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 some game-changing eco-tech.
Consider the Desolenator, which creates safe drinking water from sunshine. Invest a few bucks and help thirsty people toast in 2015 with a glass of clean water.
A team of archaeologists discovered an ancient underground city in Cappadocia, Turkey, with tunnels and escape routes spanning over 3.5 miles. Estimated to be 5,000 years old, the massive metropolis was found in the areas around and beneath Nevşehir fortress during an urban development project carried out by Turkey’s Housing Development Administration (TOKİ). Hurriyet Daily News called it the “biggest archeological find of 2014”.
Solar energy panels are an important investment for planet earth, but also for residential homeowners that want to cash in on attractive feed-in tariffs. Homeowners that invest in solar energy can feed the power they generate back to the energy grid and in time make money after their initial investment in panels is paid off.
Most homeowners in the United States won’t know their solar energy-producing potential unless they hire a contractor to come and survey the roof, or run a DIY solar energy potential calculator found online. And not all homes are suited for solar panels.
Maybe your roof faces north, is blocked by tree cover or has too many complicated angles to justify solar panels? In these scenarios an investment wouldn’t pay off to the planet or your pocketbook. But how would you know?
An Israeli company called SolView has a solution to the problem.
Typically what happens today is that large solar energy integrators will send out canvassers hoping to attract homeowners to buy into solar energy opportunities.
According to industry estimates a company can spend $4000 for each new customer acquisition –– money that can be saved if they used automated rooftop scanning technology, according to SolView founder and CEO Ofer Sadka.
RELATED: White reflective roof paint can cool buildings by 20%
With 15 years in image processing and software development experience behind him Sadka’s company SolView makes use of publicly available images like from Google Earth and applies a special algorithm developed to identify regions, cities, towns, neighbourhoods and even zooms in on individual homes that would benefit from solar energy panels.
Of course one could put solar panels anywhere, but whether or not the investment is worth the installation is what SolView is helping companies understand.
I scanned my parent’s house in Ontario, Canada and saw that solar panels would never work for them. They have way too many trees shielding the roof.
SolView, in business since 2013, has raised about one million dollars from VCs like Capital Nature to grow the business in the United States, and it currently has business with a few publicly traded solar energy companies there. Solview is raising $2.5 million series A round for growth and expansion.
Knowing on which homes the sun shines brighter
“The key issue of SolView is our ability to automatically identify the solar potential of rooftops,” Sadka tells Green Prophet. “Some companies are able to do a manual process and provide somewhat of a similar output. Our key benefits are of automaton which means we can do it on a massive scale.
“Instead of targeting a specific prospect, we can scan or ‘canvas’ entire areas. Based on that initial canvasing a company can change their marketing processes to target the right prospects and then not rely on specific market campaigns to pan out.”
SolView’s business is in the US residential market and they work on a B2B model with installation companies.
Until now companies had to work with human canvassers who would walk up and down the street and knock on doors, even on the doors of homes with roofs that are non-viable for solar panels. An appointment would be scheduled, and then the process which is slow and cumbersome starts.
“We can know before the first canvasser knocks on the door whether the home is viable for solar panels. We can ‘see’ physical constraints such as a roof divided into different facets, or if it’s facing the south, which is good in the northern hemisphere. Are there excessive amounts of shading or a roof that is built with too many planes?” Sadka says.
For now it’s hard to know a golden number of what roofs work best for optimizing investment. That is up to the company selling the panels, Sadka explains.
He says there is a booming solar energy market in the US for residential use. He is also getting requests from the UK, Brazil, India and China.
“All the big companies are looking for sales and a much much shorter and cheaper customer acquisition process.”
The payment process? For now per rooftop. The company has since scanned hundreds and thousands and millions of rooftops for every customer. SolView sells by regions and which areas should be targeted by sales personnel.
If this means faster sales of solar panels, and higher customer acquisition at a lower price then I’d like to speak on behalf of the planet, if you don’t mind, and say that this is an excellent idea.
