Israeli design team Tridom won honorable mention in NASA’s 3D Printed Habitat Challenge for their ‘Bubble Base’ building, a prototype for future human habitation on Mars. The design competition invited solutions to the “need for safe, secure and sustainable housing on earth and beyond.”  This goes beyond Hollywood set design for The Martian (shown above) or Interstellar. It’s also grounded in rapidly emerging technologies, with immediate application.

Tridom team leaders Yaron Schwarcz and Lior Aharoni, assisted by Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design architecture graduate Helen Wexler, presented a design of a flexible structure that is inflated with a small amount of liquefied natural gas once. A swarm of construction drones would cast quartz-rich, Martian sand into building blocks that would anchor the domed structure around it’s base. (See image of ‘Bubble Base’ below.) Almost all of the design teams used robots or drones for their building assembly process.

Designers had to address environmental concerns specific to Mars, such as radiation exposure and extremely high temperatures, while including fairly standard residential elements such as gardens, communal and private spaces, and a gym.

Specialists in construction robotics, Tridom has extensively researched 3D-printed sustainable housing. They are currently developing a frameless 3D printer which extrudes recycled building cement through a robotic arm, reducing labor costs and construction waste.

Shelter is one of our most basic and crucial needs, but packing materials and equipment to construct housing on a distant planet would take up valuable cargo space that could be used for other life-sustaining provisions. Ideally, habitat would be constructed from indigenous materials, combined with recycled waste – which reduces transport impacts whether the project is terrestrial or in outer space. Adding 3D manufacturing to the mix allows added flexibility, as bespoke elements of the building can be manufactured on site. 

“The future possibilities for 3-D printing are inspiring, and the technology is extremely important to deep space exploration,” said Sam Ortega, NASA program manager. “This challenge definitely raises the bar from what we are currently capable of, and we are excited to see what the maker community does with it.”

The NASA challenge, in cooperation with the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (America’s 3D Printing Institute) is a $2.25 million competition to design and build a 3D printed habitat for deep space exploration, but – like most NASA research and development – the results will also be applied to sustainable housing solutions and evolving construction technology here on Earth.

Geopolitical instability, climate change, and ballooning global population could make the mass human migration underway from the Middle East to Europe seem like a stroll along the Champs Elysee. Safety and security should be basic human rights, but clean water and adequate food are essential human needs.  The wars that will result when out taps are dry and our cupboards bare will make battles fought over religion and energy pale by comparison. Science is looking to space for solutions.

The post Israelis design 3D-printed home for NASA village on Mars! appeared first on Green Prophet.

How best to provide adequate housing when disaster strikes?  Weather-related calamity can be sudden – think earthquakes and tsunamis. It can be forewarned – as in hurricanes, floods, and droughts. And it can creep up slowly through rising sea levels and civil unrest.

In Urgent Architecture: 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World, author Bridgette Meinhold showcases 40 emergency and long-term housing projects built from conventional materials, but also from sandbags, straw bales, and re-purposed shipping containers.

Some are real, others theoretical, but each is designed to grapple with changeable environments and for fast deployment.

The LifeCube prefab deploys quickly and houses a family of four.

Gabion structures reuse the rubble left by Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake. Fragments are placed into wire baskets creating blocks to build retaining walls and earthquake-proof structures.

In Pakistan, reinforced straw bale homes are built out of regionally appropriate materials using few tools.

Built on stilts, the Porchdog House can withstand flooding.  Its structure can safely tolerate hurricane-force winds.

Millions of people lack decent housing. There’s critical need for safe, sustainable home designs that are buildable with local materials and hardy enough to withstand severe environmental conditions.  And to be realized, they need to be cheap.

Meinhold’s produced an essential resource for anyone interested in sustainable design, affordable housing, and humanitarian relief.  The book is organized into five categories: rapid shelter, transitional shelters, affordable housing, prefab housing, and adaptable housing. Examples are taken from Malibu and Milan, Bangladesh and Haiti.

