flygskam

The above Swedish word for flight shame, accompanied by the hashtag jagstannar-påmarken—meaning stay on the ground, have gained considerable cultural cachet in their native Sprachraum (språkområdet) and beyond as people become more keenly aware of the impact that flying has on the environment. Train ridership has seen an upturn with the trend continuing on the same trajectory and the government as well as tour operators are working to make rail routes an increasingly attractive and viable alternative.

stratocaster

Originally conceptualised by an engineering student at Berlin Technical University and inspired by the Gibson Flying V line of guitars, Delft Polytechnic is working with Dutch airliner KLM to prototype a new two-pronged aircraft aimed to be the most fuel-efficient long haul plane out there. Visit Design Boom at the link above to learn more about sustainable aviation and some of the design features of the cabinet and propulsion system.

still life with portion control

A Valencia-based design studio and patron of the arts called Quarte Caps has commissioned the re-contextualising of iconic still life paintings, like this ostentatious cornucopia from Dutch Baroque artist Abraham Hendriksz van Beijeren (*1620 – †1690)—with the face of the artist in the original reflected in the silver decanter—in order like the first Delft school of painters executed pronkstillevens that highlighted the affectation and pretension of fine tableware to focus on the excessive and unnecessary packaging (see also) and shuttle diplomacy of convenience food, whose persistence changes the metaphor of the perishable. Can you see yourself in the plastic soda bottle? Learn more and peruse a larger gallery of “Not Longer Life” at the link above.

dx

Taking a cue from the fracking and oil drilling industry could be the seismic and technological shift that helps the US and other power-intensive jurisdictions make the move to power sourced from wholly renewable and sustainable sources.
While solar and surplus storage (in batteries or as potential energy in gravity schemes) have been benefactors of public-attention, the same with electric vehicles over staid but practical public transportation, it’s been at the expense of geothermal engineering and exploration. Albeit the prospect of circulating plumbing through a field of hot springs for direct exchange is much more of a challenge than blasting enough water into the ground to force out a diminishing amount of shale and gas—poisoning our own wells in the process, considering how far the business was able to advance—transforming the US for instance from a consumer to a producer of petroleum, in the last decade does illustrate how sufficient motivation yoked to government support and regulation can send efforts—regarding cleaning up our acts—into overdrive.

europawahl

Though Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, did lighten up on their messaging somewhat, having taken this particular poster out of circulation early on after the campaign began in mid-April, the notion that freedom is not a guaranteed matter of course and that elections have consequences still is a crucial one.  Representation is important and illiberal forces are counting on your political disillusionment and disenfranchisement to forward their agendas. If polling has not already taken place where you live, please get out there and vote.

material and motif

The always brilliant Nag on the Lake introduces us to the repertoire of architect Bruce Alonzo Goff (*1904 - †1982) through his organic, harmonious commission for artists and educators Nancy and Eugene Bavinger completed in 1955 (making the cover of LIFE magazine due to its immediate status as a tourist attraction) in Norman, Oklahoma, far off the beaten path.
Set in the woods and using a re-purposed oil derrick drill stem as the central spire a single locally-sourced sandstone wall spiralled to the ground like a Möbius strip, the only division separating indoors from outdoors, rooms were suspended platforms at graduated heights with curtains that could be drawn for privacy and the ground floor was the forest itself. This icon of habitation integrated with its environment was sadly ultimately demolished in 2016 overgrown with vegetation and after a decade of vacancy and a tornado that damaged the structure’s anchor as plans for restoration were discussed. Other examples of works by Goff survive and enjoy protected status.

sacred grove

The once lushly forested landscape of Ethiopia that has been critically depleted from the start of the twentieth century onward is preserved in tens of thousands of tiny pocket parishes of the ancient and revered Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (የኢትዮጵያ : ኦርቶዶክስ : ተዋሕዶ : ቤተ : ክርስቲያን), a congregation in communion with the Coptic tradition and representing some of the earliest Christians. Sacred buildings are traditionally surrounded by a thicket of trees and thus have become the foci of biodiversity for the land, with the belief that the trees prevented prayer from dissipating too quickly. Local priests are hoping to make their oases into something more contiguous and bring Nature back to Ethiopia. Learn more at Amusing Planet at the link above.