More on Solview here
Last May, Lebanese lawmaker Walid Jumblatt called for marijuana to be legalized in Lebanon. While he never touched the weed himself, he said, “I support growing cannabis for medical use and to improve the living conditions of farmers in north Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley,” according to the Daily Star.
Now he’s back in the news seeking legal acceptance for the cultivation, sale and consumption of pot. (Read down in the article if you are curious about the tolerance levels for marijuana in the Middle East.)
“It is time to allow for the cultivation of marijuana, and to drop the right to issue arrest warrants against people who work in this field,” the veteran Druze leader recently Tweeted.
According to the French news agency AFP, Lebanon had generated hundreds of millions of dollars from marijuana cultivation during the country’s civil war (between 1975 and 1990) before the government began to put a lid on the pot industry.
AFP now reports that, in recent years, Lebanon’s cannabis growers say business has boomed in large part to the Syrian war which has deflected government attention from drug crimes. Demand for the drug in Syria has jumped more than 50 percent since 2012, a year after its civil war began, and porous national borders enable Lebanese producers to meet growing demand. Good news for “farmers”.
So what’s the word on weed across the rest of the Middle East?
The Middle East’s appetite for Marijuana is negligible compared to North America or Australia, but the drug has a string following and – along with hashish – is broadly acceptable given a centuries-old link with communal cultural ritual within some faiths.
Marijuana is technically illegal in Egypt, but use is widespread and widely accepted and convictions for personal use is rare.
Israel allows usage of medicinal cannabis, and recreational use – while illegal – is relatively decriminalized, with little or no penalty for convicted first time violators.
Marijuana cultivation, sale and use is not legal in Jordan, but enforcement for personal users is relatively lax.
Lebanon outlaws pot possession, however, large amounts are grown within the country and recreational use, so long as it is discrete, is rarely an issue.
Saudi Arabia cracks down on use and possession for personal use of any recreational drug. If caught, you face up to six months jail time. Dealing and smuggling drugs usually result in harsher prison time or even execution. Foreigners who use drugs face deportation.
Syria similarly bans recreational drugs and, under Bashar al Assad, many cannabis offenses, from simple use to trafficking, are punishable by life in prison. Despite the risks, there are reports that people living in areas controlled by Kurdish separatists increasingly cultivate marijuana as one of the few means to create income in this Syria’s debilitated economy.
Tunisia outlaws weed altogether. Don’t grow, sell, buy or smoke unless you want a stint in prison.
Turkey‘s laws prohibit possessing and using pot. Get caught and face 1–2 years in prison; or opt for a rehabilitation program and/or lengthy probation. for up to three years. Supplying and selling the drug is punishable by 5–10 years in jail, and growing and trafficking get you a minimum term of 10 years. Thinking of a Turkey toke? Suggest you re-watch the old movie Midnight Express.
United Arab Emirates laws belie it’s modernist reputation: even the smallest amounts of the drug can lead to a mandatory four-year prison sentence.
Got some real-life perspective to add to this survey? Drop us some comments and let’s begin a dialogue. What’s the real word on marijuana in the region?
Image of Walid Jumblatt and son (AFP Photo/Joseph Eid)
A hidden pleasure in ex-pat life in Amman, Jordan is the relative ease in which I can sidestep a steroidal Christmas (and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa – the trifecta of Big Business holidays that muscled into my former New York City life every December).
Here there are no TV reruns of Mid-Century classics like Frosty the Snowman or The Christmas Story (sorry, Ralphie); no aggressive toy commercials or maniacal sales pitches on radio. You can get a hit of holiday Muzak in Amman city malls and a few restaurants light up plastic trees. But around here it’s basically business as usual. Until you hit the fruit and vegetable souks, where seasonal cuisine can knock you right back into Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa) Past.
Let’s digress a bit. My Italian-American father was a Marco Polo in the food markets, bringing home odd vegetables that he’d find in the ethnic neighborhoods he traveled through to work. He terrorized my Irish ma with artichokes, manioc, and dandelions – freakish foods to a woman more comfortable around a turnip and some spuds. Nick scoured the stalls for new fruits too, we may have been the first kids in New Jersey to try a pomegranate, which we called Chinese apples. (Don’t ask – I told you this was New Jersey.)
