posts about sustainability issues
I’ve just finished reading one of the most important books of our time; on the planet, climate change, the economy and the plight of humankind, so I’m going to review it here. This should be at the top of everyone’s reading list if you want to understand what is happening to us at this moment
I gave a talk last week on Internal Bio-Systems for buildings, to eFIG, the European Federation of Interiors Group (http://www.efig.eu.com/) which was reported on swiftly by Horticulture Week . They picked up on my use of the phrase “war-footing” for the kind of response levels needed to deal with the issues at hand. Why? Well,
Went around 100% Design show at Earl’s Court recently, looking for design trends in interior furnishings. I’m developing a new mobile green wall system so want the units to fit with where people are at in interior style. Having said that, I want a design that is timeless and doesn’t merely follow a transient trend.
Had an embryonic (ie very young) salad wall at a show called “the Future of Retail” aka “Everything must go?” (it seemed to have two names) in Shoreditch, run by the Marketing Store, to look at the next 25 years of retail. They figured that hydroponics and aquaponics would play a big part in future
I’ve just put up a revamped article on vertical hydroponics http://www.marklaurence.com/articles/vertical_hydroponics.html which I first published on the Biotecture website. I put it here because it’s relevant – even accounting for commercial bias – to the understanding of urban greening. Actually, it’s not biased; my trialling and efforts simply showed that hydroponics work better, are more
I have three events at which I am speaking during the next two months, with a couple of other possibilities under discussion. Talks revolve around aspects of vertical greening for urban sustainability; for more info, see http://www.marklaurence.com/events.html
I have this concept going on in my mind (first wrote about it in 2007) about the exterior surface of buildings being like a living membrane or “biomembrane” (a term for the exterior surface of a cell), and having direct interactions between the internal and external building space, regulating such things as temperature, humidity, air
I recently spend some time in Dubai on business, looking to put green walls up there on a big scale. It’s a crazy place, I’d guess rivalled by few cities in the world for sheer extravagance (Los Vegas perhaps), and by none in the world for the speed of its emergence – 20 years ago
I’ve just posted up an article on edible landscapes, which originally appeared on my old site, thedesignodgardens.com. I want to gradually update and re-write some of my better stuff from there, so this is a start and an important one, for it shows the direct link between gardens and sustainability – that S word… you
Yesterday I introduced my fedge and polytunnel. Well, the first of these might be new to you; it’s a conservation term, used to describe an artificial hedge made from brushwood cuttings. I have quite a few willow in the garden which hadn’t been pollarded for a few years, so when I did them in March