24 Wonderful Works of Green Art, Design and Tech

What makes art or design both amazing and green? Sustainability is a factor, but so is style - and the degree to which something is integrated with its environment. From transforming green boxes to rotating dome homes, creative eco-art to exotic eco-landscapes and dizzying tree houses to dazzling tree sculptures, here are twenty of the greatest (and strangest) works of contemporary green art, architecture and design. Click the thumbnails below for more images and information:

Unique Beach and Lake Houses

A house with a water view is a dream come true for house hunters and vacationers alike. The tranquil sound of lapping waves, the beauty of sunsets over the water, and the feeling of being in one’s own paradise retreat make beach houses and lake houses perennial favorites for everyday living and relaxing getaways. Sometimes, the proximity to the water inspires owners or architects to create homes that are truly unique masterpieces. Whether you will ever find any of these beach houses or lake houses for sale is another question entirely!

(images via: Docarmor.free.fr)

Castel Meur, also known as The House Between the Rocks or La Maison de Plougrescant, was built in 1861. It’s nestled between two natural granite pillars on the English Channel coast in Brittany, France. Those rocks and the waterside location make Castel Meur an extremely photogenic abode. The house became somewhat famous when postcards featuring a beautiful photograph of the property were sold in gift shops around the world. Unfortunately, tourists lacking respect for the residence have caused damage to the home and property, prompting the owner to prohibit commercial sale of images of the home.

(images via: e-Architect.co.uk)

This amazingly creative weekend beach getaway near Melbourne, Australia was dreamed up by McBride Charles Ryan Architects. The Australian firm based their design on the Klein bottle, a mathematical conceptual shape with no discernible interior and exterior sides. Although it sounds like an odd (not to mention impossible) concept for a home, they pulled it off brilliantly. The home’s black metal roof folds down in some places to change the shape of the home and form part of the exterior walls. The central courtyard and flexible living space make the occupants of this amazing house feel like they exist indoors and outdoors at the same time.

(images via: Robert Bruno)

Some of the most beautiful houses are the result of the owner’s direct involvement. So it is with Robert Bruno’s steel house, a creation that he’s been working on for more than three decades. The architectural sculptor began building his home near Lubbock, Texas in the mid-1970s. Today, its impressive form - part 1950s Chevy, part airplane, part sci-fi spaceship - rises tall above the surrounding landscape to give those inside a spectacular view of the nearby lake. The interior is reminiscent of a huge steel cave, filled with curves where one would expect angles.

(images via: Dome of a Home)

After a series of devastating hurricanes and tropical storms battered their home in the 1990s, Mark and Valerie Sigler decided that there must be a home design that would withstand the most severe Florida weather. Working with architect Jonathan Zimmerman, the Siglers brought their dome home to life. It’s a sturdy structure, but it also has its share of beauty and uniqueness. And if you’re ever in Pensacola Beach with $5600 a week to spare, the five-bedroom Dome of a Home is available for rent.

(images via: Daily Mail)

This spectacular piece of architecture isn’t even built yet, but that didn’t bring down its price any. It recently sold for $14.4 million to an undisclosed buyer. The eco-friendly Orchid House, built on a lake in a privately-owned Cotswold (U.K.) nature reserve, is predicted to produce more energy than it uses. The house, which was designed by Sarah Featherstone, won’t be finished until approximately 2011. If the owners ever put it up for sale one has to wonder if anyone else would pay so much for something so strange.

src:weburbanist.com

Monuments Dedicated to Great Geeks: Men of Science Past and Present

Alan Turing

English mathematician, logician and cryptographer, Alan Turing is famous for being the father of modern computer science. Turing’s greatest impact on our daily life was his work at Bletchley Park, the UK’s codebreaking centre, where he contributed to crack the Enigma code used by the Germans during World War II. It was considered decisive for defeating the Third Reich.

He also worked on the design of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) and presented a paper on 19 February 1946, which was the first complete design of a stored-program computer in the UK. Another area that Alan Turing researched and got very interested in was artificial intelligence. He proposed an experiment, the famous Turing test, an attempt to define a “sentient” computer. He thought a computer can think. Turing also helped build one of the first working computers in the world - the Mark 1 in 1949.

His memorial, situated in the Sackville Park in Manchester, England, was unveiled on June 23 (Turing’s birthday) in 2001. It faces Alan sitting on a bench with an apple in his hand. It’s the classical symbol of forbidden love and the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It also represents the way Alan Turing died : he ate a cyanide-laced apple.

Samuel Hahnemann

An advocate of homeopathic medicine (the Father of Homeopathy), Samuel Hahnemann believed patients benefited from much smaller doses of drugs than were customarily prescribed. He is also the first in the world to use the magnet therapy. Using north and south pole magnets, he prepared three medicines by exposing milk and water to the magnetic force and found that he could treat 1243 symptoms in aiding recovery of diseases. During those times most pharmacists and doctors were against his ideas, mainly because they wanted to profit from the sale and administration of drugs.

In the northwest quadrant of Washington DC, located on Scott Circle, the monument was supported by the growing homeopathic community with individuals donating as little as $0.25. It’s a curvilinear memorial that features the bronze likeness of Hahnemann in the center under a domed, glazed mosaic composed of foliage and flower of the cinchona plant.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, or shorter Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath. Though he is mainly known as a great painter and sculptor, his knowledge and skills allowed him to be one of the best scientists, mathematicians, engineers, inventors, anatomists, architects, botanists, musicians and writers in the world. Trying to envision what the future holds, Leonardo’s ideas were vastly ahead of his time. Though his concepts were not feasible back then, he was able to visually represent the way a helicopter and a tank should look, considered a calculator, solar energy, and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

Anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics all fascinated Leonardo da Vinci. Other of his inventions include musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, finned mortar shells, a steam cannon and so many more.

Traveling to Milan will most likely get you to Piazza della Scala (here’s the most famous opera house in the world, La Scala) where you can see the noble monument in marble, that was erected in 1872 to the memory of that immortal artist of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci.

Amazing Light Graffiti Artists and Photographers

Light graffiti, also known as light painting, takes what you think you know about graffiti and turns it on its head. This ephemeral approach to art and expression uses the movement of light to create incredible images and is created on the streets, in nature, and in studios by artists whose creative impulses transcend traditional media. Unlike projection bombing, light graffiti is sometimes produced as performance art, and sometimes just to capture it with photography and video, but either way it makes for some incredible viewing. These artists producing light graffiti and light painting represent some of the most amazing talent in a growing (and increasingly strange) field of art.

Alan Jaras

Alan Jaras creates his stunning images by passing streams of light through molded and textured plastic, for a ‘refracted’ effect that is unlike any other light painter’s work. Colored dyes are added to the plastic shape, and the shape is placed in front of the camera in lieu of a lens to be directly captured on 35mm film for an incredibly unique and organic result.

Toby Keller





Toby Keller of Burn Blue Photography in Design has created a series of light painting images in which the free-flowing forms of light seem to have no rhyme or reason – and they don’t have to. Keller takes what would already be beautiful nature photography and makes it seem to crackle with kinetic energy as ribbons of glowing light swirl around groups of rocks by the sea. For more great light graffiti artists check out CultCase.