Here’s an invention that manages to be environmentally conscious and ridiculous at the same time.

Figure 1, above, may look like a lovely work of art meant to evoke little wavelets formed by raindrops on a serene body of water.  But actually it’s the Eco-Drop shower floor.  You turn on the shower and step in, the concentric circles gently massaging your feet and helping make the surface non-slip.

But the floor is made of a special expanding material, and the longer you stay in the shower, the more pronounced the droplet designs get.  It’s not too long before, as you can see in Figure 4, they become downright uncomfortable on your feet and you have to get out!  Voila — no one takes very long showers!

Still, there must be a better way.  I’m picturing a bunch of angry people with sore feet and sudsy hair returning this thing to their local hardware store.

The first solar powered community of North America is located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. They call it the Drake Landing Solar Community. There are 800 solar panels located throughout the community on garage roofs, and they produce 1.5 mega-watts of thermal power during a summer day and supply heat to the district heating system. The whole system meets 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs of the homes.

For more on the subject visit Inhabitat.com

Green Vehicles. What are they? Well they can be hybrid vehicles or full electric vehicles. But can they be horse powered? Well this one can. An Iranian engineer based in Dubai has come up with something truly different. Abdolhadi Mirhejazi has built the Naturmobil (previously, the Naturcar). The Naturmobil is 1 HP. That is the truth. It’s literally powered by one horse. The Naturmobil is a six wheeled, polycarbonate framed buggy with a top speed of 50mph although typical cruising velocity is closer to 12mph.

Inside the cart is a treadmill tied to a gearbox. Powering the treadmill is a horse. Temperature and heart rate sensors attached to the horse allow its condition to be monitored so that it doesn’t get overworked. When the horse walks it moves the conveyor belt which through a gearbox drives an electric motor that drives the front wheels.

Via: Treehugger and AutoBlogGreen

More photos below.

“Abdolhadi Mirhejazi during a test ride.”

“Naturmobil can reach speeds of up to 80km/h – although its cruising speed is a more sedate 20km/h.”

It reminds us of this horse-powered bus.

That poor horse looks like it wishes it could walk on firm ground.

“Naturmobil was designed and built to achieve the maximum level of attention from its audiences.”

The Water + Life Museums complex in Hemet, California, has just become the first museum to break the LEED Platinum barrier. The building constructed by LA based Michael Lehrer Architects is worth $40 million and is 72,000 square feet big. Situated in the desert the building brought some challenges going from freezing in the winter to more than 100 degrees in the summer but the architects were able to keep a light footprint.

The roof is topped with one of the largest solar installations of its kind, a 540 watt, 3000 panel solar array that produces nearly half of the complex’s power needs while shading the interior from the scorching desert sun. Additional shading is provided via translucent panels that hang over 8,000 square feet of the structure’s heat blocking glass. The interior makes use of abundant day-lighting and features radiant flooring backed by a sophisticated HVAC system. The terraced gardens are fed through a drip irrigation system that uses reclaimed water. Lehrer stated “We are gratified to receive the Platinum rating, but even more proud that the Water+Life Museums will effectively conserve water and electricity for generations to come.”

Via: InHabitat

This beautiful and colorful building is the parking garage of the Santa Monica Civic Center. This building is on its way to becoming the first LEED certified parking garage in the United States. In fact, the building meets and in some cases exceeds many of the US Green Building Council’s LEED guidelines. With it’ roof covered with solar photovoltaic panels to provide shade to the top level, it generates clean and renewable energy.

The parking building will provide 900 parking spaces with it’s six aboce ground levels including an 1/2 below ground level. To be noted, only 14 parking spaces are devoted to electric vehicles. There’s also free bicycle storage available to “encourage alternate transportation modes.

This is the first episode of a four-part series by TreeHugger. It shows singer Ben Harper in conversation with TreeHugger founder Graham Hill.

The Pearl Street Triangle, which could accommodate about two dozen cars, was transformed due to an idea of a group of Pratt Institute graduate students.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 plan for environmental sustainability calls for adding 800 acres of new public space by 2030.