Along with exotic (to NJ) tangerines, pomegranates became symbolic of our Christmas feasts. The ruby-red orb was a perfect match to holiday decorations, but how to access its cache of juice-rich seeds without turning the kitchen into a crime scene? To us kids, peeling a pomegranate was a precursor to the Rubik’s Cube. How to solve this natural riddle without being chased from the house by an angry mother? Yet our Christmas pom tradition endured despite acres of stained tablecloths.
Last year, Green Prophet brought news of an excellent technique to remove seeds in 10 seconds, neatly with a bang-a-spoon technique. It was life-changing. Until I whacked my hand once too often with feverish spoon-wielding, prompting me to look into another method scoffed at by the man in the video: subaquatic seed removal.
YouTube offers several versions, this one will do the trick. It’s clean, quick, and a gentler approach than beat-the-bulb approach. Use the leftover water for your houseplants, or pet’s water bowl – especially if you also live in water-parched Jordan.
.[youtube]http://youtu.be/8s1LiSYqLl8[/youtube]
Yes, Virginia – there is a Santa Claus. And this Christmas, rejoice that there is also more than one way to peel a pomegranate. Look, ma, no stains!
Image of cut pomegranate from Shutterstock
Taking a cue from its neighbor city Tel Aviv Lebanon’s regional “landmark”, Sidon’s notorious garbage mountain, will now become a city park. Sidon’s stench was once so bad that locals used to say that “you smell it before you can see it.” This hideous site, the result of garbage trucks dumping straight into the sea not only detracted considerably from the beauty of one of the country’s most historical cities, but has been causing serious marine pollution as well.
This ungreen reality is now in the process of being greatly improved, due to an industrious clean up project by the city municipality and overseen by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
These efforts are now transforming the former Sidon dump also known as the Saida dump from a foul smelling garbage mountain into a green park: “It’s gone from a 58-metre (190-foot) trash mountain to an eight-metre green mound. We’ve cleaned up the sewage, and the trash mountain is gone,” said Sidon’s mayor Mohamed al-Saudi.
The garbage mound came into being during the 15 year Lebanese Civil War (1975 to 1990) when a place was needed to take large amounts of rubble caused by the bombing and shelling. At one point, a large part of the mound’s total size was made up of rubble from destroyed buildings.
Mayor al-Saudi, who came into office in Sidon with a pledge to rid the city of the dump, says he is proud of this project, which will join the former garbage dump to a large 33,000 sq. meter public park that will contain 100 year old olive trees and an amphitheatre.
The dump itself was moved further south.
Edgard Shabab, assistant resident representative and manager of the Energy and Environment Program of UNDP, told Your Middle East that in eight years time “the former mountain of shame will be part of a 100,000 sq. meter green park and something that Sidon will be very proud of. ”
Not everyone is impressed by the project, however, as the costs involved have exceeded more than $25 million USD which critics say could have been put to better use. The project has also caused damage to a long stretch of beachfront, according to Mohamed Sarji, president of the Lebanese Union of Professional Divers.
Despite the objections, the outcome of this project will be far better than the former smelly garbage mountain. Projects like this one will eventually make the entire region a much better place to live in, and help preserve the environment in Lebanon for future generations.
More on garbage dumps:
Garbage Strucks Dump Straight into the Sea in Lebanon as Hezbollah Takes Hold
A New Face for Israel’s Garbage Park
Cairo Sustainably Manages Garbage with Unionized Pigs and Ragpickers
Image of Sidon City from Shutterstock
DUBAI — Mention Dubai, and people immediately think of soaring skyscrapers, enormous shopping malls and insanely expensive sports cars. But 30 kilometers south of this world-class city-state — along the E66 highway towards Al Ain, and just past a Chuck-e-Cheese outlet — the glitz gives way to desert.
Here at Umm Nahad, there are no architectural wonders to behold, other than a lonely strip of asphalt stretching into the distant horizon. The quiet is punctuated only by the occasional screech of jets taking off and landing at a nearby military air base.
