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First residential building certified to the Fitwel standard

Fitwel is all about healthy living, and it's going to be big.




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Forget Vision Zero. Demand Streets That Don’t Kill People

Words are powerful. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association is choosing good ones.




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This May Day, get outside and celebrate spring.

It doesn't have to be all about politics.




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Why are so many visions of the future dominated by cars?

The private car has dominated our design dreaming for a hundred years; no wonder it is so hard to break the habit.




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Happy 56th Anniversary, Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's book that many say launched the environmental movement was released on this day.




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Paris had a marvellous moving sidewalk in 1900

It's like a moving High Line, and is still a very good idea.




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The inventors of insulin sold their patent for a buck. Why is it so expensive?

On March 22, 1922, the discovery of insulin was announced. Here's what happened after.




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Analysts expect 18GW of subsidy-free renewables in UK by 2030

Britain has already made great progress in decarbonizing the grid. It looks like there's more to come.




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Finnish passenger ferry retrofits rotary sail to reduce emissions

The Viking Grace was already low emission. Now it's going further.




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From bike lanes to solar, the UK has transformed itself since 2006

What a difference a decade makes.




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UK carbon emissions down 38% since 1990

Even if you factor in offshoring of jobs and industry, emissions are way, way down.




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Competition to Find a New Design to Replace the Electrical Pylons

It's an icon that has been part of our lives forever... The electricity pylon was invented, in this design, in the '20's and since then it has been marching across the fields and highways of our mind




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"Fish Chopper" Animation Shows the Gruesome, Deadly Side of Power Plant Cooling Towers (Video)

The Sierra Club is pointing attention to the once-through cooling systems used by many power plants. Power plants suck up over 200 billion gallons of water a day, and with that water comes millions of fish that don't exactly




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Musician Ben Sollee on the Ravages of Coal and the Wonders of the Bicycle (Podcast)

Among music festivals, Bonnaroo is the juggernaut, and this year is was bigger than ever with 80,000 people descending on Manchester, Tennessee. One of the innumerable artists to preside over the festival's many stages (which included sitting in with My




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California Utility Opens First Sustainable Campus as Model Utility Site

Burbank Water & Power opens a sustainable power plant campus as a model for re-adapting industrial sites from water reclamation to solar




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Viral Video Calls for Mass Exodus from Fossil Fuels

Popular anger at profiteering energy utilities is high. One wind-power pioneer is hoping to harness that sentiment with a funny viral video.




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British utility allows businesses to buy "local" renewable energy

Should we care where our electrons come from?




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10 Businesses Going Green in the Realm of Romance

Valentine's Day is all about romancing your sweetheart. These companies show the planet some love too.




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Valentine’s Day by the numbers, are you sitting down?

The holiday once marked by amorous missives and hand-plucked posies has evolved into a day of staggering statistics.




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Valentine's Day is losing its allure with young adults

Is Cupid's appeal fading as millennials find the holiday has become too commercialized?




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Wretched Excess Never Looked So Good: 45,000 Lights On A Single House

Sometimes it's worth it.




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Wretched Excess Dept: Castor Design's Marble with Fluorescent Tube

"At first glance, Marble with Fluorescent Tube's monolithic 2,500 pound base appears to be at odds with the banality of the bulb which sits on top of it."




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Wretched Excess or the future of housing design? Another look at the car elevator

There is a perverse logic to this idea of bringing your car to your apartment.




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This doesn't look like a Passive House to me

Serenity may not be a spaceship but it is still out of this world.




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Wretched Excess or Clever Design? Apartment tower with car elevators is definitely the former.

Two years ago we couldn't decide, but when you see it in action the answer is obvious.




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Utensilmate is a great candidate for the Wrongest Product Award

I can't decide if this is just what I always needed or the worst product ever put on Kickstarter.




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The Coffeeboxx: Wretched excess or clever design?

We hate pods, but love durability. Is there a place for this?




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It's Gonna Take a Lotta Love to Reforest Indonesia

Love is often said to blossom, but a new government initiative in the Indonesian district of Garut aims to make that metaphor literal by requiring newly married couples to plant 10 tree saplings.Two years ago, Indonesia




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6 ways to keep it simple on your wedding day

If you keep it simple, then the wedding will be more fun and relaxed for everyone involved, not to mention kinder to the environment.




