Aquaponics

Fish Farms with a Side of Greens
I have always had an eye on this industry in terms of its ability to work in a closed loop...where waste becomes food and vice-versa. The "cradle to cradle" for the food industry?

" Aquaponics — a combination of aquaculture, or fish cultivation, and hydroponics, or water-based planting — utilizes a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn filter the water in which the fish live. Cuttings from plant are composted to create food for worms, which provide food for the fish, completing the cycle."

Masdar: Progress report

Great progress report from "Critic's Notebook" on the opening of Masdar...the first buildings.

Ouroussoff states:
"...What Masdar really represents, in fact, is the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance...

...This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a self-sufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens."

Well said...

City Grid as Canvas

"...Over the last four years hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have walked by or on top of the orange lines have unwittingly passed what is possibly the biggest graffiti tag in the world. The tag, which is so vast that all parts of it cannot be viewed simultaneously, was created in 2006 by an artist known as Momo and consists of a paint line that he said runs about eight miles long and spells out his name.
It runs from the East River to the Hudson River and extends north to 14th Street and south to Grand Street. The line runs over curbstones and subway grates and zigzags around lampposts and manhole covers. Its route begins at the edge of a West Side pier and ends after crossing a footbridge over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive..."

Wheeels

Interview with Wheeels creaters, David Mahfouda and Alex Pasternack.

"Transit, and the hard infrastructure that undergirds it, is a system that could obviously benefit from greater efficiency and less waste. But it was the less tangible infrastructure of the Internet that led to her eureka moment, ten years ago: “This is what the Internet was made for, sharing a scare resource among many people.”...

Small Scale, Big Change

New Show opening at the MOMA...NYC
"...This exhibition presents eleven architectural projects on five continents that respond to localized needs in underserved communities. These innovative designs signal a renewed sense of commitment, shared by many of today’s practitioners, to the social responsibilities of architecture...."