Israeli design team Tridom won honorable mention in NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge for their ‘Bubble Base’ building, a prototype for future human habitation on Mars. The design competition invited solutions to the “need for safe, secure and sustainable housing on earth and beyond.” This goes beyond Hollywood set design for The Martian (shown above) […]
How best to provide adequate housing when disaster strikes? Weather-related calamity can be sudden – think earthquakes and tsunamis. It can be forewarned – as in hurricanes, floods, and droughts. And it can creep up slowly through rising sea levels and civil unrest.
Tel Aviv highlights green buildings, spaces, construction techniques, and gardens during its annual “Houses from Within” weekend. [image via: Ykravitz] One spring weekend every year, for the past few years, Tel Aviv celebrates its architecture and invites the public to learn about the special structures that get to call the city their home. These structures […]
With a mantra to “design like you give a damn,” Sinclair has transformed thousands of lives. Whether to save governments billions of dollars in mutual conservation efforts or to share information about the harmful effects of meat, great things happen when people get together to achieve a common good. Few people know this better than […]
Way before there were electronic ways to condition our temperatures, cooling methods were built into the architecture of traditional Middle Eastern homes. Such as the beehive homes found in Syria.
The global ecologically friendly building trend is taking hold in Turkey as well, according to the English-language daily Hurriyet News and Economic Review. We’ve covered Turkey’s water agreements with Iraq, along with the country’s hard line against coastline development. Green construction in Turkey includes waste disposal systems, solar energy, and rainwater collection, Hurriyet reports: Reghnumj’s […]
We’ve all heard about hybrid energy systems for cars (because we’ve read Karen’s story about her family Prius); but now an Israeli company, Phoebus Energy, located in the coastal city of Netanya, has developed a unique hybrid heating system to produce energy more efficiently to heating and cooling large institutional buildings such as schools, hotels, […]
The Green Building in Manchester’s Macintosh Village. An Israeli version, coming soon? Last month, the Tel Aviv municipality implemented some creative solutions to help solve Israel’s ongoing water crisis. It appears they are not stopping there in their efforts to green the City That Never Stops. Soon, construction will begin on Tel Aviv’s first ecological […]
Green Design – From Theory to Practice (see preview post here), a major international architectural seminar took place this week here in Jerusalem, bringing together leading experts from the worlds of architecture, design, and integrated studies. Despite the recent war in the south, all but one of the international practitioners came, and by doing so, […]
Windows are one of the most significant costs in building projects or home renovations. Next to that are the bills homeowners have to pay for heating and air conditioning. Solving two problems under one roof — literally — is an Israeli company Alubin that has developed all-season reversible windows. The solution is also good for […]
If you don’t know what a yurt is, have no fear. Most people don’t (including yours truly). But yurts, with their portability, suitability for nature trips, and simple low-tech structures are highly suitable for eco-tourism – so they definitely deserve our attention. And it certainly is exciting that yurts are entering the Israeli tourism scene. […]
Roasting in the summer, freezing in the winter? Welcome to life in my Jerusalem apartment, and thousands of others like it. But if buildings are built according to environmental and climatic principles, it doesn’t have to be that way. “Jerusalem has virtually the perfect temperature for houses,” explained green architecture consultant, Valentina Nelin when I […]
Last week, I visited the town of Umm El Fahem with staff members from Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME). FoEME is a trilateral Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian environmental organization that brings environmentalists together to work on issues of shared regional concern. As the Summer 2008 FoEME intern, I am assisting with the Pro-Aquifer […]
The Elah Valley. Beautiful rolling hills, a patchwork of gold, green and brown with fields, orchards and pasture steeped in biblical tales: Who wouldn’t want to live here? Thanks to developer Jake Leibowitz, hundreds of new immigrants, mostly from North America, will soon be able to move into the luxury Eden Hills development after 18 […]