Sustainability

Space

NASA noodles with Moon bases grown from fungi

NASA's myco-architecture project at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley is exploring the possibility that future inhabitants of the Moon and Mars, not to mention the Earth, may live in homes grown from fungus.

The Imperial War Museum Paper Store was completed in January, 2019 and cost £2,863,000 (roughly US$3.6 million) to build

Architecture

Imperial War Museum archive is most airtight Passivhaus building to date

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.

The Flying-V concept is reckoned to use 20 percent less fuel than an Airbus A350-900

Aircraft

KLM and TU Delft eye sustainable aviation future with V-shaped flyer

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.

As you can see, this tiny home is almost completely isolated in the high desert of Arizona. There is one nearby neighbor.

Tiny Houses

Living small in the high desert

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?

A "central green spine" runs down the center of Dubai's Sustainable City

Environment

Beyond oil: Inside Dubai's Sustainable City

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

Architecture

Shimmering sustainable home on the lake uses glass to give residents a floating sensation

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.

Zhang Liye from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology designed Acorn, an entirely biodegradeable base made from raw materials gathered from crop waste, fashioned into frames to raise plants in the desert

Good Thinking

Seven brilliant inventions from the world's biggest student design show

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.

When objects produced by the Paper Pulp Printer are no longer needed, they can be recycled or repulped

3D Printing

Pulped paper replaces plastic as the raw material for this 3D printer

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.

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is home to a multitude of species, which could be sources of new medicines – if they survive

Environment

How biodiversity loss is quietly eroding the potential for life-saving drug discovery

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.

Good Thinking

Potato plastic and 3D-printed ant nests feature in the 2018 James Dyson Awards

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.

Researchers hope to fit drones with spraying hoses to apply layers of biomaterials onto light structures, such as geodesic dome frames or grid shells covered in tensile fabrics

Architecture

Mud-spraying drones take aim at low-cost housing

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.

The containers used for ISDSI's new campus were carefully selected from Bangkok ports

Architecture

Shipping container-based campus leaves nothing to waste

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.