I woke up to find an email from Cameron Sinclair thanking me for “designing like you give a damn.” Sinclair is the executive director of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation and, yeah, celebrities and politicians email me all the time. I’m also popular with Nigerians who need help cashing checks. I need to figure out how to […]
Incense that burned in ancient Egyptian and Greek temples was once harvested from this island; nine species of the frankincense tree are unique to Socotra.
Assuming you stayed relatively sane on New Year’s Eve, you probably going to woke up the next day feeling optimistic, ready to start the new year with a clean slate. Maybe resolve to lace up the sneakers, or lay off the carbs. Or take it bigger and tackle a problem beyond yourself by investing in […]
This is the amazing tale of Derby the dog. The life of this little pup born with withered front legs took a radical turn when he met an animal lover named Tara Anderson. See the power of tech to change lives – all species welcome.
The Middle East and Africa subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation officially launched an outrageous shopping experience for its Xperia products this month, with a pop-up store located just offshore from the environmentally dubious World Islands in Dubai – and 4 meters under the sea. It’s the world’s first underwater store.
Italian architect Arturo Vittori and his colleague Andreas Vogler designed a low-tech machine, based on passive design, that can produce between 50 and 100 liters of clean drinking water daily, without electrical equipment and independent of land-based water sources. This inexpensive, easily assembled tower was designed specifically for rural communities in Ethiopia that lack access to safe […]
A hundred employees from The Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh planted over 300 trees in the hotel’s surroundings as part of a new environmental campaign called Green Earth, Clean Earth. The project is part of a global initiative called Clean up the World with a dual purpose to preserve the natural environment and give back to the […]
Photographs are visual reminders of past events, at least for those of us who can see. Scan a stack and stimulate long-forgotten memories. But what artifacts help the visually impaired to stroll through their histories? Singapore-based tech company Pirate3D is helping the blind to “see” photographs through their innovative 3D printing project, “Touchable Memories”. It began as […]
Drop-A-Brick is a clever PR campaign to cut water waste in severely parched California, a state with dwindling aquifers that is experiencing its worst drought in 500 years. It’s a project that can be implemented everywhere there is indoor plumbing, and the concept is sound – displace some tank water and over time, save buckets of the […]
Halloween landed on a Friday this year, meaning your “I have to work tomorrow” excuse for not dressing up becomes as flimsy as a ghost. So, with a few hours to prep before tonight’s parties begin, how do you devise a spooktacular costume without buying more polyester (most likely shipped over from China) to crap […]
We were quite taken with these long-standing caves in Iran, and with this eco-boutique hotel in Turkey, but neither match the style of the restored Yunak Evleri hotel in Cappadocia. With fixings such as marble in the reception area, it isn’t the most modest tourism facility we have featured, but we do love to see history, nature, and travel merge in creative harmony.
Leading fashion houses are turning to schools in search of new materials for high-end handbags, shoes, and accessories. We’re talking fish schools, as designers troll seafood industry waste streams looking for alternatives to increasingly banned exotic leathers. It’s not new, but it is trending. Is “leather” made from fish skin inventive recycling or another misstep for […]
Imagine if passing through airport security could be as pleasant as a stroll through a park. Scientist June Medford is working to harness the innate sensing abilities of plants, genetically engineering them into lean, green bomb-and-drug detecting machines. Medford is a “synthetic biologist” (not to imply she’s artificial, but to clarify that she dabbles in the re-design […]
You’ve got open eyes. You’ve read the reports, like this one from the WWF on how polluting we’ve become. Yet we can’t get enough of consuming stuff on planet earth. Pick up the New York Times and see an editorial running on watch ads. Fancy, crazy expensive watches for elite people, not this planet in peril. […]
A pair of Israeli designers has turned alleyway graffiti into fine furniture with the help of some unwitting street artists in their south Tel Aviv neighborhood. It’s ersatz “WickiFurniture” made up anonymous contributions by anyone acting on an urge to create.