The Super Strength of POLLI-Bricks – Bricks Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles!

These recycled plastic bottle bricks are more affordable and durable than traditional bricks

They’re transparent and translucent. They interlock together to form a honeycomb structure that’s extremely durable. They can be used to build anything from buildings and fences to roofs and walls of light. So what are “they” referring to? They’re called POLLI-Bricks, and they’re a genius example of recycled bottle architecture.

Although these plastic bricks may not be as cool as the Heineken beer bottle interlocking bricks from Joe Laur’s One Million Buddhist Beers on the Wall, One Million Buddhist Beers…. blog post, these are a pretty cool close second! Created by the folks at miniWiz, these amazing plastic bricks are lighter than regular bricks, and they each hold a small volume of air inside of them that allow for perfect thermal insulation.

Here’s a video of Brian Chee talking about POLLI-Bricks at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

http://greenopolis.com/goblog/green-groove/super-strength-polli-bricks-bricks-made-recycled-plastic-bottles

Dandelion Close Up View

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjun10/bj-dandelion.html

Architecture Student Paper Tower Competition - Bezalel 2007

Private life of plants

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2298451294711103353#

Mercedes-Benz G-Class: Paper World

MERCEDES-BENZ BAS CHILD / HQ / High Quality

BOOK TOWER

the seed and structure

Here are some good sites on the study on dandelions:

Dandelion discription and structure

Seeds & Fruits Dispersed By Wind

Drawing dandelion in pc?

and the wonderful UK pavilion inspired by dandelion

Our Theme the Dandelion

paul hayes

“334″ Newspapers Bench

paper spiral

Paper Hand Bangles from Space

book folding

papergraphic

paper creations by Jen Stark

Ernesto Neto

chris kirby: 'spiral lamp' at milan design week 09

Cellulose, seeds and rice noodles transformed into amazing sculptures

Lichtenberg Figures: Amazing beauty of captured lightning

latest trend in graffiti art webtagging

Bill Smith sculpture

5th festival of lively architecture

Source: designboom

Chouchou Electric Butterfly - CScout Japan

Sweden’s Sweeping Green Roofed Hillside City

Nestled beneath an undulating series of rolling green roofs, Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects New Heden project transforms a vacant city block is a self-contained sustainable city interspersed with cycling paths and walkways. Envisioned as a “green lung” for Gothenburg, Sweden, the development will introduce a beautiful expanse of fresh green space to an area currently consumed by parking lots and football fields.

Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects' New Heden project aims to establish a vital new community in an underutilized site. The development will house 10,000 people in 5000 new apartments and will provide commercial zones, sports facilities, and parks, reducing the distance that residents need to travel each day.

We love how the development rises up from the earth in a series of gently flowing hills, forming a lovely terrain laced with pathways and plenty of perfect spots for picnics. These green roofs provide excellent insulation to the buildings beneath while absorbing rain that can be purified and reused as household water. The project also includes plans for the local cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and after development the site will feature a much greater biomass than before.

Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects state: “With a unique identity of sustainable densification the new town block Heden creates a vision of a garden block that connects green space, healthy lifestyle and pleasant surroundings to a modern living atmosphere.

Source from inhabitat.com

The Private Life of plants

The Private Life of Plants (Part 2-6) - Growing

49:15 - 1 year ago

Legendado PT-BR, Subtitles ENG Send subtitles to brauliobo at gmail dot com 2. "Growing" Broadcast 12 January 1995, this programme is about how plants gain their sustenance. Sunlight is one of the essential requirements if a seed is to germinate, and Attenborough highlights the cheese plant as an example whose young shoots head for the nearest tree trunk and then climb to the top of the forest canopy, developing its leaves en route. Using sunshine, air, water and a few minerals, the leaves are, in effect, the "factories" that produce food. However, some, such as the begonia, can thrive without much light. To gain moisture, plants typically use their roots to probe underground. Trees pump water up pipes that run inside their trunks, and Attenborough observes that a sycamore can do this at the rate of 450 litres an hour — in total silence. Too much rainfall can clog up a leaf's pores, and many have specially designed 'gutters' to cope with it. However, their biggest threat is from animals, and some require extreme methods of defence, such as spines, camouflage, or poison. Some can move quickly to deter predators: the mimosa can fold its leaves instantly when touched, and the Venus flytrap eats insects by closing its leaves around its prey when triggered. Another carnivorous plant is the trumpet pitcher that snares insects when they fall into its tubular leaves. Attenborough visits Borneo to see the largest pitcher of them all, Nepenthes rajah, whose traps contain up to two litres of water and have been known to kill small rodents

Why are plants green?

Plants are green because they have a substance called chlorophyll in them. Understanding why chlorophyll is green requires a little biology, chemistry and physics.

If we shine white light on chlorophyll, its molecules will absorb certain colors of light. The light that isn’t absorbed is reflected, which is what our eyes see.

A red apple appears red because the molecule of pigment in the apple’s skin absorbs blue light, not red. Thus, we see red. Chlorophyll molecules absorb blue light and some red light. The other colors are reflected resulting in the green color that we associate with plants.

Plants get their energy to grow through a process called photosynthesis. Large numbers of chlorophyll molecules acts as the antenna that actually harvest sunlight and start to convert it in to a useful form. Here’s where the absorbent properties of the chlorophyll molecule come into play.

It turns out that eons of evolutionary design have matched the absorbance of chlorophyll to the actual color of the sunlight that reaches the leaves. Sunlight consists of primarily blue and red light mixed together, which are exactly the colors that chlorophyll molecules like to absorb. Light is a form of energy, so the chlorophyll is able to harvest the sunlight with little waste.

Resource from:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/081496.html

microstructures: http://sbio.uct.ac.za/Webemu/gallery/descriptions.php

the private life of plants: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2298451294711103353#docid=3347449170122297008

Nature as Inspiration

Biomimicry is the art, skill, intuition and science of turning towards nature as inspiration for solving our dilemmas. There are endless possibilities of colour and shape and texture that nature never tires of creating.

Be inspired!!!!!!

useful sites:

http://www.grant-associates.uk.com/

http://www.cerveraandpioz.com/bionic_megacities_v.htm

http://territoiredessens.blogspot.com/

http://architecture.myninjaplease.com/?p=1845

Skyrise examples

Evolvo had a whole magazine feature on skyrises. These are some awesome examples of skyrise buildings in general, some great ideas and new conceptual architechture.
http://www.evolo.us/category/architecture/

cool websites abt biomimicry

Definition-- http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/about-us/what-is-biomimicry.html

Biomimicry examples-- http://brainz.org/15-coolest-cases-biomimicry/

http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/01/nature-inspired-innovation-9-examples-of-biomimicry-at-work-image-gallery.php

videos-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n77BfxnVlyc

biomimicry architecture-- http://www.asknature.org/forum/5f8ea0db41860f77026f0dbd9f318b3c