How cool looking is this new green-roofed apartment building in Amsterdam?

More info and photos here.

(via)

Great signage for Vancouver’s Olympic transit line. From an interesting interview with the city’s planning director on preparing for the Olympics and beyond:

All of our facilities are readily convertible into civic and community uses. We know how our facilities are going to be used the day after the Olympics are done, essentially. And they’re all part of making our livable city even more livable.

Behold, the home of the future. This model of sustainable living is currently on display in downtown Vancouver. Made from two shipping containers and wrapped in cedar and pine beetle wood, the home features local and recycled materials, energy-efficient appliances, solar panels, and a green wall on the exterior that shows how you could insulate the structure from hot and cold temperatures.

Via Jetson Green:

Perhaps the size of the home alone is a good signal of the form shelter will take in years to come.  It’s a mere 680 square feet, which is quite different from the average home of today.

More info on the home at BC Hydro

I’m pretty in love with the concept of IdeaPaint, which you can use to turn any paintable surface into a dry-erase board. I’m not sure why this hasn’t existed for years already, but it’s good to see that it’s out there now. It looks like it takes a bit of time to install, but it’s half the cost of a whiteboard, better-performing, more environmentally-friendly, and you can fill your entire wall with it.

Has anyone used IdeaPaint yet?

(via)

What a Green Job Looks Like

A huge amount of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy used in buildings and homes. Weatherizing can reduce environmental impact and lower energy bills—while creating new jobs in the process. Everyone wins.

(via)

The guys over at Portland design shop Parliament have built themselves one hell of a workspace. From the looks of things, much of it was hand-built using reclaimed materials and accented with vintage design artifacts. I bet it even has that nice smell of freshly cut wood.

(via)

Sustainability expert Alex Steffen of Worldchanging gave a two-night presentation in Seattle just before heading off to the Copenhagen climate summit. In the talks, he laid out exactly where we came from as a society and where we’re headed. According to Steffen, we’re pretty much toast unless we immediately begin rebuilding our cities. He calls out the lesser steps towards sustainability (electric cars, CFLs, etc) as insufficient distractions and instead focuses on urban living as a crucial element to maintaining a livable civilization. Denser, more walkable, and more fun!

In his talks, Steffen challenged Seattle to become North America’s first carbon-neutral city by 2030, saying nothing less is good enough. Putting things in those terms immediately raises a number of questions… What would a carbon neutral city look like? What role do designers have in making that happen? What might a campaign look like to achieve such a thing?

Listening to Steffen speak is truly enlightening. I highly recommend that you begin watching The Seattle Talks immediately. As if your future depends on it.

Andrew Pattison, doctoral student in the sustainable urban infrastructure program at the University of Colorado, Denver

It’s a new year, how about a new desktop wallpaper? You could do a lot worse than this one by illustrator John Fan, which can be grabbed in various sizes at Kitsune Noir.

To me, the guy here looks like an urban planner thinking about how to build a better city. You can stare at it and think about all the cool things you’ll do in 2010 to be part of designing something positive in your community.

The New York Times Magazine has a great new feature full of interesting little write-ups on the best innovations of 2009. Titled The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas, all of it is really well-designed and illustrated, just as online information should be (but rarely is). You can navigate through the ideas alphabetically or with handy tags & icons in Business, Design, Natural Science, Technology, etc.

One example of a good idea is The Cul-de-Sac Ban:

Virginia expects the new rules to relieve its strained infrastructure budget: through streets are more efficient and cheaper to maintain, and they take pressure off arterial roads that otherwise need to be widened.