We’re all over bicycles as the best green alternative to getting you where you want to go. News about bike-messenger schemes in Beirut, dedicated bike lanes in Jericho, and affordable bikes made of cardboard get our wheels spinning every time. So we’ve loving this simple way to eliminate one of the biggest obstacles to bike riding for […]
With so much conflict erupting around us, it’s hard to imagine a peaceful future, but Erdem Architects does a good job of it. The Turkish firm recently won an international design competition with their proposal to turn an area of the Italian city La Spezia, historically used to host the city’s war arsenal, into a series of serene peace islands.
The United Arab Emirates has now become a very popular holiday destination, boasting dry, hot weather for much of the year. Although the climate may be appealing to tourists, the United Arab Emirates has much more to offer than sun, sand and sunbathing. 1. Natural Attractions As well as the modern, built up cities, the […]
Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), the electric car company founded by Elon Musk, will be releasings its earnings statement next week and call it kismet or good planning, but Tesla has more good news: its partner Mobileye (NYSE:MBLY), the company that will be giving it driverless technology, said it will open on the New York Stock […]
When we first presented the solar-powered woven refugee shelters that have now been seen all across the world, many people suggested they’d also make great festival tents. Well, now we’re wondering the opposite. Could these B-and-Bee shelters designed for Belgium festivals provide temporary housing for refugees in the Middle East?
Not great news for mothers-to-be who live in cement-enroaching cities like Beirut: according to a new study pregnant women living near green urban spaces will deliver babies with higher birth weights. Time to start planting trees?
Two credible scientific datasets are suggesting that Earth, like George Clooney or Elle MacPherson, is getting hotter with age. Buckle your seat-belts and let the Climate Change debate begin!
Allergic to home improvement? Here’s an easy DIY chore you shouldn’t sneeze at. It will clean your air, increase its “coolness”, and save you buckets of money to boot. Change your air conditioner filters!
Luxor home to some of Egypt’s greatest temples has something to solute over: the city has started its first 80kW solar energy plant, worth about $530,000 US to power lights at Luxor University and surrounding streets.
Have you ever read an online story where the comments best the content, turning your idle news-scanning into a mini-meta experience? A recent piece on some new bike-safety gear caught our eye – (what’s not to love about designs to encourage pedal power!) – but it was the readers’ response that snapped the story into perspective.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a 12-hour ceasefire in Gaza yesterday, a brief respite from the escalating violence that is testing the capabilities of relief agencies already strained by four years of Syrian war and renewed battles in Iraq. It’s a half day opportunity to park politics and take humanitarian action. Want to make a difference? Jump into […]
Iranian architecture has evolved over the years – like everywhere – and the new generation of designers are producing truly impressive work. Take the extraordinary Sharifi House by next office. In order to maximize space, flexibility and daylight, the design team inserted semi-mobile rooms that rotate with the push of a button.
There are roughly 150,000 stray cats and dogs in Istanbul alone, and with so many other problems to deal with, city officials aren’t likely to make them priority. One Turksih company came up with a brilliant solution to feed some animals and recycle plastic at the same time.
How would you like to save money by no longer paying electric bills? There are several ways in which this can be accomplished. The first option is to go completely off the grid, and choose not to use electricity of any kind. This may not be suitable for the average person and will definitely not […]
Some workplace environments are naturally going to be considered more dangerous than others, meaning that someone working in an industrial or agricultural occupation is likely to be more exposed to dangerous working conditions than a person working in an administrative role in an office.
An exciting tourism project is set to promise a bright economic future for Saudi Arabia.
Confirming what we’ve known all along, the consumption of beef is much worse than a vegetarian diet, and also worse than eating other animal meat products like pork and chicken, a new study from Israel confirms.
If you live in the Middle East, surely you are accustomed to seeing plastic bottles lining city streets and even far-flung desert areas. While a tiny fraction of these might be recycled in some countries, most of them will languish for years in informal and formal landfills.
A new “eco-mosque” that seeks LEED silver certification has recently opened in Dubai. Designed to set an example for other mosques and local residents, the Port Saeed mosque can accommodate 3,500 worshippers.
Ample fresh water supplies for agriculture and drinking by the world’s burgeoning population are becoming more and more scarace these days due to over-consumption and the ravages of global warming and climate change. This has resulted in the need to tap into prehistoric underground aquifers, such as North Africa’s Nubian Aquifer under Libya; and the the […]
The Middle East joins the race to space with a new program which will launch a research probe to MARS in the next seven years. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ruler of Dubai) announced establishment of a UAE Space Agency.
If you live in south Tel Aviv in the Shapiro neighborhood by the central bus station you might come in contact with an African migrant or refugee. Unless you live side by side with them, it’s doubtful that you’ll get a chance to talk to one of the tens of thousands of men, and sometimes […]
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev scientists have poured molten aluminum into a scorpion burrow and discovered that scorpion burrows have a platform on which to warm up before the evening hunt.
Apart from a couple of monkeys from Iran, the Middle East has yet to send a serious mission to space. But Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE vice president and ruler of Dubai, recently confirmed that this is about to change with news that the United Arab Emirates is planning to send a […]
The London Design Museum bestowed upon Zaha Hadid the prestigious Design of the Year award for this incredible Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan, and there’s nothing green about it. But it does reinterpret fluid Islamic design in some interesting ways, and it really is a work of pure genius.
