I grew up as a Dutch girl in Canada. Among part of our family’s storytelling and legends was the tale about the Dutch boy who plugged a dyke with his thumb to save his town, the country, the world? from an encroaching sea. The flatlands people of Holland or The Netherlands as you might call them are at home with the idea of climate adverse consequences.

The national psyche is built on man against nature or man with nature, and for that the Dutch people have been reasonably doing unreasonable things against climate change and for helping the environment. See our article on the extraordinary city of Rotterdam, the home to one of resident writers, or Boyan Slat, who boldly plans to clean up the seas with his plastic-corralling invention.

While Americans might rather escape to Mars with Elon Musk, the Dutch are battening down the hatches and are offering more reasonable approaches to dealing with Mother Nature, or an angry Mother Nature. It was an ongoing fantasy in my home that if we won the lottery we would invite all our family and rent a boat and take them all on Caribbean yacht charters. We didn’t know about this luxury houseboat option then. Consider the Dutch firm who has designed a solar powered yacht that can lower stilts for a more permanent mooring.

Like the modern trailer also known as the #tinyhome or #vanlife, this yacht appeals to a certain eco personality that might also want to settle like the barge dwellers in Amsterdam. It is not your father’s houseboat.

The solar powered boat is created by the Dutch architecture studio Waterstudio.NL for the yacht maker Arku in Miami, with an option of it becoming an off-grid home.  

The craft is 75 feet long, is fully solar-electric, mobile and self elevating. This turn-key vessel is furnished and decorated in style by the acclaimed Brazilian furniture company, Artefacto.

The first one is for sale at a cool price of $5,500,000.

Arkup is a Miami, US-based company founded in 2016, to pioneer next-generation floating homes. The company rethinks life on water with its fully solar-electric, mobile and self-elevating livable yachts they call “future-proof blue dwellings.”

Weather and future proof, rain harvesting too

These livable yachts feature zero emission and silent electric propulsion which provide mobility and maneuverability. An automated hydraulic lift system, allowing the vessel to put down a stable foundation in up to 20 feet of water, ensures stability and hurricane resilience.

The livable yacht has four bedrooms in 2,600-square-feet of indoor space, with 4,350-square-feet in total, including its terraces and balconies. To achieve its sustainability objectives, the Arkup design is 100 percent solar-powered and has systems for harvesting and purifying rainwater, for complete independence.

With Covid and potentially other climate change disasters facing us, let’s start saving? The other option might be our collective thumbs in the dyke.

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When thinking about cities in the Netherlands, most people picture canals lined with charming old houses and narrow brick alleyways. Don’t expect to find any of that in Rotterdam. This is not your typical Dutch city. Rotterdam is known for its modern, experimental architecture and has turned it into a hotspot for sustainable urban design. Once an unappealing port city, the city transformed into a playground for innovation.

Rotterdam’s rising up from the ashes

The second-largest city in The Netherlands, home to about 600,000 people, has always been different from other Dutch cities – and for a long time, it didn’t stand out in particularly positive ways.

Rotterdam was long known as one of the poorest cities in the country, with high criminality and unemployment rates and a large population of unskilled immigrant workers. It was a working-class city, with an economy mainly fueled by the city’s port – once one of the largest ports in the world. It had a gritty image and didn’t appeal much to well-off Dutch people, tourists, and investors.

During World War II, Rotterdam was bombed and the city center was left in ruins. Hence the lack of a historic center, as you will typically find in other Dutch cities. After the war, instead of rebuilding the city center the way it used to be, Rotterdam decided to head in a new direction. It started to reinvent itself as a modern city, characterized by high-rise buildings and experimental architecture.

Over the years, the city has earned a solid reputation. The city that used to be looked down upon, is now a popular tourist destination with international allure, attracting creative minds and designers with big ideas. It is home to dazzling architectural structures and many recent additions to the city’s skyline stand out because of their innovative and sustainable character.

Dealing with Floods in Holland

Rotterdam’s inhabitants like to think of themselves as pragmatic people who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get things done. It might be their no-nonsense, entrepreneurial spirit that sparked the wave of green innovations in the city. But there is also another, more practical catalyst: rising water.

Like a big part of the Netherlands, Rotterdam is located below sea level. At approximately four meters below sea level, it is basically a big bathtub. Although protected by the country’s extensive water protection systems, climate change presents new challenges, such as rising sea levels and heavy rainfall potentially flooding the city.

Several innovative projects were developed as part of plans to make the city climate-proof – Rotterdam aims to achieve this by 2025. Those projects include the construction of a Water Square, featuring concrete basins that serve as recreational facilities but can double as water storage facilities, and a Sponge Garden, where new concepts for collecting, retaining and returning rainwater to the natural environment are being tested.

