Sustainability

Britain's Imperial War Museum (IWM) recently gained a new archive to help house its vast collection of records. The IWM Paper Store is one seriously energy efficient building and is also the most airtight Passivhaus project to date, according to International Passivhaus Association records.

When Gibson introduced the Flying V electric guitar in 1958, it divided opinion. A bold new aviation concept out of TU Delft is sure to do the same. Wearing the same moniker as Gibson's iconic instrument, the design is aimed at improving aircraft efficiency and sustainability.

I've often wondered what it would actually be like to have a small footprint, off-grid house. How does it work? What does it take? How much does it really cost? Does it feel like going back in time?

The carefully planned Dubai Sustainable City is a reminder that between the towering skyscrapers there is plenty of environmental awareness to be found. As cranes hover at its edges expanding its footprint piece by piece, New Atlas ventured into the desert to see it all from the inside out.

As the name might suggest, the Glass Villa on the lake is big on transparency, with its walls largely consisting of panes of glass designed to leave residents with the impression of floating on the water.

With 150 projects from the world’s leading design schools on show, the Global Grad Show in Dubai is an annual celebration of all the creativity student design has to offer. New Atlas was on the ground at this year’s edition to sniff out the brightest ideas.

​With a few notable exceptions, the majority of objects removed from a 3D printer bed are fashioned with plastic. But plastic has a nasty habit of ruining our environment at the end of its useful life. Beer Holthuis has built a 3D printer that extrudes paper pulp to build three-dimensional objects.​

Drawing on nature to cure ailments stretches back thousands of years, but with our destruction of the environment continuing apace, some are concerned how much of it we’ll have to depend on in the future.

The finalists for this year’s James Dyson Award offer an exciting array of clever design solutions. Some of the highlights include biodegradable plastic made from potato starch and prefabricated ant nests designed to help rural communities easily harvest insects for food.​

​Further to opening our eyes to all kinds of new perspectives on our environment, we are beginning to see how drones can play very active roles in its construction. The latest example comes from a team of researchers that hope to use them to craft low-cost housing made from natural materials. ​

Thailand's International Sustainable Developmental Studies Institute teaches American students about sustainability, so it makes sense that when it needed a new campus, it used shipping containers. Nothing went to waste, with off-cuts reused as doors, walls, and the like.

​Low-tech Magazine has rebuilt its website to be entirely solar powered, and is wilfully designed to go offline when conditions dictate. The new site has a much-reduced energy footprint, and is something of an exemplar in efficient website design.