swedish neatballs

Exclusive to Dezeen, we are treated to three sustainable, future-proof recipes to try at home from IKEA’s laboratory Space10. By releasing a cookbook and encouraging individuals to experiment in their own labs and incubators, IKEA is hoping to come closer to closing “the gap between future trends and real life” and enable people to become active and engaged agents of positive change. Check out recipes and learn more about Space10’s test kitchen at the link above.

known colloquially as moss piglets

Via the Art of Darkness’ Shadow Manor blog, we’re introduced to a stress-relief ball in the form of a macroscopic version of a tardigrade (previously). Having survived the previous five mass-extinction events, able to withstand extreme temperatures and the vacuum of space, this little water bear—even just watching the video of it being squished and regain its shape is relaxing on its own—can surely handle your day-to-day stressors and would be glad to help alleviate them.

m.arch

Though probably best known for the once abhorred but now treasured glass-and-steel pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre, master modernist architect Ieoh Ming Pei’s (RIP, *1917 – †2019) first major commission in 1961—construction completed by 1967—a flagship laboratory for the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, also deserves appreciation.
The Mesa Labs and headquarters building, the cubist structure suggestive of exhaust vents or ship funnels, remarkably continues to serve its original function all these decades later, conducting crucial studies climate change and modelling, and earned I.M. Pei the industry recognition that would lead him to other projects, including the Dallas City Hall, bank buildings, libraries and galleries around the world.

голос води

Commissioned for the 23 March annual observance of World Water Day (previously), a group of one hundred sound engineers and musicians—including the group DakhaBrakha—teamed up to create a tone poem from the waters of Ukraine, designing special accompanying instruments to capture the character of currents coursing down the Carpathians. More to explore at Calvert Journal at the link above and for those of you who missed the commemoration like we did, it’s your cue to appreciate and collect the music of your local body of water.

die unendliche anziehungskraft der natur

Inspired by a sketch executed in 1971 by fellow Austrian Max Peinter (*1937, a cousin of Ettore Sottsass) called “The Unending Attraction of Nature” art collector Klaus Littmann will bring the picture to life by transplanting a forest of trees in the sports stadium of the industrial city of Klagenfurt as public art installation of the same name.
Calling the government officials out for their inaction on climate change and habit loss (lifestyle choices do matter and have an impact but the real and difficult sacrifice is in legislating the polluters), Littmann fears that in the near future, such displays of Nature might in fact be within the purview of the viewing platform or gallery, like animals in zoos. They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. Once the project concludes (9 September – 27 October 2019), the trees will be given a permanent home at a nearby location on public lands.

8x8

shuudan koudou: the Japanese art of synchronised, precision walking

how happy we could be if we’d only listen to our kitschy teacups: cheerfulness is not a virtue and rather an equal opportunity vice

shortlisted: a curated selection of submissions to National Geographic’s travel photography competition

the wookie roars: RIP Peter Mayhew (*1944 – †2019)

tiger on tour: during the height of the Space Race, Esso gave away maps of the Moon

deplatformed: garbage social media ejected a bunch of garbage provocateurs, though the stunt is more publicity for the banned

klimaanlage: researchers in Karlsruhe study enlisting air conditioning units to pull carbon dioxide out of the air

yijin jing: watching Shaolin Kung Fu training from above (previously)

macroalgae

Instead of the usual plastic cups or bottles of water offered to parched runners, for this past London Marathon participants were handed out some thirty thousand gulps of a sports drink encapsulated (previously) in a seaweed-based edible container. Among the newest wonder material, designers and the industry are just beginning to appreciate the potential of seaweed as a sustainable bio-plastic which, incorporated dietarily, can also combat the bio-genesis of methane.