Sustainable Floating Structures 

The abundance of water also triggered another phenomenon that characterizes sustainable design in Rotterdam: floating structures. While the city’s port is still huge, it is not as significant as it used to be and various old harbors are no longer in use. The space occupied by those harbors is being repurposed with a greener future in mind.

There is a floating pavilion, consisting of three large glass domes which are being used as an event location. The so-called bobbing forest is an artistic project featuring miniature trees floating about on buoys. The floating park, made entirely out of recycled materials, is designed to trap plastic and serve as an urban ecological habitat for animals.

Meanwhile, the floating farm – a world premiere – is home to dozens of cows. It claims to prioritize animal welfare, promote circular farming, and produce healthy food right in the middle of the city, close to consumers. The cows are fed with residuals from local companies.

Circular economy across the city

Another innovation hotspot for the circular economy has arisen on the banks of the river Maas that crosses the city. The iconic former swimming pool Tropicana – every inhabitant of Rotterdam born before 1990 swam here at least once – has turned into a hub for sustainable start-ups, named BlueCity.

It aims to support starting sustainable enterprises and connect them to each other, creating circular networks in which the output of one process becomes the input for another. At BlueCity, bee wax from a local beekeeper is used by a local carpenter and fruit peels from the local market are processed into fake leather for producing bags.

It all began with the start-up Rotterzwam when two green entrepreneurs realized the humid basement of the former pool was the perfect environment for a mushroom farm. They started cultivating mushrooms in coffee grounds from surrounding coffee shops. The veggie snacks made from the mushrooms are served in low-waste restaurant Aloha and bars and restaurants around town.

Green spaces in the urban environment

Rotterdam’s concrete urban environment has been upgraded with green spaces. The city is home to the largest public roof park in Europe, the DakPark, complete with vegetable gardens and grazing sheep. In another part of the city, the roof of former train station Hofplein has been transformed into a public park. The nearby Schieblock features a large rooftop farm, measuring 1000m2, where city folks grow fruits and vegetables and keep bees.

Sustainable housing, though not yet widely available, is being experimented with. The Concept House Village is designed as a test site for sustainable construction, where sustainable concept houses are realized in close cooperation with researchers from local universities. Across the city, the ActiveHouse is designed to have minimal environmental impact, with large windows facilitating natural light and passive heating and a heat pump connected to solar panels to generate energy.

Clean energy and air for Rotterdam

Green energy was also an important consideration during the construction of the new Central Station, which features an iconic angular roof. Over 10,000m2 of the roof is covered in solar panels, making it one of Europe’s largest rooftop solar projects. The solar panels account for an eight percent reduction in the station’s CO2 emissions.

The yet-to-be-built Dutch Windwhell is even more ambitious and aims to generate three times more energy than it uses. The gigantic ring-shaped skyscraper sets out to use a newly developed form of wind technology, combined with biogas from organic waste and solar panels.

Rotterdam is also home to the “largest smog vacuum cleaner in the world”. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the seven-meter-tall Smog Free Tower aims to rid the city of pollution by removing tiny smog particles from the air.

The captured smog particles are used to make jewellery.

Prestigious green playground or functional sustainable innovations?

Rotterdam has clearly emerged as a playground for architects, who see Rotterdam as the perfect site for bold experiments. I have to ask myself: what are these innovations all about? Are they just another way for the city and architecture firms to gain prestige and publicity? Or is Rotterdam really leading the way towards a greener, more sustainable future?

Some projects seem to have a high wow-factor but little added value. Others don’t have direct benefits yet but are designed as sites for testing and research – which is arguably important to come up with new technological solutions that can be implemented on a larger scale later. Like what we see at Masdar in the UAE. Or Vertical Forest in Dubai. Or Neom in Saudi Arabia.

But the projects that really make my green heart jump, are the ones that have a direct impact on the local environment and community.

Those are the small local initiatives – not the fancy ones, but the smart ones. The ones that connect locals to entrepreneurs and city dwellers to nature. The ones that revive neighborhoods and strengthen local communities. The ones that make a big difference on a small scale. That is where transformation happens in real life.

Sure, a sustainable skyscraper is exciting and a carbon ring is cool. But what we really need are practical solutions for daily life that enable us, as urban citizens, to live as green as possible. It is the small local initiatives that are turning dreams of a green future into reality, from the ground up. That befits the city of Rotterdam. After all, groundwork is what Rotterdam has always been good at – even before it became a booming city.

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Virgin Buildings is the newest branch of Branson’s empire aimed at “capturing iconic Virgin moments in a new generation of ultra-green skyscrapers”.

The new suite of designs includes a space-shuttle-shaped Sydney skyscraper and a New York tower shaped like a bunch of balloons.

