in the ocean). But it's made from petroleum, and we haven't really got any to spare. So viable plastic alternatives — corn plastic, algae plastic, chicken feather […]
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A dress with a built-in air purifier
The Centre for Sustainable Fashion's "catalytic clothing" strips pollutants out of the air and breaks them down harmlessly. Here's an atmospheric (ha) video of an air-purifying dress, but they've also got jeans, which significantly improves the chances of getting enough people wearing catalytic clothing to actually make a difference in air quality. (None of this is available for purchase or anything crazy like that, but in theory, if it were, you'd probably want the jeans.)
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How do you design a bike that will make people give up cars?
Oregon Manifest is a challenge, sponsored in part by Levi's, to bike designers and constructors to build "The Ultimate Modern Utility Bike." The bike must have features like built-in anti-theft devices, fenders, lighting, load-carrying capability, and kickstand. Bikes entered into the contest will be tested on a 50 mile course that covers city and dirt roads, asphalt, gravel, hills, and stairs. The winner receives a $3,000 prize.
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Amazing bamboo bike is grown, not manufactured
The complicated weave of the Ajiro bike would be work-intensive to achieve through conventional means -- it takes a lot of energy to bend bamboo stalks into shape. So instead, design student Alexander Vittouris tensioned the bamboo over a mold as it grew, then harvested a completed bike frame.