mother of invention

Previously we’ve explored how the Year without a Summer influenced and informed Mary Shelley’s Post-Modern Prometheus and the hardship endured by the population in general, but hadn’t appreciated how the climate disaster helped transform transportation by creating a situation that allowed machine aided propulsion to gain a purchase.
Due to cold weather that precipitated successive failing harvests, people had no fodder to feed their horses and out of desperation, had to eat their horses, which made alternative modes of getting around a necessity, prompting Karl Freiherr von Drais (see also) to invent his Laufmaschine—a dandy-horse and like a bicycle without the pedal mechanism. Innovations such as this speak to human ingenuity and resilience when it comes to surmounting change. Let’s hope we can all keep pace.

don’t mess with mother

Graduating from its not nice to fool Mother Nature (the campaign for Chiffon margarine), Apple delivers a pretty intense advertisement—highlighting the capability of its camera—for Earth Day (previously) set to Megadeth’s 1985 thrash metal song Last Rites/Loved to Deth, to remind that Nature is a force to be reckoned with and that we’re squandering time at our peril. This latest short film is a departure from the gentler response in 2017 released after the US announced its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty with a montage of outdoor photography to Carl Sagan’s narration of Pale Blue Dot.

apiculture urbaine

Understandably not the first concern to leap to mind, but thanks to Parisien correspondent extraordinaire Messy Nessy Chic, we are happy to report that rooftop colony of bees kept in three hives (ruches) at Notre-Dame de Paris has miraculously also survived the fire, residing on a portico one level below the ancient wooden timber frame that was engulfed in flames. The hives are part of a very successful network of some three hundred kept in the city to contribute to the urban ecosystem, pollinate plants and offer humans surplus honey, populated by a docile breed of honey bees developed at the Buckfast Benedictine Abbey (also for its fortified tonic wine) in Devon in the 1920s. Learn much more at the link up top and spread the consoling news.

breakfast of champions

One of the intermediate achievements to come out of a four-decade experiment of The Land Institute’s founders Wes and Dana Jackson was trialled earlier this week before a body of scientists, conservationists and environmental activists in the form of a cereal milled from the grain of a perennial wheat, domesticated through a series of cross-breeding (see also) to make a potentially useful food crop out of wild prairie grasses.
Calling their cultivar Kernza, the team hopes to transform and invert the way industrial agriculture affects the environment and ecosystem as an enduring part of an environment that admits cohabitation rather than a seasonal interloper that requires energy intensive replanting year after year and causes a large degree of collateral damage despite its otherwise shallow impact.  In comparison, seasonal farming practises seem like a scorched earth campaign, with pesticides, erosion, vast expanses of monoculture that does not allow for a degree of diversity and the act of tilling itself that releases a bigger share of carbon dioxide than most other human enterprises.  Learn more at the links above.

waschbär

On this day in 1934, forester William, Baron Sittich of Berlepsch, at the request of the animals’ keeper, poultry farmer Rolf Haag, released two pairs of raccoons into the nature reserve Edersee-Kellerwald, in what turned out to be the ideal environment for them—several earlier attempts to introduce the North American export to Europe having failed.
The forester’s effort to “enrich the native fauna” was not exactly sanctioned as official permission from the Prussian authorities came weeks later, and raccoons have seen a rise in population climbing to an estimated million across Germany presently. The extent that the successful, invasive species (Neozoon) threatens biodiversity is a point of contention, most regarding their uncontrolled spread as disastrous, endangering native birds and edging out competition from domestic carnivores by their strength in numbers.

spring cleaning

Our village held what was billed as a Ramadama—a new term to me, from the Bairishe dialect (see also) for “Räumen tun wir!”—that is an organized tidying up effort, I suppose like #Trashtag challenge.
A tractor took a group of people out past the main road and they collected litter from the field and side of the road, a noble effort certainly though this area pretty clean to begin with. The first such call for volunteers goes back to 1949 when the lord mayor of München rallied over seven thousand to clean up rubble from the war by his side and has been a civic exercise organised by communities, schools and clubs ever since.