The author is an American engineer and Architecture Editor for Inhabitat where she writes about green design, architecture and sustainability.

El Tiemblo is an energy-efficient residence made from four shipping containers.

Urgent Architecture: 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World, by Bridgette Meinhold, published by W.W. Norton, 2013, 256 pages, $50.

The post Bridgette Meinhold Showcases Urgent Architecture Sustainably appeared first on Green Prophet.

Tel Aviv highlights green buildings, spaces, construction techniques, and gardens during its annual “Houses from Within” weekend.

One spring weekend every year, for the past few years, Tel Aviv celebrates its architecture and invites the public to learn about the special structures that get to call the city their home.  These structures usually include architecturally significant public buildings, but also encompass architectural spaces that are generally closed to the public such as urban villas, interior designers’ lofts and open studios that open their doors and welcome the curious masses to view Houses from Within.  For the past couple of years the event has made a greater effort to highlight environmentally friendly and/or sustainable urban spaces, and this year there are more green events than ever before.

Looking for something to do this weekend?  Curious about green and the big city?  Here’s a list of some of the interesting green eco-urban and eco-architectural events happening this Friday and Saturday:

Sarah Racine Root Research Laboratory:  Professor Amram Eshel of Tel Aviv University will be offering open tours of the Botanical Gardens’ Root Research Laboratory, where roots are researched from below.  Friday 9am-3pm.

Maoz Aviv Community Garden: The garden, founded and tended to by local residents in the Maoz Aviv neighborhood, is an example of initiatives that promote community and eco-friendly living in the city.  Organic veggies and composting are part of the garden.  Friday 9am-12noon.

Making Items Out of Recycled Plastic Bags: This workshop, run by Liat Kadosh of Eccoukka, will teach kids how to make kites out of recycled plastic bags.  Suitable for children aged 3 and older.  Friday 2:30pm-6:30 pm.

Urban Sustainability in Tel Aviv: This tour, led by Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz, will highlight issues of urban sustainability in Tel Aviv’s city center.  The tour will begin in Dizengoff Square and end in London Garden.  Saturday 11am.

The “City Tree” Ecological Apartment: An interesting and beautiful historic architectural structure in its own right, the City Tree ecological apartment on Bialik Street was renovated with completely eco-friendly methods.  The apartment also features, urban compost, a raw kitchen, greywater system, and a vegetable garden.  Friday 10am-3pm, Saturday 11am-5pm.

Ecological Planning of Rothschild Boulevard: Valentina Nelin, a sustainable architecture consultant, will lead this tour of Rothschild Boulevard and how it serves as a model for problems of ventilation light and shade.  Friday 3:30 pm.

For full information about each of the above events please click the relevant link, and for a full list of events (both green and otherwise) check out the Houses from Within website.

Houses from Within is taking place May 7-8 throughout Tel Aviv.  For more information, visit the event website.

Read more about Tel Aviv’s urban sustainability::

Is Sustainability in Tel Aviv an “Urban Legend”? New Film Challenges City Planners to Think Outside the Box

The Best Way to Keep Buildings Green is Not to Build New Ones

City Tree: A Green Oasis in the Middle of Tel Aviv

The post Tel Aviv’s Annual Architectural Weekend Celebrates Urban Green Spaces appeared first on Green Prophet.

Whether to save governments billions of dollars in mutual conservation efforts or to share information about the harmful effects of meat, great things happen when people get together to achieve a common good.  Few people know this better than the co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, Cameron Sinclair.  Fresh out of college in 1999, with only $700 and a website, the 24-year-old architect and Kate Stohr joined forces to create a non-profit organization that provides “innovative solutions to housing problems all over the globe.”  Today that organization has 80 chapters in 20 countries, and can usually be found at the scene of virtually every serious natural disaster.