What a perfect place for a camel farm.
Known by its playful brand name, Camelicious — the farm represents one of Dubai’s very few attempts at actually producing something: healthy, natural camel milk.
About 250 people work at Camelicious, on a huge tract of land covering 25 to 30 square kilometers.
“Dates and camel milk are part of the staple diet of Bedouins. This is what people here used to live from,” said company communications director Kirsten Lange, speaking to GreenProphet.com during our recent visit to Camelicious. “Quite a few locals have camels. They drink the raw milk from their own camels, even though they might live in the city.”
At the moment, about 3,600 camels make up this operation, said Lange, though the idea is to have 10,000 animals within the next two or three years.
So how do the workers keep track of all these dromedaries?
“The camels have numbers, but of course our vets know the old ones,” Lange said as she guided us around the farm. “Once in awhile, we give them names. Once we had a camel with lots of hair; we called her Tina Turner. They have GPS trackers on their collars, and we have a very extensive database. On every camel we have a huge database, and they get regular blood and urine tests.”
The point, of course, is to get these camels to produce as much milk as possible. The average camel gives seven liters a day, though not all camels are producing at all times. Daily production averages 5,000 to 6,000 liters, she said.
Last February, the company got permission from UK authorities to export its camel milk to the British market. The Camelicious brand is now available in selected ethnic stories in London, Brighton, Manchester and Bradford. Milk powder has also been shipped to potential partners in the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.
In addition, there are two sister companies: The Majlis and Al Nassma. In July, Al Nassma — which distributes fine chocolate products made from camel milk — reported a 100% growth in sales over the previous 12 months. The Majlis, meanwhile, runs a retail outlet at Dubai Mall, selling a range of bread loaves, muffins, Danish pastries and ice cream.
“Camel milk has always been known in the Middle East, but the accessibility for the wider public has been limited. We at EICMP have been reaching out to the broader community in the UAE to encourage a healthy lifestyle since 2006,” said Mutasher Al Badry, the company’s manager of business development. “Our goal is to promote the benefits of camel milk as a natural and pure resource of the region, and as a healthy alternative to cow’s milk.”
While not everyone likes the taste of camel milk — Camelicious tends to have a pleasing, slightly salty taste — the experts seem to agree that it’s far healthier than the kind that comes from cows.
Besides having three times more Vitamin C and 10 times more iron than cow’s milk, it’s antibacterial, low in lactose and shows promise in treating everything from diabetes to Crohn’s disease. A 2005 study showed that just 500 milliliters of raw fresh camel milk daily improves the quality of life for diabetics, thanks to a protein found in this particular milk that has characteristics similar to insulin but doesn’t coagulate.
“About 25 years ago, Dubai’s Central Veterinary Research Lab set up a research facility to explore what a camel could really be used for. Before that, no one thought of commercially exploiting camel milk,” she explained. “After awhile, when it became clear that this might be profitable, the company was set up on the same premises under the leadership of CVRL. It was founded in 2003 and became operational three years later.”
Lange, a German development and PR consultant who speaks Arabic fluently, previously worked in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Yemen before resettling in Dubai.
Lange said the Camelicious operation is heavily subsidized by the government, to the tune of “tens of millions of dollars,” though she wouldn’t be more specific.
“It is a private company, of course, owned by several shareholders. It’s not at the break-even point yet, but right now, with exports to Europe and the prospect of getting FDA approval — as well as getting into new industries like pharmaceuticals — inshallah it will be profitable soon. We see a lot of market potential.”
Camelicious comes in a variety of tempting flavors — so far, it’s available in plain, chocolate, saffron, date and strawberry. With the brand’s humorous logo of a cartoon camel with sunglasses, one might think this would be the perfect off-the-beaten-path destination for tourists and their kids.
But this isn’t Dubai Waterpark. As Lange said, “we are not a tourist attraction. We are running a business operation here with ISO and EU standards.”
