In the English countryside, a house is taking its first steps.
The Walking House, a 3.5-metre-high, 3.7-metre-long hexagonal chamber designed by Danish art collective N55, is slowly trundling around Cambridgeshire this month, crawling at a leisurely 60 metres an hour on six hydraulic legs designed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its maiden movements are posted on YouTube, alongside comments that deride its slow pace.
“But it’s meant to move slowly,” says designer Ion Sorvin from his office in Copenhagen. He and N55 member Øivind Slaatto put the house on legs rather than wheels, he explains, as an antidote to accelerated lifestyles.
There are radical philosophical motivations behind the house. Inspired by the struggles of Europe’s Roma travellers, N55 promotes nomadic living. “The best way for governments to control people is to make sure they stay in one place,” says Mr. Sorvin, who lives on a houseboat in Copenhagen. N55 members also believe that the private ownership of land should be abolished.
The house, containing a living room, kitchen, bed and mainframe computer, is designed to be self-sufficient, with solar panels, micro wind turbines, a compost toilet and rainwater harvesters. Wood-burning stoves or small greenhouses could be added.
This is just one of many eccentric designs architects have conceived to create more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly dwellings that “do more with less space.” N55 has also created small submersible micro-dwellings modelled after Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome.
Mr. Sorvin doesn’t expect to see walking houses marching across the Earth or geodesic pods filling our harbours any time soon, though. “I just want to make people think about housing in a different way,” he says. “In Denmark, people will pay two-thirds of their income just to have a place to live – if you can live in micro-architecture, you can spend your time and energy on other things.”
With coastlines worldwide threatened by rising sea levels, mobile and cheap homes may not seem so radical for long.
The Walking House is on display at the Wysing Arts Centre, 15 kilometres west of Cambridge, until Nov. 30.
BANISHED BOTTLES
For the first time in two decades, the sales of bottled water are slowing.
The Beverage Marketing Corporation announced last week that bottled-water sales will rise by only 2.3 per cent this year – the slowest growth since 1991, and down from consistent double digits in the early 2000s.
“This is a very significant statistic,” says Richard Girard, water campaigner with the Polaris Institute in Ottawa.
The bottled-water industry blames the economic downturn and a cool summer – but Nestlé (one of the world’s top four bottled-water producers) states in an internal document that consumers are being affected by “perceived environmental issues.”
The packaging, shipping and distribution leave each bottle with a carbon footprint equivalent to filling it a quarter full with oil, according to the Pacific Institute in the U.S., which also calculated that Americans buy 29 billion plastic bottles of water a year, using 17 million barrels of oil. And yet 40 per cent of bottled water – sales of which increased by 25 times from 1976 to 2007 – is just tap water with extra filtration.
British market-research firm Mintel predicted this year that there would be a “backlash” against bottled water, which it said is now becoming “unfashionable” because of ecological concerns.
Cities worldwide – including London, New York and Paris – are actively trying to persuade citizens to turn back to municipal tap water. Other cities, such as Liverpool, have banned the purchase of bottled water with city funds (as the city pays for water purification anyhow).
Toronto may do so soon, and if it does, “it could be the biggest city to have such a far-reaching bottled-water legislation,” Mr. Girard says.
THOREAU’S CONTRIBUTION
Little could Henry David Thoreau have known 150 years ago, as he meticulously recorded flora and fauna in Concord, Mass., that he would help scientists today understand how climate change is affecting the world’s plants.
Botanists from Harvard and Boston University published a paper last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists documenting that a total of 473 species of plants are flowering an average of seven days earlier today – some as many as 20 days earlier – based on the records in Thoreau’s journals.
Those plants that are flowering earlier in response to warmer temperatures are flourishing. But those that are flowering at the exact same time of year (because they bud in response to the length of the day, rather than temperature) are declining.
Moreover, the study shows that the plants in decline are more closely related to each other; the plants that are flourishing are also more closely related. “So when you think about Darwin’s branching tree of life, this means that entire branches are going to be pulled down from the tree,” says lead author Charles Davis of Harvard
As our climate changes, there will be winners and losers. “In this study, we’ve focused on the losers,” which include some of the loveliest flowers, such as lilies, orchids, buttercups and violets, he says.
Now, he and his team are going to look more closely at the “winners.” Though they aren’t sure yet, he says, it’s likely that the biggest winners will be invasive species such as mustards and hawk weeds.
ECOLOGICAL DEBT
The credit crunch has been grabbing headlines all year – but the ecological crunch is far more dire and irreversible, according to a new report.
Each year, we use 30 per cent more resources than the planet is able to regenerate, according to the Living Planet Report 2008, which adds up to an ecological debt of $4-trillion to $4.5-trillion each year – double what the financial crisis is costing. Speaking in London last week, the authors – led by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London – urged governments to set up a similar multibillion-dollar bailout to replenish and clean our air, water and soil and protect biodiversity, which they estimate has declined by 30 per cent globally since 1970.
Three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries that are exacting more than they can replenish, with the United Arab Emirates ranked as the most resource-intensive, followed by the United States in second place and Canada in seventh.