Architecture for Humanity “channels the resources of the global funding community to meaningful projects.” Beginning projects included mobile clinics in Sub-Saharan Africa that fight the enormous HIV/AIDS epidemic there, transitional housing for returning refugees from Kosovo, and a reconstruction effort in Bam, Iran, after a massive earthquake leveled the city in 2004.  After creating and soliciting affordable and practical designs from socially conscious designers, Architecture for Humanity then implements them.  A hands-on organization motivated by doing, rather than prattle from their couches, the group is involved with every step of the process from advocacy to construction.

They note that the United Nations needed twelve years to upgrade their emergency shelter to a flat tent, while in that time they have implemented designs as diverse as transformed shipping containers, straw bales, and edible clinics. This year they are in Haiti and Chile, and their reach and scope is expanding.  In a speech given to TEDsters, Sinclair discusses the importance of using local resources to solve local problems, since people in their own neighborhoods best understand the challenges of their specific environment.  He is only 32 years old, but is partly responsible for improving the lives of thousands of individuals.

At the end of this speech, Sinclair also expressed the wish to “develop a community that actively embraces innovative and sustainable design to improve living conditions for all.”

You can watch the video below.

TED granted this wish with the 2006 TED prize by collaborating with the creation of Open Architecture Network. This is an online community that shares ideas, designs, and plans (including full CAD files) and is the first to open-source architectural plans and drawings.  Registered members can freely download any of these files in order to address specific design problems.

The strength and scope of this community attest to the power not only of social and professional networking but also that of a group of committed individuals and their organizations.  Not limited to just architects, everyone is getting involved:  governments, non-government organizations, aid agencies, and anyone else interested in serving those populations that have the least natural and intellectual resources.  Sinclair’s mantra is “design like you give a damn.”

We think is a fine attitude to apply to Middle Eastern projects.

More on Sustainable Architecture:
The Best Way to Keep Buildings Green is Not to Build New Ones
Is Safdie’s Habitat ’67 a Viable Model for Middle Eastern Urban Housing?
Hassan Fathy is The Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture

The post Architect Cameron Sinclair Gives a Damn appeared first on Green Prophet.

With the unbearable heat of a Middle Eastern July upon us, many of us try to find ways to stay cool.  Though regular energy-guzzling air conditioning is tempting, some of us will try to relieve our consciences with more energy effecient cooling methods, such as using the cross breeze or a solar powered air conditioner.

But way before there were electronic ways to condition our temperatures, cooling methods were built into the architecture of traditional Middle Eastern homes.  Such as the beehive homes found in Syria.

Remaining beehive homes (nicknamed “beehive” because of their conical, tapered shapes) are located mainly in northern Syria – west and east of the Aleppo and along the Euphrates River.  Two towns that still have a number of these traditional beehive homes in good shape are Sarouj and Twalid Dabaghein.

The beehive homes keep the heat out in a few ways.  Their thick mud brick walls trap in the cool and keep the sun out as well (beehive homes have very few, if any, windows).  The high domes of the beehive houses also collect the hot air, moving it away from the residents sleeping at the bottom of the house.Combining natural elegance with architectural functionality, the shapes of the beehive homes keep interior temperatures between 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The beehive homes also protect their residents from cold temperatures, serving as a strong guard against powerful desert winds and maintaining a comfortable temperature.

The post Passive cooling for Syria’s beehive houses appeared first on Green Prophet.

We’ve covered Turkey’s water agreements with Iraq, along with the country’s hard line against coastline development.

Green construction in Turkey includes waste disposal systems, solar energy, and rainwater collection, Hurriyet reports:

Reghnumj’s Astrum Towers in Haramidere will also collect rainwater. A-Z Yapı’s Meritlife Kent will utilize a system where all domestic waste will be recycled. Soyak’s Mavişehir will consist of houses that reduce heat dissipation, while Milpa’s Milpa Konutları in Esenyurt will help reduce water waste by 50 percent.