Most of this operation is even off-limits to members of the media, who are not allowed anywhere near the milking facility. And visitors may enter the production and bottling line only after donning disposable blue outer garments to reduce any possible contamination from outside.
Many of the workers, it appears, come from India, Bangladesh and Nepal — along with several Arabic-speaking employees — though none of them would talk to this reporter. Asked how they all communicated, Lange said, “the ones who don’t speak English take classes. We have people who started here eight years ago not knowing English, and now their English is excellent. We take pride in caring for our workers.”
On the other hand, she said, “running a camel farm is not only about having camels. Here, we have 10 years of company experience and 25 years of research, but we are not done. No one is ever done,” she said. “Everyone who sets up a camel farm will eventually face problems.”
One such problem surfaced last June, when a team of Dutch and Qatari medical researchers found that the virus which causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is found in camel milk. That prompted the Qatari government to issue guidelines warning against drinking raw camel milk, and that milk be boiled before consumption.
In Dubai, Camelicious is available through the Waitrose supermarket chain for 10 dirhams per liter; its price is fixed by local municipal authorities.
But in the States, camel milk costs more than some premium liquors, when it’s available at all. Walid Abdul-Wahab, founder and CEO of Desert Farms, told the trade industry publication DairyReporter.com there are 18,000 cows for every camel in the United States. That’s why pasteurized whole camel milk goes for $16 per pint (473 ml).
“Camel milk retails for double the price of cow’s milk, but when it comes to European prices and maybe later on the U.S. once we get FDA approval, it’s up to the retailers,” said Lange. “It’s all about creating standards for camel milk. How do you judge whether the quality is good or bad? For other milk, there are already standards. The FDA basically has to do the same.”
Larry Luxner is a freelance journalist and photographer who writes frequently about Latin America and the Middle East. Photo credit: Larry Luxner, 2014, for Green Prophet
NASA scientists are using the Suomi NPP satellite to photograph the earth at night. They are studying natural phenomenon as well as light pollution. They found that manmade lights shine noticeably brighter during the holidays of Ramadan, Christmas and New Year.
Some Middle Eastern cities shone more than 50% brighter during Ramadan. Find out how ancient religious celebrations led to traditions of holiday glare.
NASA scientists and associates used a sophisticated computer algorithm to compare man-made lights during holidays to man-made lights at other times of the year.
RELATED: NASA watches freshwater sea vanish
They compensated for clouds, dust and other weather phenomena which might have impacted the results. They also ignored increases in brightness from areas with snow cover because snow reflects and increases the amount of manmade illumination which escapes into space.
The scientists were surprised that holiday lights are visible from space.
The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is sometimes called the festival of lights. It commemorates a Maccabee victory and a miracle of efficient lighting that took place in 165 BCE. A nine-branched Hanukkah menorah lamp is part of this traditional celebration. The menorah’s candles are lit in order to represent the miraculous extra days of light.
RELATED: NASA sees Cairo’s black cloud on camera
Electric menorahs are sometimes used for display purposes and to let others know about the Jewish faith, but under most circumstances, this mitzvah requires a true menorah which burns wax or oil as the original temple menorah would have.
So, with the exception of the green laser menorah projected onto a landfill in Ariel Sharon park near Tel Aviv, typical Hanukkah celebrations aren’t bright enough to be seen from space.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in Bethlehem. To Christians, Jesus Christ is the messiah and the light of the world. But there is only a tenuous connection between core Christian beliefs and the traditional illuminated Christmas tree.
The ancient pagan practice of decorating an evergreen tree was adopted by devout Christians in Germany. Marriage and other family connections brought this tradition to Great Britain around the year 1800 and spread further when Queen Victoria married her German cousin. At the time, these Christmas trees were decorated with ornaments and occasionally with lit candles.
In December 1882, Edward H. Johnson demonstrated the first electric Christmas tree lights. This was only three years after his associate Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical incandescent light bulb. These lights were seen as a publicity stunt of the fledgling Edison electric company and not immediately welcomed as a less flammable alternative to candles. Businesses began using them around the year 1900 but they were too expensive for average households until about 1930.