In the English countryside, a house is taking its first steps.
The Walking House, a 3.5-metre-high, 3.7-metre-long hexagonal chamber designed by Danish art collective N55, is slowly trundling around Cambridgeshire this month, crawling at a leisurely 60 metres an hour on six hydraulic legs designed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its maiden movements are posted on YouTube, alongside comments that deride its slow pace.
“But it’s meant to move slowly,” says designer Ion Sorvin from his office in Copenhagen. He and N55 member Øivind Slaatto put the house on legs rather than wheels, he explains, as an antidote to accelerated lifestyles.
There are radical philosophical motivations behind the house. Inspired by the struggles of Europe’s Roma travellers, N55 promotes nomadic living. “The best way for governments to control people is to make sure they stay in one place,” says Mr. Sorvin, who lives on a houseboat in Copenhagen. N55 members also believe that the private ownership of land should be abolished.
The house, containing a living room, kitchen, bed and mainframe computer, is designed to be self-sufficient, with solar panels, micro wind turbines, a compost toilet and rainwater harvesters. Wood-burning stoves or small greenhouses could be added.
This is just one of many eccentric designs architects have conceived to create more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly dwellings that “do more with less space.” N55 has also created small submersible micro-dwellings modelled after Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome.
Mr. Sorvin doesn’t expect to see walking houses marching across the Earth or geodesic pods filling our harbours any time soon, though. “I just want to make people think about housing in a different way,” he says. “In Denmark, people will pay two-thirds of their income just to have a place to live – if you can live in micro-architecture, you can spend your time and energy on other things.”
With coastlines worldwide threatened by rising sea levels, mobile and cheap homes may not seem so radical for long.
The Walking House is on display at the Wysing Arts Centre, 15 kilometres west of Cambridge, until Nov. 30.
BANISHED BOTTLES
For the first time in two decades, the sales of bottled water are slowing.
The Beverage Marketing Corporation announced last week that bottled-water sales will rise by only 2.3 per cent this year – the slowest growth since 1991, and down from consistent double digits in the early 2000s.
“This is a very significant statistic,” says Richard Girard, water campaigner with the Polaris Institute in Ottawa.
The bottled-water industry blames the economic downturn and a cool summer – but Nestlé (one of the world’s top four bottled-water producers) states in an internal document that consumers are being affected by “perceived environmental issues.”
The packaging, shipping and distribution leave each bottle with a carbon footprint equivalent to filling it a quarter full with oil, according to the Pacific Institute in the U.S., which also calculated that Americans buy 29 billion plastic bottles of water a year, using 17 million barrels of oil. And yet 40 per cent of bottled water – sales of which increased by 25 times from 1976 to 2007 – is just tap water with extra filtration.
British market-research firm Mintel predicted this year that there would be a “backlash” against bottled water, which it said is now becoming “unfashionable” because of ecological concerns.
Cities worldwide – including London, New York and Paris – are actively trying to persuade citizens to turn back to municipal tap water. Other cities, such as Liverpool, have banned the purchase of bottled water with city funds (as the city pays for water purification anyhow).
Toronto may do so soon, and if it does, “it could be the biggest city to have such a far-reaching bottled-water legislation,” Mr. Girard says.
THOREAU’S CONTRIBUTION
Little could Henry David Thoreau have known 150 years ago, as he meticulously recorded flora and fauna in Concord, Mass., that he would help scientists today understand how climate change is affecting the world’s plants.
Botanists from Harvard and Boston University published a paper last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists documenting that a total of 473 species of plants are flowering an average of seven days earlier today – some as many as 20 days earlier – based on the records in Thoreau’s journals.
Those plants that are flowering earlier in response to warmer temperatures are flourishing. But those that are flowering at the exact same time of year (because they bud in response to the length of the day, rather than temperature) are declining.
Moreover, the study shows that the plants in decline are more closely related to each other; the plants that are flourishing are also more closely related. “So when you think about Darwin’s branching tree of life, this means that entire branches are going to be pulled down from the tree,” says lead author Charles Davis of Harvard
As our climate changes, there will be winners and losers. “In this study, we’ve focused on the losers,” which include some of the loveliest flowers, such as lilies, orchids, buttercups and violets, he says.
Now, he and his team are going to look more closely at the “winners.” Though they aren’t sure yet, he says, it’s likely that the biggest winners will be invasive species such as mustards and hawk weeds.
ECOLOGICAL DEBT
The credit crunch has been grabbing headlines all year – but the ecological crunch is far more dire and irreversible, according to a new report.
Each year, we use 30 per cent more resources than the planet is able to regenerate, according to the Living Planet Report 2008, which adds up to an ecological debt of $4-trillion to $4.5-trillion each year – double what the financial crisis is costing. Speaking in London last week, the authors – led by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London – urged governments to set up a similar multibillion-dollar bailout to replenish and clean our air, water and soil and protect biodiversity, which they estimate has declined by 30 per cent globally since 1970.
Three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries that are exacting more than they can replenish, with the United Arab Emirates ranked as the most resource-intensive, followed by the United States in second place and Canada in seventh.