Photography by Ulrika Krynitz

It’s been great to see a growing number of eco-lodges offering a more sustainable holiday alternative surface over the last years. As much as they all deserve recognition for their environmental awareness it’s hard not to get excited when stumbling upon one with that little bit of extra. One like The Wood Hermitage, located in the leafy Holaved forest in the south of Sweden. The Hermitage — surrounded by lakes and the mountain Omberg — has welcomed guests to its spartan facilities since May 2007. Offering simple luxury, the lodge mixes traditional Swedish craftsmanship with Japanese-influenced interior design. The small handcrafted wooden huts and cabins — some of them with grass covered roofs — work in harmony with the surrounding environment. All houses except for the main cabin were built using trees felled by the storms Gudrun and Per in 2005 and 2006. The use of electricity is sparse — there is only enough for running a single 15W light bulb in the kitchen and the solar panel in the bathing house. Both the sauna and the wooden bathtub are wood-fired. On top of such a cozy living space, The Wood Hermitage also embraces the local food trend, with all the food coming from their own garden or nearby farmers.

Image courtesy of Kevin Cyr

These days, it seems there’s a new eco-invention every week. Maybe you’ve already heard of the solar-powered eco-camper, the vegetable oil-fueled bio-Trekker , or even the Emergency Response Studio. If you have, then there’s no need telling you that the RV no longer has to be that gas guzzler antipode of sustainable travel that it used to. If not – well, now you know. And there’s even more….
     Boston-based artist Kevin Cyr has created another type of green RV: the Camper Bike. Secured on a steady three-wheeler the camper is a human-driven sustainable RV that can be taken for a ride by a single pedaler. The inside is still under construction but once finished the Camper Bike will be equipped with the most necessary amenities for a few days on the road, making it a neat alternative holiday house — that is, if you don’t mind traveling solo. On his website Cyr describes the camper as a sculptural art piece, even if it is fully functioning. As such there might be little luck in wishing for one of your own anytime soon. But who knows, if Cyr gets a good response maybe he’ll put the camper into production.

There are some inspirational, off-beat composers out there. Namely the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra — playing on carrot-flutes and radish-marimbas — and Joseph Bertolozzi, who turned the entire Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge into a gigantic percussion instrument. And then there was David Byrne’s installation last year, Playing the Building. Most recently, composer and sound designer Diego Stocco appeared on our radar. With an eminently creative mind, Stocco builds music out of ingenious objects like sand and burning pianos. For his latest project he turned to a sprawling old tree in his own backyard.
     “In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs,” he writes on his website. “It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.”
     It turns out he could, so he did, and with no other means than a pencil sharpener, two microphones, and a customized stethoscope he made a track simply by thumbing and shaking the tree. The pencil sharpener was used to trim the twigs so that Stocco could tune them. Connected to a plastic pipe on one end and a microphone on the other, the stethoscope then transmitted the sounds Stocco created. The final version of the track has not been processed or digitally edited in any way. “All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on,” Stocco explains.

As we reported previously, a number of companies and consortiums are exploring the idea of urban, “vertical” farms – entire ecosystems of agricultural production contained in modern buildings right in the middle of the world’s busiest cities. Besides looking really cool, these agricultural factories have ingenious production cycles, capturing sunlight, rain, and wind as well as having floor-to-floor crop plans that increase efficiency and crop yield, and maximize resources.
     Many argue, and certainly the companies behind these “farms” do, that the world’s increasing population needs new solutions for future agriculture. With 80 percent of the world’s arable land already in use, the idea is to build up instead of out — and keep the distribution of food local — an approach that has led a growing number of vertical farm projects to surface. The verdict is still out as to whether these projects are truly as viable and environmentally sound as they claim. Much research and analysis will still need to be done, especially by qualified third parties. But for now we marvel at the inventiveness of the various plans we see springing up.

Photography Courtesy of Bowery Lane Bicycles

Ah, nothing to fill you with that enticing feeling of freedom like cruising your bike down the block on a grand summer’s day. The wind in your hair, sun in your face, and your fellow commuters’ envious gaze on your exquisite new ride. Because really, what other way to ride a bike than with impeccable style? The people behind Bowery Lane Bicycles, a New York-based family company, have the right idea — and they’re performing it with great finesse.
     The retro-style Bowery Lane bikes are handmade in New York out of American steel. The two-wheelers are available in three styles, all of which are locally handcrafted and manufactured and made with eco-friendly parts such as sustainable cork grips. The Broncks Black — the company’s flagship, inspired by a Dutch original — is even made with renewable solar energy, bringing together traditional craftsmanship and sustainable technology. The company was founded with the goal to make affordable bikes that have more to offer than flair and timeless beauty (as if that wouldn’t be enough) and they sure deliver what they set out to do.

Images by Joyce van den Berg

Today, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, much of the former border between the East and West is still a no man’s land. A painful reminder of times past, the barren strip of land lies untouched, as though someone witnessed something horrible there and swore to never speak of it again.
     Inspired to change this, landscape artist Joyce van den Berg set up the exhibition New Light on No Man’s Land, currently on display at the German Center for Architecture (DAZ) in Berlin. The exhibition shows precisely where the restricted area used to be and how it has changed, and proposes to transform the “landscape of trauma” into a dynamic and organic recreation area.
     Van den Berg wants to construct two bicycling tracks and reseed the ground so that new plants can grow where there is now little else but sand and gravel. The sandy terrain used to be regularly flattened in order to make it easier for the border guards to spot the fresh footprints of East Berliners fleeing to the West.

First was the Tesla – an electric dream car taking you from zero to sixty in four seconds with a range of 220 miles per charge, bringing environmental responsibility and high-performance sports cars together in perfect harmony. Of course, its one drawback is its price tag, affordable only to the super rich.
     Enter the Zero, straight out of the land of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati. Named for its lack of greenhouse emissions, the name might also be a hint at its accessible cost. The newcomer isn’t able to go as fast or as far as its competition but the Zero brings something much-needed to the world of electric cars: affordability. Its €18-20.000 price tag makes it a realistic option for the average driver, beating the much-anticipated Chevy Volt to the punch by a solid year. And the cute compact design makes it the Mini-Cooper of electric cars. Let’s hope consumers will find it as irresistible as we do.
     Hitting markets early next year, the 113-inch two-seater will be a perfect for cramped city streets. Constructed primarily out of cast aluminum, it weighs merely 1,200 pounds, one quarter of which is the latest generation of Lithium batteries. It charges simply by connecting to a normal socket. The chassis is one hundred percent recyclable aluminum. With a range of eighty-eight miles on a single charge, it is well within the average daily usage of most drivers, and can accelerate from zero to fifty-five km per hour in less than five seconds.
     The Zero will have its world premiere at the International Motor Show in Bologna, Italy, in December.

Interesting things are happening in the south of Senegal a few miles northwest of Dakar. Edouard François, the architect known for his innovative green establishments, is rebuilding the old Les Almadies Club Med creating a sustainable holidaymakers paradise.
     The 250 rooms – made of clay, wheat and wood – are perhaps best described as wooden bird’s nests, or cocoons, as they rest above ground elevated by poles. The location of the resort is stunning with the North Atlantic Ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other. To provide the guests with a full view, each of the rooms have 360-degree windows.
“In our daily life we normally only have windows facing one way, maybe two, but never all the way round. A 360-degree view means that you are free”, he says.
     François has become known as one of the entrepreneurs of green architecture and the new Club Med is no exception.
     “With this place I want to do something that is very poetic and unusual and that also deals with ecology. We have a very high level of ecological ambition for the project and are aiming to become self-sufficient.”