Electric Christmas lights went through several technology and style changes over the next few decades. This included compact fluorescent Christmas lights introduced in the 1940s, high voltage Christmas lights, low voltage “fairy light” incandescents and the recent introduction of red, yellow, green, blue, ultraviolet and finally white LEDs.
These decorative lights eventually spread beyond the western world and beyond the Christian holiday. Some neighborhoods hold competitions for the brightest, blinkiest, most eye-watering holiday light display. So it should surprise no one that lights such as these are seen from space:
The lights of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan can also be seen from space. In Saudi Arabia, outdoor lights were twice as bright during Ramadan than they are at other times of year. Some of this may be caused by decorative lights, and the fact that more people are outside after sunset when each daytime fast ends.
Photographs by NASA some rights reserved
As olive groves across Turkey are falling victim to energy projects, one construction company decided to buck the trend, turning a coal mine into an award-winning olive plantation.
Protests erupted in the disaster-struck coal capital Soma last month after a construction company felled 6,000 olive trees to make way for a power plant.
The case generated nationwide interest, underlining Turkey’s struggle to balance the government’s aim of reducing the country’s dependence on energy imports with protecting the environment.
But in Aydin on the Aegean coast, a few hours’ drive from Soma, the Zetay olive grove serves as a rare example of sustainable development in Turkey.
Originally an open-excavation coal mine, it was operated by the Ankara-based Aydiner Company in the 1990s until the coal ran out.
Yet instead of letting the land lie barren, the company bought the 300,000 sqm area in 2007 and transformed it into an orchard. Last year, it began producing its own olive oil.
Ömer Aydiner, the company’s owner, said he had been thinking about converting the area for several years. After deciding to turn it into an olive grove, the company sought the advice of agriculture experts at Ankara University and the local community in Aydin.
“We started looking into the best variety we could use with one of the professors in Ankara and by using the experience of the muhtar [village headman] and his father,” Mr Aydiner told Green Prophet.
“They’d been living in the village ever since that village was established, so they knew what could be grown over there. We decided to stick to the olives that all the farmers and all the people in the area were growing.”
The company works closely with the villagers. As Zetay’s young trees do not yet yield enough to sustain the oil production, Aydiner buys olives from farmers in the region. During harvest, the plantation also relies on local labour.
“We are from a village ourselves. We’re from northern Turkey, from the Black Sea coast, so we know how to be a village person,” Mr Aydiner said about his company.
“The best knowledge is always on the ground, it comes from the people who live there. I cannot bring someone from the Black Sea to advise me on growing olives in the Aegean area, that would be ridiculous.”
External help came from Professor Mucahit Özkaya from Ankara University’s horticulture department, who specialises in olive farming.
Under his supervision, the company began work on the barren mine. The area’s soil was severely damaged after years of coal exploitation, so Prof Özkaya instructed the company to dig holes – one each for the roughly 13,000 trees – and fill them with fertile earth.
He also added caper and pomegranate trees to the orchard to prevent landslides and further erosion.
“Some other companies plant forests or orchards on old coal mines, but this company contacted me to establish it in the right way. Most companies don’t care for the science behind it,” said Prof Özkaya, who still works as a consultant at Zetay.
As Aydiner wanted to produce organic oil, the plantation uses no fertiliser or pesticide and little machinery. To combat pests, the workers rely on tried-and-tested methods used by local farmers.
“We had some problems with mice and insects, so we put some animals, like turkeys, chickens, hens and geese, in the plantation and they’re eating the insects,” Prof Özkaya told Green Prophet.
Nearly 10 years in the planning, the effort has paid off: Zetay’s olive oil won eight awards from across the world this year. Encouraged by the plantation’s success, Mr Aydiner said his company was looking into starting a similar project in the Black Sea region.
Such projects are rare. Elsewhere in Turkey, olive groves are under threat after the government drafted a bill to facilitate the expropriation of small olive plantations to build power plants.
An estimated 90 per cent of the country’s olive groves are smaller than 2.5 hectares and could therefore be expropriated at the government’s will if the bill passes.
