Could it be a world-changer? A cheap solution to help African kids get to schools and clinics? Israel’s Izhar Gafni (who we interviewed here) had an outlandish idea to create a durable cardboard bike from scratch with raw materials sum totalling about $9. Add in some labor costs and you can get a pretty cheap […]
Israeli designer Ohad Lustgarten designed Shade and Shelter as part of his final project at Shenkar College of Design, the same center that spawned living lace made from bacteria. The six foot tall prototype constructed out of cardboard looks like a giant centipede when it is unwound but then coils up to provide a lightweight […]
Egyptian studio House designed a beautiful prefabricated Mashrabiya home called Oxygen Villa. Comprised of modular boxes with both vertical and horizontal screens, this solar-powered gem provides all of the natural lighting, ventilation and privacy the average Arab family needs. Combining cutting-edge technology such as photovoltaic (PV) glazing modules and decentralized wastewater treatment system with ancient passive […]
Green Prophet has been touring the 18 Solar Decathlon homes that made it to Madrid for this year’s international collegiate architecture competition, and we’re dazzled by what we’ve seen. Although the Egyptian team wasn’t able to construct their home as a result of delays back home and in Valencia, AUC will have another chance to […]
Four Turkish students collaborated to design Washit – a combined shower and washing machine that makes those 15 minute showers almost guiltless. Responding to the combined woes of water scarcity and excess water use in the bathroom, Ahmet Burak Aktas, Adem Onalan, Salih Berk Ilhan and Burak Soylemez created a shower box that collects, cleans, and […]
Mashrabiya screens are a common element in Middle Eastern architecture and yet few people outside the design world realize how much work goes into making them. In order to unveil the extraordinary care and patience that goes into each handcrafted screen, Beirut-based Carwan, the Middle East’s first popup art gallery, commissioned mischer’traxler to design the Mashrabiya […]
Sarine Zaken is the world’s first designer to incorporate living bacteria into clothing and jewelry that people can actually wear! A third year student at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, the young Israeli fantasized about incorporating something alive into her final project. While that may seem a bit creepy at first, a chance encounter led her to […]
In its purest form, Islam (like most religious and spiritual ideological systems), calls for humanity to retain their connection to the earth. That we are custodians of the planet is an idea that is expressed in numerous Quranic tenets.
While solar advancements continue apace, wind energy technology has remained fairly stagnant over the years, making it in most cases less viable than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. It’s expensive, harmful to birds and bats, deeply inefficient and comes with a host of annoyances such as noise and vibration. Responding to what they perceive as […]
What’s hotter than Italian-designer Gabriel Diamanti talking about a solar-powered desalination device for the 99%? Not much, except for the Eliodomestico that he built during his graduate studies at the Milan Polytechnic in 2005. Following extensive travel to parts of the world that can no longer take fresh water supplies for granted, like Saudi Arabia, […]
Israel’s Mediterranean city of Bat Yam is pulling itself out of obscurity with one of the most unusual art spaces we’ve seen. Located just south of Tel Aviv – the country’s most well-known seaside city, the Riviera used to be a thumping nightclub in the 1950s and 1960s. Now it’s a very yellow and open industrial-chic art […]
The most creative design solutions are often spurred by the tightest restrictions and this is definitely true of the new loveat branch in Jaffa, Israel. Commissioned to transform a 20th century orange-packing plant just south of Tel Aviv into a hip new coffee shop, Ronen Levin and Eran Chehanowitz faced several challenges. Not only were […]
We interview Izhar Gafni, the inventor of the cardboard bike.
Once Muzer Al-Kasas was able to collect all of the necessary materials, it only took him three days to build a small electric vehicle. Unlike Better Place EVs (which are now for sale in Israel) or any other fancy equivalents, the taxi driver’s inexpensive innovation is a slightly more viable means of transportation for a […]
Flush toilets create a real stink in slum communities. Not only do they require often non-existent sewage connections for safe disposal of waste, but they also drain already scarce water resources – no matter where they are. So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge.” This initiative aims to reward […]