Green Design

The New Lots Triangle after its opening ceremony last fall. Photo: Noah Kazis

A transformed street in East New York is just one of many projects that New York City's Department of Transportation is tackling as part of the metropolis's PlaNYC initiative.

There’s a housing boom in North Dakota—for birds. Beginning architecture students at North Dakota State University have created birdhouses in the manner of award-winning architects as part of a design competition. Featuring environmentally friendly materials where possible, each house caters to a specific species—be it a tree swallow or a northern flicker. “One of the things [the students] really enjoy about [the project] is designing and building something that a creature can actually occupy,” says Joan Vorderbruggen, an assistant professor, Architecture & Landscape Architecture who oversees the project—now in its third year—along with her architect husband Darryl Booker.

Image: Delancey Underground Project

From the time New York City’s High Line Park opened in June 2009, it’s caused a stir. In a city that can feel packed with people, any new nook for trees is a blessing. This park in particular was a reminder of how an aging urban space—in this case, former freight train tracks—could be reused and recycled into something new. Two new proposals for NYC could provide more inspiration.

Among the world's wonders, Leonardo da Vinci marveled at how birds fly, mulling over possible mechanics in what became his Codex on the Flight of Birds. Imagine what he'd say if he saw SmartBird.

 
From Eco Amazons: 20 Women Who Are Transforming the World by Dorka Keehn, published by powerHouse Books.

Eco Amazons, released this month by powerHouse Books, profiles 20 American women who are leaders of the environmental movement.

One early May morning a few years ago, I scrambled around Chicago’s high rises in search of dead birds. Talk about a somber start to the day.

New Energy applies its SolarWindow coating to commercial glass, making it capable of generating electricity. Photo: New Energy Technologies, Inc.

Forget those bulky, breakable solar panels: The future of solar photovoltaic technology may come in a spray form. It’s a bit more complicated than press-and-spritz, but that’s the general idea, and the technology is making strides.

Photo courtesy of Dana Hundley/Wikipedia. A hairdryer was used to change the blue to turquoise.

The 90s left much to be sartorially desired, agreed? Flannels, Umbros, and skorts somehow made it into my wardrobe. One item that didn’t: hypercolor shirts. Looks like the gimmick’s back, and it's telling us something about our air quality.

At once the sculptor and the sculpture, a beak can tell a
lot about a bird and its place in the world—as well as ours. In "Pecking Order" (Audubon Magazine, January-February 2011), writer Peter Friederici and photographer Joel Sartore probe the science behind bird beaks.

"Finches with their hefty seed-crackers; warblers with their forceps made slender for extracting small insects hidden among leaves and stems; raptors with their curved hooks for tearing; shorebirds with their probes, straight or curved, which help them extract foods buried on a beach or mudflat. Novice birders quickly learn that the wild diversity of bird beaks is among the most reliable means of quickly determining to what family, and often even what species, a bird belongs. When you’re faced with the bewildering array of avian life in a fall marsh or spring woodlot, that certitude is a comfort, something solid to rest on. But it’s a bit misleading, too. Birds’ beaks are, in fact, always changing..."

It might sound like a character dreamed up by Dr. Seuss, but Google is banking that the Schweeb could help transform the way we get around. Pairing a recumbent bubble bicycle and monorail, the Schweeb is among the five winners—out of 150,000 submissions—of Google’s Project 10^100, a call for ideas that could change the world. The goliath dot-com is awarding the Schweeb’s creators $1 million to test it in an urban setting. (Until then, anyone wanting to give it a go will have to hop over to New Zealand, where the Schweeb is an amusement park ride at the Agroventures Park in Rotorua.)