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 […]
Luca Curci architects studio presents Desert City, a project proposal for a sustainable way to live in the desert. It surely beats the maze of crazy unsustainable cities we see in regions in the United Arab Emirates, save for Masdar the zero energy city outside Abu Dhabi. The architects say that their theoretical project was born from […]
Investments in solar energy innovations are not dead! Remember those weird and wonderful solar energy harvesting tulips planted in Israel and Spain? Seen miles away the sky-high tulips have found a new commercial home – in Ethiopia, the company announced last week in a press statement. We’ve covered Aora over the years and thought possibly […]
Last weekend, a gang of antiquities thieves were caught in the act of cave-robbing by inspectors of the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery (UPAR) of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), with help from the Arad Rescue Unit. It was the first time in 30 years that relic robbers were captured while plundering. The suspects are six men from […]
A stunning series of portraits by American photographer Kevin Horan casts barnyard regulars into supermodels, resulting in anthropomorphic images that capture the personalities of these oft-overlooked animals. I showed them to a Jordanian photographer friend – he says he’ll never eat goat tagine again. Look into the faces of these animals and tell me if you […]
Peak sand and an end to construction as we know it
A United Arab Emirates-based firm has just concluded what it says is the region’s first water and energy audit of a large-scale housing facility for over 1,000 guest workers. Facilities management company Farnek assessed performance of their staff accommodation center in Al Quoz, Dubai, identifying opportunities to slash annual utility bills by 20 per cent (an estimated […]
Arabs eat hummous with religious fervour. And it’s true: mamma usually does best. As this Arab American in this video points out, if it comes in a plastic container, it is not hummous. Not the kind you want to eat any way. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGUFaizAHs[/youtube] For a great laugh watch the video above. And for a great hummous […]
Israel’s worst environmental accident, possibly worse than the devastating Carmel fires of 2010, happened yesterday morning. An estimated 600,000 gallons of crude oil (3 million liters) is causing severe damage to the southern port city area of Eilat, endangering also those close to the Eilat border, media outlets confirm. The damage was caused by a […]
Not so long ago, forests of majestic mangrove trees fringed the eastern shores of Saudi Arabia. Official stats now estimate that only 10% of the forest remains. Decades of landfill operations in support of growing urbanization destroyed the rest. Now a group of female environmental activists are battling to protect what remains.
Stroll around the ruins of Gaza on a late afternoon and you may catch sight of airborne young men, jumping off mountains of rubble and rolling from rooftops. Their extraordinarily athletic running and climbing, swinging and vaulting makes for an urban ballet. This is parkour and free running and this is the best crew in the Arab […]
Have you met the quince? You might have come across it in a market and passed it by. It’s yellow, but not yielding like an apple. It looks like a bumpy pear. Raw, it’s inedible. What do you do with it? The simple answer is: cook it. Quinces under heat become sweet and tender, with […]
You might meet snake charmers in the square of Marrakech and also storytellers who tell a good tale. But there is one thing always true about Morocco: the sun always shines. Foreign firms are eager to bank on Morocco’s attractive feed-in tariffs and catch some healthy profits from our sun. Solar energy companies like Martifer […]
A new video highlighting the importance of recycling is going viral on YouTube, garnering nearly 900,000 views in its first week online. The short clip (under two minutes) features young Israelis combining extreme sport with garbage collection. You’ll be scratching your head trying to figure out how they do it! A pair of gymnasts propels cans into […]
You know you should have done it. The DropBox folder is there, the extra hard drive is on the shelf. Hey, your partner even set up a wifi link to help you back up your files from any room in the house, without cords. But you have fallen into the trap of laziness. You are […]