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Larch Corner is a Passivhaus wooden wonder that shows how we should be thinking about carbon

Mark Siddall of LEAP measures and calculates everything, thinks about it, and then calculates it again.




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World Environment Day launches logo design competition

Design a logo for this year’s World Environment Day and win a trip to Milan, Italy.




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Slow Food highlights the need for food biodiversity at Expo Milano

It is fitting that Slow Food has a prominent place at the World’s fair, which this year is hosted in Italy and promises to explore the topic of feeding the growing global population.




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The Year In Strange Design: 20 of the Oddest, Ugliest and Most Useless

I really didn't know where to start, there is so much terrible stuff around




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My Favorite Stories in Design: January to June, 2012

The year saw the start of some very interesting trends that will play out over the next few years in a big way.




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My Favorite Stories in Design: July to December 2012

These stories from the past six months tell a lot about the shape of things to come in 2013.




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The Design Stories of 2012 That Will Resonate in 2013

What we learned from last year and will look for in this one




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Lucirmás Turns Single Wine Bottles into 3-Piece Table Sets

Spanish company Lucirmás debuts Pure-Bottle, a fully recycled and recyclable table set which consists of a glass, lantern and spoon.




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Eco Wine Review: Lynmar Estate 2008 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir

A delicate balance of dark fruit, cocoa, pepper and mushroom from a sustainable vineyard that donates to AIDS and cancer patients.




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Eco Wine Review: Frei Brothers Reserve 2009 Russian River Valley Chardonnay

Frei's 2009 Chardonnay touches your nose with hints of rose water, jasmine and other floral delights. But on the palette, it is swimming with honey and sweet butter and just enough acidity to make it all work.




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Organic winemaker faces jail for refusing to apply pesticide

The French agriculture ministry has sentenced Emmanuel Giboulot six months in jail for not taking preventative measures against a bacterial vine disease.




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Morocco: let us break the rod of repression with organisation and struggle

Those who follow the situation in Morocco can see that the repressive dictatorial regime has become more and more frenzied, and the police state has tightened its repressive grip on everyone and everything. They are arresting those who protest, who sing, who criticise, who write, and who show solidarity with those arrested.




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South Africa: the coming explosion

South African capitalism is in total crisis. The ruling class is divided and the worsening conditions of the workers and poor are causing a groundswell of resentment that will burst to the surface sooner or later, placing renewed class struggle on the agenda.




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Nigeria: the crisis spares no one – a Kano version of the pandemic

Kano has become the epicentre of the spread of Covid-19 in northern Nigeria. A large number of so-called “mysterious” deaths was recently reported, but the state government of Kano blatantly claims that the sharp rise in deaths is not due to Covid-19. Here we provide an eyewitness account from an IMT comrade in Kano.




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US Wildlife Services killed 1.3 million non-invasive animals in 2017

From foxes and falcons to otters and owls, the USDA program is doing away with wildlife in droves.




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Recycled suitcase sculptures 'unpack' metaphysical baggage of the refugee experience (Video)

Using recycled materials and audio recordings from refugees, this exhibition hopes to deepen understanding and connection with those who have had to flee their home countries.




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Angular small house is inspired by Dutch and Japanese design

Clad with reclaimed cedar, this modern and quirky house fits on a small footprint.




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President's executive order might open national parks to logging

It is a brave new world of "reducing vegetation" and "fuel reduction" and a lotta logging.




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A New Form of Subsidized Housing and Urban Intensification: Living in a Billboard

It makes sense; They have great views, lots of exposure to wind and sun, and think of all the exercise you'll get climbing up.




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Multi-layered urban housing prototype packs in plenty of great small space ideas

Using a series of overlapping mezzanines and spaces, this accessible, urban housing prototype explores the possibilities of living small but comfortably in the city.




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Co-living apartment designed as "social overlapping" experiment for students

This experimental co-living design scheme aims to foster communication, responsibility and human relationships.