Category Archives: Environment
USA Flood control system Should Go Dutch
Flood control systems in the Netherlands are built to withstand storms of a severity seen once in 10,000 years, in the US the levees are built to stand up to storms of a severity anticipated once in a century. (via) As storm season comes around in the USA Mary Landrieu a Senator from New Orleans [...]
White Paint
Could the answer to global warming be white paint? I’m really partial to this idea but also a little worried it’s a bit like the ‘if we all jumped off the ground at the same time’ thing.
Renewable Energy and Housing
I’m actively trying to seek out new information about designing as environmentally sustainable buildings and systems as possible so I dug up something I’d tagged a long time ago meaning to write it up but somehow never managed to do until now. The Vaasa Housing Fair which ran from 11.07.08 to 10.08.08 last year is [...]
Going, going, gone.
In the last ten years nearly 200,000 Britons have emigrated away from the UK (including me!). I guess most of them have gone to the English speaking new world somewhere , but where should they have gone? Of course the answer is Iceland which is currently first in the UN index of human development making [...]
Nuage Vert
Nuage Vert the industrial size art installation and visualisation over the centre of Helsinki over the Ruohlahti power station came to the end in February. The concept was simple, to project a light onto the smoke stack of this coal fired power station, the greater the wattage consumed the smaller the visual image. The artwork [...]
Arctic Seed Vault
On the Island of Spitzbergen in Svalbards, a remote archipelago 1000km from the NW coast of Norway a doomsday vault is being built. With over 3 million seeds the world seed bank projects aim is to protect the bio-diversity of the planet against natural or manmade disaster. It is managed by the Global Crop Development [...]
Helsinki is moving
Helsinki is moving to the South of Poland by 2071 # At least if the predictions made by the International Centre for Research on the Environment and Development come true. Something we may have to start to take into account with building design. The triple glazed, highly insulated buildings of Helsinki with large unopenable windows [...]
Bio-fuel in Finland
Bio-fuel should be being utilised more. Long term fuel prices will only go up, and environmentally it is carbon neutral unlike fossil fuel. But what does the Finnish Government do about enabling this? The answer is less than nothing. Because of the potential loss of taxes a new bio-diesel plant being built in Porvoo may [...]
European Green Belt