This was the first of about 31 plaza projects to be completed by 2009.

The Dumbo Improvement District contributed $25,000 to the project, and the city $20,000.

via:: Susty.tv and TreeHugger

People could live in glass houses and look at the world through rose-tinted windows while reducing their carbon emissions by 50% thanks to QUT Institute of Sustainable Resources (ISR) research.

Professor John Bell said QUT had worked with a Canberra-based company Dyesol, which is developing transparent solar cells that act as both windows and energy generators in houses or commercial buildings.

He said the solar cell glass would make a significant difference to home and building owners’ energy costs and could, in fact, generate excess energy that could be stored or sold.

Professor Bell said the glass was one of a number of practical technologies that would help combat global warming which was a focus of research at the ISR.

“The transparent solar cells have a faint reddish hue but are completely see-through,” Professor Bell said.

“The solar cells contain titanium dioxide coated in a dye that increases light absorption.

“The glass captures solar energy which can be used to power the house but can also reduce overheating of the house, reducing the need for cooling.”

Professor Bell said it would be possible to build houses made entirely of the transparent solar cells

“As long as a house is designed throughout for energy efficiency, with low-energy appliances it is conceivable it could be self-sustaining in its power requirements using the solar-cell glass,” he said.

“Australian housing design tends to encourage high energy use because electricity is so cheap.

“But it is easy to build a house that doesn’t need powered cooling or heating in Queensland.”

He said the glass would be on the market in a few years.

Professor Bell said the solar cell glass was the subject of two Australian Research Council Linkage grants to QUT researchers to investigate ways to increase its energy absorption and to reduce the effects of “shadowing”, where overcast skies and shadows from trees or other buildings can cause loss of collected power.

I don’t know if they just have more wind in Bahrain but the architect who design the future WTC in Manhattan overlook this possibility. The blades, each about 100 feet in diameter, are the first to be integrated into a commercial structure. They will power up to 15% of the center’s electricity needs.

The developers did not say how much the installation cost, but said it was just 3.5 percent of the total price of building the trade center.

From inhabitat:

One of the oldest museums in the Mid-West was recently relocated to an elegant new LEED Gold certified structure, garnering accolades from art aficionados and sustainability advocates alike. Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture designed the new Grand Rapids Art Museum to be as beautiful as the artworks within, placing a premium on public space and ultra-efficient modern design. Situated downtown amid Maya Lin’s “Ecliptic” park and Alexander Calder’s “Grand Vitesse”, the museum is an impressive addition to the renowned architecture of the “sculpture city”.

LEED certified museums tend to be a tall order in terms of economics and design, which is one reason why there are so few of them. This is because the modern museum is more cultural complex than singular structure: it fulfills a range of functions through galleries, auditoriums, conference rooms, cafes, and stores. All of these rooms have different energy dynamics which are complicated by the exacting temporal science of archiving and displaying art. Regarding the project, Yantrasast states:

“a museum, especially an art museum, is a very unforgiving type of building because the air inside the building has to be very consistent. It is mostly 75 degrees and 50% humidity. [that range] can sway about five percent, but if it swings more than that the artwork will suffer. Conventional museums expend a lot of energy maintaining that condition.”

Remarkably, Yantrasast was able to triple the museum’s size to 125,000 square feet while maintaining a stellar environmental footprint. In order to do this, the structure takes advantage of a wealth of cutting-edge sustainable technologies. Climate is controlled by excellent insulation and building materials (20% of which are recycled) and a high-efficiency HVAC that features an “energy recovery wheel” system (as warm air is cycled outside, heat and humidity are transferred to incoming air, regulating temperature). The structure is also designed to receive 70% of its light from natural sources, and water-efficient fixtures compliment an on-site rain and grey water reuse system that reduces water consumption by 20%. This adds up to a structure that is clean, conscionable, and suffused with light – a perfect environment for artistic appreciation.