
From unpredictable floods to rising sea levels, the earth-altering phenomena induced by climate change are changing the way humans coexist with water. Urged on by the demands of global warming, architects and city planners are responding to the challenge with buildings that sit on or above the shifting seas. Aqua-architecture has a long history in the Netherlands (a full third of the country......read more
Chicago-based photographer Craig Shimala has found a nice little artistic niche using a mirror technique he applies to time-lapse vids. It started with a Flickr video shot from inside his car, and now we have this one made from footage of the Chicago skyline shot over several years. The simple mirrored effect turns the city skyline into a gravity-defying monolith cruising through......read more
Surrealist sculpture and green architecture collide in this hillside Austrian home that might make M.C. Escher blush -- and Mies van der Rohe cringe. The detached house, designed by Weichlbauer Ortis Architects, is covered in a soft synthetic turf, offering a strange yet somehow literal take on green wall design. With willfully superfluous windows extending from other windows and weirdly placed......read more
At this week's multilateral clean energy meeting in London, the British government announced it will collaborate with the US to develop floating wind turbines that harness the higher wind speeds available over deeper water. The UK's offshore wind potential big; it is estimated to account for about one-third of Europe's overall offshore wind potential. But in order to exploit it, new technology......read more
Homesteading is broadly defined as a lifestyle of simple, agrarian self-sufficiency. The sustainable, back-to-the-land movement is gaining popularity in urban areas, where applicable rural homesteading elements are being applied to city living. In theory, most people are into the idea of producing everything needed for survival on one's own land. While this isn't realistic for most of......read more
Talk about double vision! At certain angles in the right time of day, cities that sit on bodies of water can appear as mirages, with their skylines mirrored in the water below. These spellbinding photographs, originally seen on scene360, show off this stunning mirrored effect that happens when a panoramic cityscape sits on a body of water. Taken by various photographers, each image shows a......read more
When Dave Hartley isn't manning the bass for War On Drugs, he stays busy recording orchestral, layered pop songs under the Nightlands alias. "I Fell In Love With A Feeling" is a shimmering, horn-adorned track from Nightlands' latest release, Oak Island, and it now has some surreal visuals to go along with it. The two-minute clip, directed by David Kessler, follows the silver-painted Hartley......read more
French artist Isa Barbier brings the practice of environmental art indoors with these suspended installations made with seagull feathers. Spotted on Colossal, the works feature huge quantities of feathers hung by filaments to create abstract geometric volumes. Because the filament is transparent, the feathers seem to defy gravity as they hang suspended in mid-air. Elegant and airy, the massive......read more
Founded last year in Olympia, Washington, Affordable Floating Homes aims to provide "small footprint, high quality interurban living at an affordable price without developing more land," according to owner Mike Auderer's mission statement on the company's Facebook page. The new company's first build -- and Auderer's current domicile -- is called "Sweet Pea" due to its green exterior. It's......read more
This floating pavilion on Vancouver's False Creek is being used as a temporary restaurant featuring 4-star local cuisine. Which is neat on its own, but it's doubly cool when you find out it's floating on nearly 1,700 recycled 2L pop bottles. And gets even sweeter when you discover that the Pop Bottle Dining Barge is a fundraising project for the School of Fish Foundation, which......read more