Prinzessinnengarten

Urban agriculture can mean a lot for a city population. Not only can it provide local food, but it can also create a social landscape in a city.

And Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin does exactly that. Since 2009, a collective called "Nomadic Green" rents a 6000 sqm plot at the Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg. The site has been a wasteland for about 50 years, but with relatively small means it has been transformed in an idyllic urban garden. Not only do locals maintain the garden themselves - thus creating a stronger sense of community in a relatively socially weak area of the city - but it also produces local (healthy and organic) food. Even more so: at Prinzessinnengarten, they strive towards a larger biodiversity. They try to cultivate rare species of plants.



Since the site is only rented, it cannot be a permanent garden. So most of the vegetables are planted in old crates from bakeries, or in large bags. In case the rent is ended (for whatever reason), most of the Prinzessinnengarten could be easily transported to another site. Other than that, by doing so, one doesn't depend on the local soil, since it might not be in the best condition after being wasteland for such a long period of time.



But besides the plants, the food and the greens, the community aspect of the project is quite important. It gives the locals a place to work on food production together, it is a place to educate kids about food, a place to eat together, a place to hang out in a green spot amidst all the concrete and a place that ties extremely different people together. And the idea seems so simple (albeit difficult to actually do, I assume).

Prinzessinnengarten is launched as a pilot project by Nomadic Green, so let's hope that there are many more projects to follow. By them, but also by people that are inspired by their acts.

Without the hot air

There's no denying it: sustainability is a hot topic. And, as most sane people would agree, rightfully so. But there is little agreement on what the right measures would be to deal with our current climate crisis (which would be more aply be labelled as a "energy crisis", in my opinion, but that's a whole different subject).

The current trend in sustainability seems to be based on the adagium "every little bit helps", combined with "fake it until you make it". Every little bit is made to sound large, by using numbers that to many a laymen sound vast, blurring the discussion with fake facts and unclear figures.

That's where David MacKay, professor at Cambridge University's department of physics steps in. His main argument is that there should be a clear measure for energy consumption. His basic concept is very clear, as could be seen in this quote "We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use; we need to decide how much energy we would like to use in the future; and we need to choose where we will get that energy from."
Ok, it sounds simple, but how? For him, the starting point is starting to measure everything in a single unit. In the case of energy, of course, Kilowatt-hour: a measure that most people know from daily use.

To give some examples: One kilowatt-hour (1 kWh) is the electrical energy used by leaving a 40 watt bulb on for 24 hours. Or driving an average European car 50km uses 40kWh of fuel. In total, the british lifestyle allegedly uses approximately 125 kWh a day.

Good. Once the basic units and a reference point are established, it's time to see how actual measures add up.
The first example is simple: switching off phone chargers when not in use. It's included in lists of "things to do to go green" all around the world, and sounds like a sensible idea. The truth is that leaving a phone charger switched on uses about 0.01kWh per day – 100th of the power consumed by a lightbulb. Or better yet: switching off a phone charger for an entire day is the equivalent of driving a car for about 1 second!
This being said, it's not that switching off phone chargers is a bad idea. Just note that it's only a tiny bit of improvement. So in this case a tiny bit only helps a tiny bit...

Another example: think about vehicles. Most people consider hydrogen cars one of the sane solutions - they certainly have a "green" feel to them. The odd thing is, that if you really measure it, most prototype hydrogen-powered vehicles use more energy than the fossil-fuel vehicles they replace. The average fossil car in Britain uses 80 kWh per 100 km, the BMW Hydrogen 7 uses 254 kWh per 100 km.
Electric cars, is a different story alltogether: Even if the electricity for electric vehicles comes from traditional fossil-fuel power stations, electric cars are still more efficient than petrol cars; and if in the future we switch over the nation's electricity production from fossil fuels to greener sources, then electric vehicles will win by a mile.

And now the big question: how can we use more (preferably only) renewable energy sources? "As a thought experiment, let's imagine that technology switches and lifestyle changes manage to halve British energy consumption to 60kWh per day per person. How big would the wind, nuclear, and solar facilities need to be to supply this halved consumption? Here is the scale that is required if (for simplicity) we wanted to get one-third from each of these sources: we would have to build wind farms with an area equal to the area of Wales; we would have to build 50 Sizewells of nuclear power; and we would need solar power stations in deserts covering an area twice the size of Greater London."

The interesting thing about the argument David MacKay brings across isn't about solutions, it's about measuring. About carefully looking at actual effects, and cutting away all the hot air surrounding sustainable arguments.
This is uncomfortable for anybody who's making money spreading half-truths about green issues (or green-washing unecological ideas).

He put forth his ideas in a book, aptly called "without the hot air". The cool thing is that the entire book is available as a PDF from (t)his website. It's worth your time, because he delivers a refreshing take on sustainability and energy consumption, and gives an insight that is mostly left out of the equation. There's no politics in this book, only arthmatics. And that's definitely wise for such a widely used and misused theme.

