Thanks to Tel-O-Fun, now Tel Aviv urbanites with the tiniest of apartments can bike around without the storage hassle. Despite widespread announcements that it would open its city-wide bike sharing service in April, Tel Aviv’s Tel-O-Fun finally got kick started in May (but, to its credit, in a bigger way than originally intended). 150 stations […]
Explore the world's five most renowned and low-key "eco mosques" - Muslim places of worship - that are either high tech or made from mud.
Eskişehir, a center of industrial production in Turkey, is the country’s most sustainable city, according to a recent survey. When businesspeople from 29 different cities in Turkey were asked to rank their country’s provinces and cities in terms of sustainability, quality of life, social opportunities, and economic environment, the biggest cities in Turkey — Istanbul, […]
Middle East city planners take note: These seven steps to creating more efficient cities could literally save the world. Cities account for 80% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), 30% of which are generated in Canada and the United States. Both countries have massive sprawling cities, where the super-highway model reigns supreme. But […]
“The city is not the problem, but the solution,” says architect Jaime Lerner. Throughout history, philosophers have been dreaming about the utopian city. The current age is faced with environmental challenges, and so many of today’s thinkers are dreaming of the sustainable utopian city. Mayors, visionaries, academics, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers and architects will all gather […]
Exhibition in Israel brings together sustainable “contemporary cavemen” (and designers). Post Fossil, a current exhibition at the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, asks the question: how to create in a post-fossil-fueled world? As the exhibition description states, “Time has come for extreme change. Society is ready to break away from last century for good. To […]
Mr. Sawaya makes no claims about changing the world, though his design could use a touch of green blush. Born and raised in Lebanon, the Italian designer William Sawaya once admitted to admiring the famous Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. Known for defying all reason and physics, Ms. Hadid’s architecture trumps convention with boundless (and genius) […]
Commuter traffic and wasteful buildings are Tel Aviv’s biggest polluting culprits, according to City Architect of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Yoav David. As one of the events surrounding the EUREKA Israel Chairmanship this week, Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv, Asaf Zamir, and Tel Aviv City Architect Yoav David spoke to visiting European representatives about the city’s efforts […]
For the first time in history, Israeli architects who designed Tel Aviv’s Port took best design at the European Biennial of Landscape Architecture Awards. The port of Tel Aviv had been an abandoned concrete pile for years before Mayslits Kassif Architecture turned it into one of the most hopping spots in Israel’s seaside city. Every […]
Although they only received 2nd place in Turkey’s national design competition, 1/1 Architecture combines “green” with culture in this stunning design True green architecture is rarely an end in itself. Many architects creating ecologically sensitive designs with a view toward sustainability have either a political underpinning, like Omar Yousef’s work, or a social motive, like […]
Sun, wind and solar updraft, could this skyscraper be the world’s first dual power plant and residential building? It’s not easy to shine in Dubai, where architecture and design have captured all the world’s firsts: the tallest skyscraper, the largest collection of artificial islands – so large they are said to be seen from space. […]
Will Iraqi Architect Hadid Use Her Star Power to Demand More Environmental and Social Responsibility? [image via bighugelabs] Much of the news coming from Iraq is fraught with environmental and human tragedy. Water is so scarce the country has to beg from its neighbors for help, and everywhere there is destruction and war. This makes it […]
Tel Aviv highlights green buildings, spaces, construction techniques, and gardens during its annual “Houses from Within” weekend. [image via: Ykravitz] 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 […]
An Israeli bank tries to sell “green mortgages” with installation exhibit on busy boulevard. As part of their campaign to sell “green mortgages” (in other words, mortgages for homes built with environmentally friendly construction or for financing the installation of solar home energy systems), Bank Hapoalim has sponsored an exhibition of futuristic green homes along […]
A rendering of Tel Aviv’s new central promenade: stairs leading down to the beach, a paved lower level, shade-providing structures and new sidewalk and beach furniture. (image courtesy of Tel Aviv Municipality) Two years ago, Tel Aviv presented a plan to redesign its central promenade. The plan – vague, unclear and buried inside another policy […]