“We’ve been lucky at Virgin to have done some pretty extraordinary things, whether its the music business, trains, planes or even spaceships, but I think this project perhaps caps them all,” said Branson, who provided fuller commentary in his video, below.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/rlWvjY9ZmTQ[/youtube]

According to the April 1st announcement (okay it’s one of those Internet jokes, yikes, or not?), each building will feature huge rainwater-harvesting facilities, living walls that can be used for growing food and moving walls that can adapt to suit different rooms and functions.

Branson describes the plane-shaped London tower as, “the best looking building in the city but it also has the best unique features,” which include an ability to rotate in order to face the sun to heat a particular floor or heat the whole building. He intends to take the technology to the moon and open a space hotel.

“We’re looking at being the first company in the world to have a building on the moon, and we thought, if we’re going to do it let’s try and pay for it by making it a hotel, and of course a pretty good-looking hotel,” he said.

The announcement followed news that two companies have revealed plans for a series of loaf-shaped skyscrapers to accompany the Cheesegrater, Can of Ham, Toast Rack and Sir Norman Foster’s Gherkin buildings in central London.

Property developer British Land released proposals for a 240-meter tower featuring a photovoltaic crust, nicknamed “The Slice of Bread”, while bread company Warburtons has revealed a pair of twin towers, known as “The Loaf”, to sandwich Norman Foster’s Gherkin.

Asked about the timing of the announcement a Virgin representative remarked “there are no coincidences at Virgin”.

Answers to the same query put to British Land and Warburtons were unintelligible, as their representatives were busy eating lunch.

Truth or fiction? With Branson – he likes to keep us guessing.

Lead image from Virgin Buildings, last image from Deezen

The post Virgin’s Branson builds Moon Hotel – for space flight tourists? appeared first on Green Prophet.

While the souq or market is integral to Moroccan culture, they are frequently crowded and polluted as population density expands throughout the North African country. TomDavid Architecten from The Netherlands submitted a proposal as part of an international design competition for a more sustainable market square that captures and recycles rainwater and surreptitiously directs trash to underground bins.

This clever design, which features an elevated platform shaded by a leaf-shaped canopy and underground shopping, promotes greater ventilation and human circulation and fosters a more sustainable market ethos.

The winning proposal for the [AC-CA] Architectural Competition Conours d’Architecture, the Casablanca Sustainable Market Square features high quality concrete leaf canopies that are light, slim and yet perfectly strong. The interior side of the leaves are lined with shimmering gold tile that pay heed to the local culture.

Water that either pours or trickles off the canopies is harvested and stored in underground containers that supply the necessary water for the square’s plumbing or to clean the pavements.

Our favorite aspect of the design must be its innovative approach to garbage, which is increasingly a maddening problem not only in Morocco, where water ways become polluted, but throughout the region. Chutes between columns direct trash to discreet bins that are also stored underground, so that the days of overflowing above ground bins might be within reach.

The idea, according to the designers, is to encourage the local populace to cultivate new behavior. Throwing away trash and conserving water are both learned behaviors, but their approach makes them significantly easier.

:: Dezeen

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We think Egypt needs a little brightening up, and it seems that Karim Rashid agrees. The New-York based Egyptian design master presented the incredible Komb House at last year’s Le Marche exhibition in Cairo before the revolution swept the country off kilter. Karim Rashid is every bit as daring as Zaha Hadid, however, unlike the Iraqi designer who rarely takes the environment into consideration when conceiving her projects, Rashid is definitely one of the top Arab sustainable designers.

A fusion of ancient Islamic and contemporary western design principles, the house is powered by renewable energy sources, receives its heat from radiant flooring, and features the most energy efficient appliances available on the market. Step on in for more images of a home that may not look like anything like the straw bale homes we typically advocate, but which is almost equally ecologically-friendly!

All the home’s lighting is derived from energy-efficient LEDs, and all of the appliances used meet the highest demands for energy efficiency.

The Komb House is day lit by a massive skylight that serves multiple functions, including rainwater harvesting. All of the greywater is recycled, and heating is provided from radiant flooring.

Water is heated using solar power, and a kinetic art sculpture generates wind energy! While decidedly futuristic looking and maybe no as eco-friendly as a straw bale home for example, Karim Rashid’s groundbreaking home does use materials that can be easily disassembled and used elsewhere!

:: Design Dautore

More amazing green building projects on Green Prophet:

Foster & Partners Finish Gorgeous Green Building in Morocco

Micro-Financed Straw Bale Buildings in Pakistan are Earthquake Proof

Syria’s Beehive Shaped Green Architecture

The post Karim Rashid Brightens Up Cairo with the Amazing Komb House appeared first on Green Prophet.