Web ecoist

Sustainability issues seem to be revolving around the same principles: material reduction, emission reduction, energy consumption reduction - all thrown in a mix with some tried and tested technical feats.

And that's what I like so much about the website webecoist.com: they focus a bit on the other side of green design and sustainable living: the sustainable oddities, small initiatives and green luxories.
There are loads of things to discover on that website, from failed eco-innovations to mud and dirt buildings; and from alternative fuels to a list of green weblogs.

The image above is a picture of an ancient Persian windmill, which can also be found on webecoist.com, by the way.

The complex history of sustainability

After all is said and done, a lot has been said about sustainability. Almost every single designer claims to be "sustainable" - even though it doesn't extend beyond the "green" image in many pieces of architecture. Exactly the complex matter of sustainability, the many face it entails, the rich history of ideologies - this all seems to be swept away in a storm of sexy wind turbines, spectacular photovoltaic cells and a strategically placed comment about the cradle to cradle principles inherent in the design process.

But there's so much more than this contemporary - relatively superficial - approach to sustainability. This inspired Amir Djalali, with Piet Vollaard, to compile "The complex history of sustainability". Originally, it was intended for a publication in "Volume #18 - After Zero" only, but the timeline has been transformed into an interactive website, based on a mash-up of the google earth software by CASA.

On this web-interface, on can browse through the history of sustainability. Sure, one might doubt some of the -isms as used. And the selective nature of the people captured in this timeline. And the speculative connections between peoples and issues.
But all in all, it gives a nice insight in the complexities and contradictions within the single term "sustainability". From the 18th century romantics, the eco-anarchists and the global warming denialists to bio-mimicry, cybernetics and nazi eugenetics, all is portrayed in this timeline. Linked to the key figures on every stage. As a nice bonus, books, movies, games and architectural projects are added on the time-line.
It might not all be 100% accurate and complete, but at least it doesn't simplify the true meaning(s) of sustainability.

A house in the garden

Green facades are by no means a new feature in architecture. Over the last couple of years, they have been popping up everywhere, largely due to the highly influential projects of Patrick Blanc. And even though the most remarkable feature of this private laboratory in Paris is, in fact, a green facade. But R&Sie(n) took a slightly different approach with their greenery.

Normally, the "green" of a green facade is attached directly to the facade itself. In this case, the architects put a facade of 1200 ferns on the outside of the building, with some space in between. This has some advantages as far as the growth of plants goes, I presume, but the main advantage is architectural. The facade material (the ferns, in this case) can be placed in front of windows, thus completely camouflaging the building behind the plants. Because of the space between the window and the green facade, there is also a pleasant effect from the interior.



To get the (diffuse) light into the laboratory, a cunning system of blown glass beakers is used. By strategically placing these in between the ferns, light can be reflected to intrude into the building. That's not the only purpose of the beakers, however: rain water is collected in them, and they are used to grow the ferns soil-less. And the combination of these hand-crafted pieces of grass with the lucious green ferns works like a charm: both from the exterior as for the interior. Inside the laboratory, you don't have the experience of being enclosed in a Parisian court, but it gives you the experience of being enclosed in your private little hideway in nature. And the neighbors don't look upon yet another extension of the existing building block, but they see a lovely (albeit slightly wild) green garden. That's a win-win situation, isn't it?



I found this project on arch daily.

Sustainable Cities

There is already a lot being said about sustainability. The thing for designers is that sustainability touches every single aspect of their design. It's not just clean energy, or eco-friendly materials, or ways of dealing with waste - but it's all that, plus several other issues. And if a designer is trying to put sustainable thought into action in his design, it's important to keep an overview of all the issues at stake.

the Danish website sustainablecities.dk is thus a very noble initiative in my eyes: it's a platform for all kinds of sustainable issues in thinking about cities and making cities. It displays cases and topics of all sorts, lists experts, gives way to various discussions. The content of the website is clearly in a development phase, but the initiative is clearly worth everbody's attention - if you are even remotely concerned with sustainability issues, that is.

The piezo bridge

This is the Sakura bridge, in Tokyo. It's part of the Shuto expressway, which is running straight through the city. As everybody who lives near a busy road knows: loads of traffic creates a lot of noise, a lot of dirt and... a lot of vibrations. All of these things can be considered a nuisance. But in Tokyo the decided to turn things around, and use one of these nuisances for to create a beneficial situation. They made use of Piezo electricity. The principle is that certain materials (i.e. specific ceramics and chrystals) produce an electrical current when mechanical pressure is applied. And the vibrations of the traffic do just that: they produce a continuously changing mechanical pressure. This leads to electricity that is being produced. This way, the bridge supplies the energy that is needed for the illumination of the bridge.

I'm well aware that this is just taking the ineffectiveness of the combustion engine and create something worthwile with excess energy, but still it is a fascinating idea to begin with.