Doğa Gayrımenkul will use only wood in the construction of Doğa Meşepark, while Hektaş İnşaat’s İdealist Kent project will include a system to collect rainwater.

Hurriyet adds that in financially bad times, the energy, water and other savings from eco-homes can be up to 50 percent.

I find it heartening to read about eco-friendly towers and not just homes; this leaves hope for creating truly green walkable communities that don’t depend on cars.

The post Green Building Takes Off in Turkey appeared first on Green Prophet.

We’ve all heard about hybrid energy systems for cars (because we’ve read Karen’s story about her family Prius); but now an Israeli company, Phoebus Energy, located in the coastal city of Netanya, has developed a unique hybrid heating system to produce energy more efficiently to heating and cooling large institutional buildings such as schools, hotels, hospitals and factories.

It is a computerized solution using specially designed algorithms.

As national reports suggest Israel is out for rolling blackouts this summer due to increased energy demands from air cons, a new solution really can’t come fast enough.

A relatively new company, Phoebus began operations in 2007, and initially received more than $2 million of venture capital funding from Terra Venture Partners to fully develop and produce these systems which utilize a very sophisticated set of computer algorithms to evaluate at least nine separate parameters.

They are temperature, humidity, price of oil, electricity kilowatt hourly price, user demand, etc., “which regulate which source – oil, electricity or both – should be used to generate heat and hot water,” according to the company’s CEO Yoav Ben-Yaacov.

Ben-Yaacov says that by utilizing these algorithms, large institutions can reduce their use of distilled fuel oil by as much as 60%. “Phoebus’ system takes all the factors it is programmed to check and evaluates them 24/7, providing up to the minute adjustments to the way energy is used,” says Ben-Yaacov.

He says that their system reduces environmental pollutants significantly, since more than three kilograms of pollutants are generated form each kilogram of fossil fuel burned.

He says that his computerized system reduces these pollutants by as much as 90%. “We are the only company in the world that has applied the used of advanced computer algorithms to monitor the efficiency of energy consumption,” he added.

A kibbutznick by origin, Ben-Yaacov has an MBA degree and has previously worked as a CFO for several high tech companies. “We are not in this project for the money like a lot of high tech companies are. Our system will save billions of dollars in fuel costs and will significantly reduce the amount of CO2 in the air,” he said.

According to a recent article in Globes, Israel’s chief financial newspaper, Phoebus Energy raised an additional $1 million through the Galilea Fund, a private investment fund, for use in further development of their algorithm energy system. Let’s hope they make it to the next level and inside our homes.

::Phoebus Energy

Got your engines roaring? More on Israeli clean tech and investments:
As Global Clean Tech Investing Reaches Record Levels, Another Fund Focuses on Israel. 
The Israel Conference in LA to Spark Deal Flow Between Israel Clean Tech and California
Tigo Solar Energy Secures A $10 Million Investment 
Israel Cleantech Ventures Exceeds Its Own Expectations 
Top California Investors Visit Israel’s Clean Tech Sector 

The post Phoebus Energy Shifts The "Hybrid" Idea to Home Heating and Cooling appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Green Building in Manchester’s Macintosh Village.  An Israeli version, coming soon?

Last month, the Tel Aviv municipality implemented some creative solutions to help solve Israel’s ongoing water crisis.  It appears they are not stopping there in their efforts to green the City That Never Stops.

Soon, construction will begin on Tel Aviv’s first ecological housing project!

The building will be on Akiva Eger Street, near the central bus station, and “will include smart lighting systems, recycled use of grey water (water generated from laundry and bathing) for irrigation or cooling, [and] charging stations for electric motor scooters.”

Since this project is part of the municipality’s plan to renew areas in the southern part of the city, builders receive rights more generous than those in the central and northern part of the city, and they are also permitted to build smaller apartments.  The affordable price and small size of these homes are expected to attract young people and investors.

