Design, Environment & Culture - Theory, Art and Design proposals toward a resilient future.
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Waterpod: a save self-sustaining ark for the far future?

How would you live when rising sealevels threaten our cities, when food supply can't be taken for granted and fossil resources become scarce? The "Waterpod" surely provides an alternative way of living.

What i find vital to this project in particular is how they incorporate a number of different environmental "issues" and answers in one prototype such as building from waste materials, self-sufficiency, off-the-grid, resource scarcity, composting, water management, agriculture and thoughtful energy consumption.

Although they obviously like Buckminster Fuller (they've got two geodesic domes on the barge) they're having a more 70's-like cabin-ecological approach, which means that their designed proto-system can be perceived as an urban island totally independent of its own environment and not considering local services to and from which it could benefit. Cabin-Ecology derives from space-ecology when scientists in the early days of space travel were researching how ecosystems on earth could be transported and/or built up in space in order to provide basic life-supporting services for colonisation of other planets (check out the most famous and failed experiment Biosphere 2).

Filed under  //   ark   ecosystem   future scenarios   living   prototype  

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Bruce Sterling on shaping things

In his speech at the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign in Potsdam, Germany in Mai 2007 as well as in his 2005 book "shaping things" Bruce Sterling proposes a whole different perspective on "things". Traceable, searchable things for reduced cognitive load and less opportunity cost. More than two years later, these days when Google launched the all famous Navigator app for Android phones this becomes even more relevant.

I can also warmly suggest his blog beyond the beyond for wired.com

Filed under  //   future scenarios   technology   theory   things  

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