RELATED: Balyolu makes Turkey’s first honey tour
Even without the new law, Turkey’s hunger for energy has led the government to lend support to destructive construction projects.
Deforestation has become widespread: Istanbul’s northern forests, where the world’s largest airport is being built, are disappearing and on the Mediterranean coast, hundreds of thousands of trees stand in the way of Turkey’s recently-greenlit first nuclear power plant.
Plans for a thermal power plant in Soma, where 301 miners were killed in an explosion in May, saw 6,000 olive trees felled last month. The images of sobbing villagers sparked outrage nationwide, forcing the Council of State to suspend the project.
Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus tried to strike a conciliatory note: “We need to find the middle ground. Yes, we need electrical energy. We need power plants. But it is also wrong to damage the environment in a thoughtless, reckless way just because we have some economic needs.”
Yet a few weeks later, his words seemed to have been forgotten when several dozen olive trees were cut down to make way for a power plant in Aydin province, less than an hour’s drive from the Zetay orchard.
Islamic versus non-Islamic or simply Western style architecture is an issue in many parts of the Middle East where locals, kingdoms and sheikdoms refuse or steadfastly hold onto their identity.
Look at the Arab Gulf States like Dubai where giant, glass fronted skyscrapers dominate the skyline.
These futuristic structures are being called cheap and anonymous by prominent architects like Frank Gehry. In Saudi Arabia the king there is attempting to wipe historic holy sites off the map by developing over them. ISIS too is wiping history off the map with their own agenda.
But Iran is very different than the rest of the Arab world right now. And legistlators there are trying to buck the trend of modernism.
Architecture in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which for centuries followed a more traditional style of environmentally green designs gave way to more modern styling during the 53 year period of the Pahlavi monarchies; especially during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who reigned from September 1941 until February 1979.
During his 38 year “off and on” reign, Shah Reza Pahlavi made great efforts to introduce Western culture into the country, which also included dramatic changes in Iran’s architectural styling.
See traditional fishbowl architecture from Iran.
Although modern architectural styling continues to change the face of Iranian cities like Tehran, efforts are now being made by Iran’s Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is slow down the pace of contemporary architecture by issuing criticisms against modern high rise structures as being “un Islamic” and not in accordance to religious fatwas or edicts. Sustainability issues are not on the table.
According to an essay article written by Mojtaba Nafisi, during Iran’s rich architectural history “the spatial layout of house design in Iran reflected the patriarchal structure of the society through the rigid segregation between private and public space, known in Persian architecture as the andaruni and biruni.”
This architectural concept has now been compromised, he writes, by more contemporary architectural designs which “are also considered erotic because, unlike the spatially introverted pre-modern architecture of Iran, faces outward with windows that shamelessly offer strangers a peek at the buildings’ private parts.”
Related: Khamenei won’t like these rotating rooms in Tehran!
Religious edicts or fatwas against modern building styles were published by Center for the Study of Science and Technology of the Islamic Iranian Architecture and Urban Planning, which is said to have close ties with the Supreme Ruler, who appears to prefer more traditional or Patriarcial building codes.
This doesn’t mean that Khameni is against all forms of modern innovations; as Nafisi says Khamenei “appears to like other Western innovations, from smoking pipes to ballistic missiles.”
Major efforts have been made to change architectural styling that was introduced during the reign of Iran’s last Shah, the late Reza Pahlavi. These include a number of buildings that were designed and constructed by large Israeli construction companies prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
One of these buildings, at Tehran’s international airport (see photo), was still reported to have Israel’s national emblem, the Star of David, still noticeable on the building’s roof. This symbol, which has been described by Iranian media as a “symbol of evil”, lays evidence to cooperation between Israel and the Pahlavi regime, when airlines of Israel’s national carrier El Al, made regular flights to and from Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Other Israeli structures include the former Tehran Hilton hotel, now called the Parsian Esteghlal International Hotel, and the Elkan Towers residential project (photo top).