(As if the coolness of living in an eco-friendly apartment wasn’t incentive enough.  Where can I sign up?!)

:: Ynetnews

Image: Terry Wha

More on Tel Aviv’s environmental initiatives:
Shop Vintage in Tel Aviv Because Vintage Is Green and Stylish
Tel Aviv Cafes Offer Great Cappucinos and Free Bike Rentals
Will the Tel Aviv Light Rail Ever Happen? Do We Want it To?

The post Ecological Housing Coming Soon to Tel Aviv! appeared first on Green Prophet.

Green Design – From Theory to Practice (see preview post here), a major international architectural seminar took place this week here in Jerusalem, bringing together leading experts from the worlds of architecture, design, and integrated studies.

Despite the recent war in the south, all but one of the international practitioners came, and by doing so, in a single stroke they reinvigorated Israel’s green thinking community, overcoming as one speaker noted, “our sense of collective depression.”

With early starts, through packed daytime lectures and workshops, to the last session finishing late every night, the conference, located in the big central venue at Binyanei HaUmma (or ICC), this Green Design Seminar has been a success in every way possible.

Bio-Climactic Skyscrapers

Speaking exclusively to Green Prophet, conference chairman and internationally renowned architect Ken Yeang said: “Today we are exploring the theoretical work done in this field of designing for a sustainable future, and using the range of technical solutions. I’m delighted to be back in Jerusalem, and proud to have helped to bring such an outstanding group together.”

Yeang has pioneered the passive low-energy design of buildings, dubbed ‘bioclimactic skyscrapers,’ authored several definitive guides to ecological design and particularly green skyscraper design, is a visiting professor at many worldwide universities, and modestly runs architectural practises in the UK (where he has recently designed a green extension to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital) , the US, and Malaysia.

“Green design is a bio-integration of the physical, systemic and temporal spheres,” Yeang told an audience of approximately 1,000 during the Conference’s opening address: “We must imitate ecological systems, which the human species may have destroyed or disrupted, and it should be built in that any potential green design will monitor and rectify any environmental damage.”

Biomimicry: seawater and solar

While Yeang’s buildings controversially try to use nature within them, by either incorporating planters vertically up and around the surface of the structure, and try to make links with urban wilderness that may surround them, another keynote speaker at the conference, Michael Pawlyn, gets his inspiration from nature first, using the term ‘biomimicry’ (first coined by writer Janine Beuyus), which he then applies to his design process.

He has used this most dramatically to great effect by designing the Biomes at the Eden Project in the UK. Here, in this pioneering development returning a quarry to life as the world’s largest showcase of different climate zones and biodiversity, Pawlyn and his team were inspired by dragonfly wings, and through an illustrated workshop as well as a keynote speech, Pawlyn constantly referred to elements within nature which feed into the human processes of imagination.

The turning point for his career was observing how the Nambian fog basking beetle uses its shell to attract water from the desert air at night to survive.

This sensitive exploration of processes within even the smallest eco system has led him to pioneer seawater greenhouses, that capture seawater and convert it to agricultural use.

Combining this technology with solar capturing techniques, Pawlyn is developing a Saharan Forest Project that he hopes will go some way to using the otherwise wasted potential of salt sea water and the heat of the sun, and move humans away from the ailing carbon-based economy.

Sustainable design in education

One of the most anticipated speakers was pioneering design architect Michael McDonough, who praised the building material Aerated Autoclave Concrete (or AAC for short, known here as Habel) as being the most environmentally friendly material he has worked with in 30 years of design and construction.

“This material I regard as a ‘wunderkind’, ” he announced to an audience of somewhat skeptical Israeli architects. “It is the lightest, strongest, most insulative material available, mold and mildew free, and will ensure any building has the potential to be a zero energy building (combined with the correct heating & ventilation systems). And all it is, is a combination of cement, lime, water and sand, caused to expand through the addition of aluminium powder.”

