Further sustainable city developments

I am back again, and will now try and round it up a bit so I can finish off the summary of my Design Museum  visit, as I am falling behind a little bit and will soon be out-of-date with my posts. ;) I cannot let that happen.

So now I will post some photos with some short comments on further sustainable developments as a foretaste, and clicking on the links related you can immerse in deeper in your preferred topics ;) Enjoy!

Freiburg Solar Settlement, Germany

Besides the brilliant and vivid colour concept by Eric Wiesner, which I think makes the whole residential settlement quite hip and trendy, there are essential and innovative technological and architectural precision and hard work: combination of heat and power, solar power as a form of renewable energy. The main aim was to live in symbiosis with the environment: the community and urban planning emphasizes an extensive car-free zone, and encourages walking and cycling by wider bike routes and pedestrian walkways. For further details on this solar settlement please click HERE to visit their site.

Staying in Germany, another sustainable design based on solar power is the Solar Updraft Tower. These towers are based on quite a simple technology: under a large grass roof the sun warms up the air (greenhouse effect) which is then sucked in by the central, vertical cylindrical tube (chimney effect). This creates an updraft effect which produces electricity:

Click HERE for more info on Solar Updraft Tower

Due to the soil under the collector the tower can operate 24hr on pure solar energy. Current electricity production of coil, oil and natural gas is damaging the environment and not sustainable. and many developing countries cannot afford these sources. It is quite a sensible development for sunny developing countries who has limited resources.

Further initiatives:

• Biloxi Model Home Programme, USA by Architecture for Humanity (AHF), a not-for-profit design services firm with a network of 40,000 professionals.Their most current project is helping families rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katarina.

• Solar Lab Research and Design,UK:Fuses design and cutting edge technology to create solar-powered transport solutions.

Solar Shuttle

Further Solar Power designs

That's it for now on solar powers. My next post will reflect on what we can do as individuals, and small communities to contribute to a more sustainable living. After that a more exciting and long awaited issue: sustainable fashion!

Stay tuned ;)