Ever wonder what an Arabian lighthouse looks like? Mariners approaching the Red Sea harbor at Thuwal, about one hour north of sprawling Mecca, Saudi Arabia are now guided to shore by a soaring new honeycomb lighthouse designed by the Australian firm Urban Art Projects. Commissioned by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), […]
Science puts a new view forward in the anti-brassiere argument. Women have bound their breasts since antiquity, for modesty’s sake or to conform to an aesthetic ideal. Exposing the breast for human survival in breastfeeding is supposed to be kept politely minimal, even with the known multiple benefits of breastfeeding. In the Western world, women […]
Corruption is black, brown, grey, devoid of color. And in Egypt, it can be seen in streets piled high with trash and polluted canals, in maddening traffic resulting from outdated infrastructure, and chronic power outages. Corruption is everywhere, yet this silent killer of hopes and dreams is hard to pin down. Not anymore. A band […]
As if they didn’t have enough trouble on their hands, residents of 15 towns and 45 villages in Pakistan’s Swat Valley have been completely stranded since a bridge linking them was swept away by last year’s floods. This isolation officially ended last Friday when the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Pakistan inaugurated a new 448 […]
We’ve been hearing about Dubai’s version of Masdar City since 2011, but skeptics have doubted that “Sustainable City” would ever become more than a mirage in the desert. Not anymore, according to local news reports. Diamond Developers has announced plans to officially launch their latest project – a 120 acre green city – at the […]
We haven’t heard from our favorite eco-warrior, David de Rothschild in some time, but that doesn’t mean the youngest heir to the Rothschild banking fortune has fizzled into obscurity. Instead, since he responded to our call to save Israel’s Adullam Valley from his (extended) family’s oil shale ambitions and published his crew’s riveting account of the […]
For ancient Egyptians blue was the color of rebirth. Today their chemical invention of artificial lapiz lazuli means new advances for lights, lasers and more. According to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society the ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue may have important new applications in nanotechnology. Researchers at […]
Dubai police have announced the latest acquisition to their fleet of cop cars: a 700 horsepower Lamborghini Aventador. Unlike scofflaws in Saudi Arabia who risk a trip to “chop-chop square”, criminals in Dubai’ may now face a white-knuckle ride in one of the world’s fastest and most expensive cars. The supercar, which can reach speeds […]
I recently spent a weekend in Istanbul, one of my most beloved cities. My hotel was based in Fatih, the run down section of the old town, and it overlooked the Little Aya Sofya mosque – also spelled Sophia, or Sofia. The morning before I flew, I thought it would be the perfect moment to […]
Today there are a dizzying variety of wildflowers blooming across Israel, welcoming the months of spring. Fifty years ago some of these plant species were on the verge of extinction. With the help of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Nature Reserves Authority, the 1965 campaign to publicize the law […]
Paris marathon organizers plan on ripping off its runners! Energy-harvesting tiles placed along an 80 foot section of the Champs Elysee will capture energy from the pounding feet of 40,000 racers. The technology developed by Pavegen offers a tangible way for people to engage with renewable energy generation. The flexible tiles made from recycled truck tires […]
Having just returned from Lamu, Kenya, where there is no other way to travel but by boat (or plane or donkey), it seems strange to me that it has taken modern Cairo this long to come up with the idea of a water taxi. But there you have it. Cairenes weary of knotted traffic jams […]
We have to admit that this isn’t anything particularly “green” about this see-saw, but it does harvest the movement of people to make music. And that’s just downright cool. A temporary installation designed for last year’s Marrakech Biennale, The Rise and Fall blends architecture and art to question how people occupy spaces and how those spaces […]
Although the Sahara desert used to be a green retreat for giraffes and hippos 5,000 years ago, it is now a giant, sometimes rolling landscape of sand. A lot of sand. In fact, roughly two thirds of Algeria is made up of sand, according to the authors of a study published in the Arabian Journal […]
Upstream hydroelectric dams have already inhibited the recovery of Iraq’s legendary Mesopotamian Marshes. A massive dam currently under construction in Turkey may wipe them out completely. For the next two months, I’ll be taking a break from my usual Green Prophet posts to report on a transnational environmental issue: the Ilısu Dam currently under construction […]