Dual Washbasin and Cistern

now this is GOOD ECO-Design, and so simple...

Via - renest
The hand basin-dual flush toilet combination has the potential to save a lot of water (70% over an 11L single flush toilet and separate hand basin). You wash your hands with perfectly clean water straight from the same supply that runs to your kitchen sink, and what would normally run down the drain, runs into your tank and is used to flush your toilet instead.
More at Caroma

Roadsworth ...

Asphalt Glory

Bullets for Oil Any time you hear a politician utter the phrase “our way of life” replace it with the phrase “access to oil” and things start to make more sense

Dandelions

North American Footprint If you’re from Bangladesh your “eco-footprint” is about the size of…a foot. If you’re from North America it looks something like this.

Safety Pins A tribute to the human tendency to devise short term solutions for long term problems.

I like street art ... I think it's neat to walk down a street and come across a random drawing/grafitti/poster - someone obviously thought it to be a good idea to express themselves there, why? what were they thinking?

Banksy ofcourse... is a FANTASTIC artist, i love his style, his quirkiness, his irreverence, etc (if you dont know Banksy - look through his site)

But recently - I came across Roadsworth (i think a clever name) - who does quirky art on streets, sometimes using existing markings, and shadows to create.... missiles, dandelions, footprints etc. He started out to express the need for more cycle lanes... since then has been charged with 53 counts of mischief, been let off and now (with public support) continues to express himself with street art

If you go through his gallery - look at his captions. some of them are pretty interesting

(2^43,112,609) - 1

Thats the 45th prime number found having 12,978,189 digits by the Mersenne Prime Search Project.

just 2 weeks later ... the 46th number was found: 2^37,156,667 -1

BBC has a story on this - Apparently, this was a group computing project - linking computers to carry out the complex calculations...

* Mersenne primes are expressed as two to the power of P, minus one - with P being itself a prime number.

(Thats pretty amazing ...that both the power, and the result has to be a prime)

Chocolate Pencils ... not a Grate Idea :)

This seems so obvious ... why hasn't anyone else thought of it ??

The "chocolate pencils" come in a number of cocoa blends that vary in intensity, and chocophiles can use the special "pencil sharpener" that comes with the selection to shave chocolate onto their dessert.

Created by Nendo: Simple and pretty as only a Japanese can create !

This pretty much sums up how I find stuff ...

Eco-Homes - Contemporary Designs from India

Here is something closer to home...

In India, one usually associates ecological architecture with Laurie Baker. Wonderful stuff and No doubt has inspired a lot of beautiful, yet earth-friendly designs.

However, for a more contemporary feel I came across Studio Mumbai Architects - a very innovative design firm with a neat philosophy, based out of Mumbai. Some examples of their work. I like the way they work with their environment and incorporate trees, hillsides, aquifers into their designs.
I like this best though. A house made of palm-trunks, hardwood and black basalt - all available locally and set in a functioning coconut plantation.

Shin + Tomoko Azumi

I found this on the Design Museum site

a clever idea - by Shin + Tomoko Azumi

Natural History through Glass Art

Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka are a father and son team from Germany who devoted their lives to create these exquisite - lifelike creations...in the late 1800's-early 1900's

Flower collection at Natural History Museum at Harvard. Incredible that these are soo fine.
What could be finer than flowers? invertebrates... sea-creatures... diaphanous jellyfish, octopi... a Marine life aquarium also created by the Blaschka's - housed at Cornell and the Corning Glass Company

Incredible!

Rolling Bridge

Thomas Heatherwick seems to be this really interesting designer, who has an interest in all things design related - be it architecture, structures, bags, furniture

If you find yourself at Paddington Basin in London on Friday at noon - you will get to see the rolling bridge (reminds me of a scorpian's tail).

Other interesting projects - the Plank, Vents, The blue carpet

Dynamic Sculptures

I have always loved mobiles, its hard to not smile when you see a bunch of colourful shapes gently moving - they that extra something to the room - me thinks.

Mobiles and Calder (you cannot speak of one without the other) The NGA in DC has a fantastic room dedicated to Calder and his whimsical art, not to mention the giant mobile sculpture in the atrium of the East Bldg.

SO I spent endless minutes.. looking at mobiles that I could buy. There are several Calder-inspired ones such as this or this, or glass or paper... Finally - didnt buy any - just looked :)

Solar Light

This stuff seems pretty cool - both eco-friendly and extremely stylish

also check out the newspaper furniture and the mail a plant concept !

http://www.yasminsethi.com/pd/SolarLight/SolarLight1.htm

Do I really need to waste more time than I do.... writing a blog?

YES!!!

I have this thing, the moment I have a deadline - everything not related to that deadline becomes fascinating... and I will spend a good amount of time knowing every little detail of that fascinating subject.

On other days too, I end up finding some pretty interesting non-work related stuff.

This blog is more of a record for me, to look back and try and get a sense of what exactly has taken my fancy ... while I am at work