SteamSHIFT

A house powered by spinach: “Seattle architecture/design firm Mithun won first place in the C2C Home Competition with their design for a house powered by spinach. The house will be built this summer in Roanoke, Virginia, along with other contest winners.

The competition asked designers to work on work on cradle-to-cradle design principles and create objects and processes that replenish communities, using materials that can be recycled indefinitely.

Mithun’s house takes energy from the sun and uses spinach protein to generate electricity for neighbouring homes and street lighting infrastructure.

The house’s skylight brings in the sun’s rays, and the heat sink stabilizes temperatures, while a highly conductive material produces photosynthetic energy generated from the protein in spinach. The spinach proteins are sandwiched between the core’s glass walls; their chlorophyll converts the sun’s rays to fuel the home. Besides, a vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core

More images.

Via WorldChanging and Treehugger < Gristmill.

Related: The search for sun-powered bio-computer.

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(Via we make money not art.)

yellowarrow.net: “Yellow Arrow™ is a global public art project, urban game, and tool for collaborative experimental travel - an interactive forum for people to leave and discover messages pointing out what counts.

Participants place arrows to draw attention to different locations and objects — a favorite view of the city, an odd fire hydrant, the local bar. By sending a text-message (SMS) from your mobile phone to 1.646.270.5537 beginning with your arrow’s unique code you associate it with a short text — messages can range from literary quotations to personal commentaries to game-like prompts to action. When another person encounters the arrow, he or she sends the code to 1.646.270.5537 and immediately receives your message on their mobile phone. Through this location-based exchange of text-messages, the Yellow Arrow becomes a symbol for the unique characteristics, personal histories, and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces. And it’s not just places, it’s people: Yellow Arrow TXTshirts™ are individually coded just like the stickers. Yellow Arrow text-messaging is currently compatible with all phones and service providers in the US as well as internationally with those networks under the GSM standard. The website, YellowArrow.net, allows participants to annotate their arrows with photos and maps and is the online gallery of Yellow Arrows placed throughout the world — visit to order arrow stickers and tshirts and see announcements about new events and features.

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“Neighbornodes are group message boards on wireless nodes, placed in residential areas and open to the public. These nodes transmit signal for around 300 feet, so everyone within that range has access to the board and can read and post to it. This means that with a Neighbornode you can broadcast a message to roughly everyone whose apartment window is within 300 feet of yours (and has line of sight), and they can broadcast messages back to you. Boards are only accessible from computers that go through the local node.

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David Rokeby: David Rokeby is a sound and video installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. He has been creating interactive installations since 1982. He has focussed on interactive pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. His work has been performed / exhibited in shows across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, including:

• the Venice Biennale in 1986
• Ars Electronica (Linz Austria) in 1991
• the Mediale (Hamburg Germany) in 1993
• the Kwangju Biennale (Korea)  in 1995
• the Biennale di Firenze (Florence, Italy) in 1996
• Alien Intelligence (Kiasma, Helsinki) in 2000
• The National Gallery of Canada in 2002
• The Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002
• Ars Electronica in 2002

Seen (2002) - Venice Biennale of Architecture:

spring is sprout-ing: “

sprout home is a gorgeous design store in chicago that makes me wish i lived around the corner from it. full of bright, colorful pieces for the spring season, sprout is your place to go to for fun and functional additions to your spring decor. you can see their entire catalog online right here. so, click away and get ready for spring….

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(Via design*sponge.)

Banksy

NCA_0401

UrbanPeel.com: Pin Clock:

“The first ever clock to use a simple yet innovative system of raised pins to display time. Pin clock has a patent pending design.

The face of the pin clock is made up of 3,000 pins arranged side by side. As time passes, a precision engineered mechanism lifts and retracts selected pins to display hours and minutes.

The inspiration behind the pin clock comes from the popular toy that uses moving pins to make an impression of one’s hand or face.”

The pope has one, why shouldn’t you? The Mitre laptop sleeve by TOM BIHN

Omotesando: “The current ad display on Omotesando.”

(Via jeansnow.net.)