Other speakers included Israel’s own Nadav Malin, vice president and editor of ‘Building Green’ and ‘Environmental Building News’ (note to self: must get copies of those), Stefan Behnisch, Thomas Herzog, and another Brit, David Lloyd Jones, who has been at the forefront and sustainable redesigns for many schools in the UK.

To bring in local talent for his workshop, ahead of his trip to Israel, Lloyd Jones approached the Anglican School in Jerusalem and asked the students to do a sustainable redesign of their school. The students excelled in their brief, and displayed to the audience a large 3D model of their desired ‘rebuilt’ sustainable school, as well as a powerpoint walk through of it, complete with solar capture units and a gym and cafeteria powered by the (rarely) unending heat of the Jerusalem sun!

Hopefully these international students will be the sustainable architects of the future. Many thanks to the conference organisers at Yad Hanadiv (The Rothschild Foundation) and all the speakers, as well as the attendees, for a stimulating 2.5 days of green design and truly deep green collective thinking (even the conference programme was printed on recycled board).

The post Designing from Nature at Jerusalem's Green Design Seminar appeared first on Green Prophet.

Windows are one of the most significant costs in building projects or home renovations. Next to that are the bills homeowners have to pay for heating and air conditioning. Solving two problems under one roof — literally — is an Israeli company Alubin that has developed all-season reversible windows. The solution is also good for the environment.

Based on the research of Professors Evyatar Erell and Yair Etzion from the Department of Man in the Desert at Ben Gurion University, Alubin is set to commercialize a unique two-sided window that promises to absorb and keep in the heat during the winter, while reflecting the sun for a cool indoors when the hot summer months strike.

Michal Segal, marketing manager for the company tells ISRAEL21c that Alubin has a few window projects underway. The company was established over 50 years ago, but takes on new projects all the time, and “green” ones, Segal admits, are close to her heart. Currently, the company is working on installing its new reversible window solution called Seasons Windows in a house in Jerusalem, and in an American news bureau in Ramallah interested in green building.

Working with architects and agents in Israel and America, Alubin makes its new windows to order.

A green window into the mainstream

“Ecological buildings have mainly two branches. We have the people who think about building from mud and who re-use grey water,” says Segal. “But I think if you want to bring on an ecological revolution to the construction market you have to work with [the mainstream] building industry.” That’s what Alubin is doing with its new windows, which resemble traditional windows, she says.

Seasons Windows are based on a ventilated solar-screen glazing system which converts solar radiation to heat either the inside of the house, or to the outside. In winter, the special tinted and absorbing glass faces inwards allowing short wave solar radiation to pass through, while a panel of clear glass blocks outward radiation.

With the flick of a switch, the window can be manually rotated along an axel, so that the same tinted glass once pointing inwards can absorb short wave solar radiation and redirect it to the outside world in summer.

Conserves energy passively

Offering a number of energy savings solutions, the Seasons Windows, says Segal are “more complicated” and do their green work by passively conserving energy. “You can turn them around for winter or summer mode,” she tells ISRAEL21c. “They can heat a room in the winter or ventilate like an air conditioner in the summer.”

Alubin is one of the largest aluminum manufacturing plants and die makers in Israel, and is based in the industrial park in Kiriat Bialik. Founded in 1958, it was purchased in 1998 by SHL, and both companies today function as one.

Admittedly, ecological solutions are more expensive than traditional ones, but the investment over time can amount to huge savings on energy costs, says Segal. “And of course early technologies are more expensive, but over the years they will pay back just like solar panels,” she concludes.

More on green homes:
Green Prophets Start At Home: The Kitchen
Green Prophet on the Living Room
Green Prophet on the Bedroom
Green Prophets Tackle Your Wardrobe
Green Prophet Greens Your Bathroom

This article was printed with permission from ISRAEL21c. Image credit lilivanilli.

The post Alubin's All Season Windows Pivot To Save Energy appeared first on Green Prophet.