Sustainability

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.

This cuboid studio cantilevers over a steep slope above and behind the owners' main residence, offering them additional room to work, relax, and entertain, while enjoying the ocean view. It also features solar panels that produce enough electricity to run both the studio and the main house.

​​The Great Pyramid of Giza has stood at a height of around 140 m for 4,500 years, many of which it was the planet’s tallest structure, but these days we are ripping down tall structures without even batting an eyelid. A new study illustrates how quick we are to pull the trigger.

The spaces where we learn are evolving with a growing emphasis on connectivity, collaboration and sustainable design. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has celebrated these principles by announcing the winners of its annual Library Building Awards and Education Facility Design Awards.

Every year for the past few years, the TU/ecomotive team has built an electric concept car. This year's EV is called Noah, and is being billed as the world's first circular car. This doesn't refer to its appearance but rather its sustainable production and usage, and its end of life recyclability.