Look West, Middle East – for a failsafe way to ween off one-use plastic bottles! Banning plastics is the best first step to eliminating this poisonous prodrome of modern civilization. Last March, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to pass a bottle-banning ordinance – quickly signed into law by Mayor Edwin M. Lee […]
Saudi Arabia is a desert country with no freshwater resources. Every day the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) produces more than three million cubic meters a day of potable water, which requires a great deal of precious energy, so every drop must be conserved. Cue NOMADD.
What’s a beach without a shoreline, or a dune perch that overlooks a horizon of…more sand? According to the World Tourism Organization, it’s the newest frontier in eco-tourism – welcome news for the Middle East.
Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai will soon play host to the world’s largest shopping mall – the gargantuan Mall of the World. Comprised of 48 million square feet of over-the-top retail, residential, and even medical services, the covered pedestrian city is expected to attract some 180 million visitors a year. I shudder at the thought.
I get that a lot of people don’t have any experience growing food and that city people might not have garden space, but so called high tech gardening has gone one step too far with Click & Grow’s exorbitantly expensive “smart herb garden.”
The people of Siwa Oasis have been growing dates for 3,000 years. And while they cultivate many varieties, three that are native to the desert community are close to extinction. Don’t worry too much, though, because the Siwa Community Development Environmental Conservation (SCDEC) group is working to save them.
The team behind Living Green just won $20,000 to further develop LivingBox, an off-grid, modular system of growing food in urban spaces - without soil!
“Do you want the chickens in the scene, or out?” I asked the director of the new American TV series Tyrant, being filmed in my front yard in Jaffa. The director’s chair and her entourage were parked less than a yard outside my front door at the spot where the dog normally naps and eats […]
Working with NASA as part of an initiative to design homes fit for space, Iranian architect Nader Khalili conceived the dome home as an affordable, accessible, easy to build, and environmentally sensible housing solution. Now it's being applied in the West Bank.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a story pops up about donkeys in Turkey that carry solar panels so that shepherds, who are often out in the field alone for days at a time, have enough energy to power their laptops.
Green walls and rooftop gardens are great, but keeping them healthy in the Middle East and North Africa can be challenging. Green Studios, whose work in Lebanon we’ve featured once before, has an answer with their patented technology that ensures plants can flourish despite the extraordinary heat in our region. “We wanted to develop something that is […]
At least 124,000 people were killed in the bloody eight month Gallipoli Campaign. Also called the Dardanelles Campaign, it was considered to be the Ottomans’ final push against the Allied forces. ONZ Architects and friends commemorate this collective wound with a breathtaking series of sunken trails on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Until the girls were abducted, I didn’t know much about Burkina Faso. And I didn’t think I wanted to know more until I stumbled upon Tiébélé, a village full of the most elaborately-painted earthen homes and mausoleums. Rita Willaert has a treasure trove of images on her flickr page. Hit the jump to see just a […]
Mashjar Juthour is a living museum of what little wild fauna and flora still exist in Area C, a portion of Palestinian territory controlled by Israel, but it’s struggling to get by. Aiming to create a sacred green space for the Palestinian people and supporters, a place to heal and regenerate, its founders humbly ask for our help.
Magnetic levitation technology enthusiasts around the world are waiting to see what will happen in Israel, where skyTran has teamed up with Israel Aerospace Industry (IAI) to prove the viability of their Hover Car personal rapid transit (PRT) system. The levitating sky cars will be tested in Lod, a run-down industrial city south of Tel Aviv.