It has become almost expected that a new paperback book is made from recycled paper and is fully recyclable. This is all very well and good, but James Kaelan’s first novel, We’re getting on, takes things a step further.
The book’s cover is made from silver birch seed – meaning that when you’re done with reading the novel, you can not just recycle it but actually plant it – giving you a lovely little silver birch tree a few years later.
This admittedly sounds like a gimick, but the author clearly does take this stuff fairly seriously. His publicity tour (across 1900 miles from LA to Vancouver) will be done entirely by bicycle, and along the route he will be staying in organic farms and eating mainly vegan power bars.
It just remains to see whether he can actually write…
Guerilla movements, advertising and fashion is all getting a little old, but guerilla architecture is something we never thought we’d see… However, it’s happening in Paris.
This is Paris’ famous Arche de la Défense… with the addition of a guerilla housing installation.
The architect behind this slightly bizarre scheme, Stéphane Malka, is seeking to illustrate what he thinks will be the future of housing.
The idea is that with housing becoming ever-more expensive and new housing becoming increasingly unsustainable, something has to give. And using structures such as the Arche de la Défense as the basis for small ‘modules’ solves both these problems.
Of course, the government and housing companies would never build these things, but Malka thinks that people will turn to this themselves as an option – hence the guerilla bit. As people turn to this, the installation would grow, almost like a parasite, and modules could be connected to create larger dwellings and small communities.
All that aside, we think this is an exceptionally cool piece of architecture. We’re not so sure about the adaptation of major landmark buildings, but the concept is just brilliant.
According to Malka, a module would cost around $3,000… considerably cheaper than a house in Paris. So for that reason alone he might just be on to something…
Any Londoners out there may well have noticed a number of giant elephants cropping up around the capital, in aid of the charity Elephant Family. Now we love most of them, but this in particular caught our eye.
The taxi elephant is Benjamin Shine‘s contribution to the event. In case you hadn’t guessed, it is inspired by the quintessential black cab, complete with taxi sign and headlamps for eyes. The elephant has a solar panel for power, so the eyes and sign light up periodically throughout the day.
The taxi elephant has in fact become one of the event’s most valuable assets, and has been relocated to the Royal Exchange where it can be kept under guard. It will be auctioned at the end of the month and is expected to fetch around £2 million…
We’ve always been a fan of crazy architecture and schemes. This is however probably the oddest we have come across yet.
This multicoloured monstrosity is a representation of a scheme by the appropriately named Whim Architects from the Netherlands – to collect all the plastic floating around in the sea and turn it into an island. An island the size of Hawaii.
So it’s a little terrifying that there is enough plastic in the sea to do this in the first place. That aside, we love the execution. The idea would be to have beaches, housing made from recycled plastic, farms fertilised with human waste, seaweed grown for biofuels, and power harvested from the sun and sea. Essentially, you take a whole pile of waste and turn it into a green, self-sufficient community.
The plan is to float this thing somewhere between San Fransisco and the current Hawaii – precisely the middle of nowhere. We reckon it should be towed around for people to jump on as their real island chains (The Maldives, etc) sink under the waves.
The wonders of Lego never cease to amaze us, particularly in the huge variety of things designers seem to be able to do with it, from turning into computer accessories to building huge sculptures. However this project by Philadelphia Zoo stretches Lego into a new field – environmental activism.
The zoo has comissioned world-renowned Lego artist Sean Kenny to create a series of sculptures of endangered animals to sit around the zoo where the animals should be. The idea is to engage and educate a younger audience about the possible extinction of these species.
We’re particularly impressed with the 95,000-piece polar bear, and the penguins are also pretty amazing.
Each sculpture is accompanied by a brief description of its habitat and the dangers it faces, as well as information on how people can help to save it. Overall, we’re not sure how clear the messaging is, but we’re loving the idea behind it, and are looking forward to more sculptures to follow throughout the year.
For all the good design in the world, occasionally you still come across a bit of nature that beats it all.
The rainbow eucalyptus is so named due to its multicoloured bark, which is quite bizarre but certainly beautiful.