Judging from the current political atmosphere, regarding the state of relations between these two countries, these remaining symbols of past Israeli – Iranian cooporation have undoubtedly been a part of Khamenei’s “un-Islamic” building design thoughts as well.
More articles on Middle Eastern and Islamic architecture:
Extraordinary Fish Bowl Architecture Photos by Iran’s Mohammad Domiri
Dubai’s Skyscrappers are Cheap and Anonymous Says Architect Franky Gehry
Islam’s Environmentally Friendly Architecture – Where Did it Go?
Photo of Tehran Airport building -Google Earth:
Photo of Elkan Towers, by Sam Ibanaru/Haaretz
Maybe you’ve heard of the Million Man March? Or the Million Mom March? Or last year’s Million Muslim March? Brace yourself for a macabre riff on that theme. A team of archaeologists from Utah’s Brigham Young University (BYU) discovered an ancient Egyptian cemetery that has more than 1 million mummies. Presumably, they don’t march.
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.
Project Pressure has created the first open source glacier archive, recording the environmental impact of climate change by documenting the world’s changing glaciers. Danish photographer Klaus Thymann launched this not-for-profit in 2008, garnering impressive street-cred with official links to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). What’s this got to do with the Middle East? Some of the most endangered glaciers on the planet are in Iran.
An Italian design student dreamed up a gizmo that he claims can heat a room for 10 cents a day. I just paid $700 to half-fill an oil tank that, if I’m Scrooge-like with that “on” switch, will heat my 3-bedroom Amman flat for maybe 6 weeks. Could Marco Zagaria’s Egloo heater really work? As I read the data on his fundraising site, the radio started playing an old Doors tune, Come on baby, light my fire!, and I choked on my tea.
The most powerful family in Jordan is tapping into the most powerful energy source in the Universe to electrify their private residence. Prince Muhammad bin Talal, brother of Jordan’s King Hussein I, has installed what is the largest, self-use photovoltaic (PV) array in the Middle East.
Prince bin Talal is an active pursuer of environmental solutions. Below see him with Green Prophet’s Karin at a Swiss event for water cooperation in the Middle East.
Covering a sun-facing hillside on his vast Amman estate, this royal installation represents a powerful endorsement of renewable energy.
Jordan’s Al Manal Palace is now powered by over 160 kW solar power!
Global Renewable Energy Systems LLC, a leading PV installation company from Germany, designed a solar system that would give long-term, reliable energy output in Jordan’s desert climate.
A total of 540 poly crystalline modules manufactured by Chinese manufacturer Realforce Power and three German-produced KACO Powador 60.0 TL3 inverters provide 162 kW of installed generating capacity. KACO new energy is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of solar inverters and the first to achieve fully carbon-neutral production.
Zouhair Kefi, Managing Director of KACO new energy Dubai, praised the good example of the Royal Family in a press release, “Precisely in a region where oil wealth did not bring good fortune, the PV array on the Al Manal Palace is serving as an example to show that a prosperous future can be attained just as well with renewable energy.”
bin Talal is a longtime proponent of solar power. Solar is environmentally suited to Jordan’s location. It is endlessly renewable, politically stable, and secure in that it lessens dependence on imports. According to World Bank data, Jordan currently imports 98% of its oil and gas, yet renewables contribute less than 1% of Jordan’s energy despite the Kingdom boasting one of the highest annual daily averages of solar irradiance in the world.
In April 1012, Jordan’s Parliament adopted the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Law (REEL) aimed at inciting private-sector investment in the kingdom’s commercial renewable energy sector. Earlier this year, development was approved for the 52.2 MW Shams solar energy plant, slated to be the largest solar PV installation in the Middle East.
REEL targets homeowners and small businesses too, but domestic installations have not been strong – in part due to relatively high first investment, and the current dip in heating fuel costs is also a deterrent.
The royal solar system went live in August and it’s a puzzle why no one has called Guinness World Records. Loudly broadcasting the Middle East’s largest personal-use PV array – and its royal champion – with follow-on stories on system performance, cost benefits and rate of return, will surely help spike domestic conversions across Amman.
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