Of course these trees are often grown for ornamental reasons, but their other main use is in the making of plain white paper. Which just confuses us completely, and seems like something of a waste.
We quite want to get one to sit outside Baby Towers. But since these things grow up to seventy-five metres tall, we might have to pass…
You may well have seen today’s news that Heathrow’s proposed third runway is having a few difficulties. Opposition has been pouring in from environmental groups, local business, councils and residents, who claimed that the third runway contradicted environmental policy. And now the Lord Justice has ruled that they have a point, and that the third runway is subject to legal challenge. Which we’re extremely happy about.
You see, over the years, we’ve played our Baby-sized role in this whole process. At key times in the campaign we’ve worked with Greenpeace, enoughsenough, the WWF and Restore UK to put together some (pretty clever) tactical ads, and we also organised an event called Make a Noise which was an anti-Heathrow rally in May 2008 held in Sipson, a village due to have been flattened if the third runway went ahead.
For this we helped by doing creative for press ads, building a website, other digital ads, posters and carnival packs. The event made the national news, with the largest-ever human ‘NO’ being made to say ‘no to Heathrow’.
We’re not trying to claim that we made this landmark decision happen by ourselves, but we’re delighted to be involved in preventing what really could have been an environmental and economic disaster.
Now from the title you might think we’re talking about some dodgy place in the wrong end of Istanbul, but we’ve actually found somewhere even older.
This was in fact the fast food shop of Vetutius Placidus in Pompeii, which closed one thousand, nine hundred and twenty one years ago, and reopened yesterday, with quite a bit of the original decor still in tact.
Fast food of course seems like a very modern thing, but the Romans apparently loved the stuff, with many people in Pompeii not even having kitchens and getting takeaway on a regular basis. And if you look closely, you can see there’s not even that much that has changed.
You’ve still got the long, L-shaped counter, and people could either sit in or take away. Apparently the real difference is the food, with considerably less kebabs and pizza, and more cheese, honey and assorted fruits.
Still, it’s nice to know that at the height of the Roman Empire, they were still no more cultured than a bunch of boozy students…
We’ve been loving the row between Greenpeace and Nestle over the last few days. For those who haven’t come across this yet, Greenpeace took objection to Nestle using palm oil grown on land that had been claimed from Indonesian Rainforest – the last refuge of the orang-utan. So they made this film:
A few people saw it and Nestle got all hot and bothered and made YouTube take it down for copyright infringement. At which point Greenpeace migrated the video to Vimeo and the viewers flocked in, driven by the winds of controversy.
Firstly, can we just say we love the ad. So it is a little bit gross, but equally you definitely get the point. And we bet you remember orang-utan fingers when (if) you next eat a KitKat.
Secondly, we really thought Nestle were smarter than to ban it. Anything prohibited instantly becomes more desirable, be this sweeties, alcohol, drugs or forbidden fruit. And it just looks like they have something to hide.
So we just thought we’d do our bit and get involved in the whole saga by posting the video to yet another site.
P.S. we got the video from YouTube where it has mysteriously reappeared. If Nestle get that one removed too, there’s always the Vimeo link here…
Chocolate is of course one of the world’s more common guilty pleasures. And from Mars bars to Charbonel and Walker selection boxes, you’d think there is enough variety for everyone. But now, for those ultra-picky chocolate eaters, you can fully customise your own chocolate, call it what you want, and have as much of it as you like delivered to your door.
German company ‘Chocri’ was first established in 2008 and has now opened operations in the US. And they trade purely in customised chocolate. Firstly, you select your type of chocolate…
…before adding ingredients from a truly mind-boggling selection of fruits, grains, spices, nuts and even pretzels and bacon.
And for a little added incentive, it’s all organic, fair trade chocolate, and they send a percentage of their profits to DIV Kinder – a children’s charity project in the Ivory Coast. Brilliant idea, we think. We’re not the biggest chocolate eaters, but even we have been thinking up combinations constantly…
The book’s cover is made from silver birch seed – meaning that when you’re done with reading the novel, you can not just recycle it but actually plant it – giving you a lovely little silver birch tree a few years later.
