99% Air: Aeromads

This is an intriguing inflatable temporary housing structure developed by some Sci-Arc students to mull over....

For the full link:http://www.sciarc.edu/aeromads/

Terrorism and Sustainability

Given the Heathrow’s liquid bomb threat last week, here is an interesting blog on World Changing about “Why sustainability, not terrorism, should be the security focus”. In his post, Steffen argued that the climate crisis and environmental degradation we are facing is by far a much large threat to us than the occasional terrorist plots… It sounds right, but I am wondering, why we choose or allow these supposedly ineffective wars on terror that there are very few convincing evident that we are in a more secure and safer place than 5 years ago. Is it because it is easier to “fight” terror with a very clear target and we are the good guys and they are the bad guys? Is it because terrorism deals with fear, not necessarily fact or evidence? Or is it because there are no obvious evils in sustainability? Because we are all kind of guilty?

Xavier Lust

I saw this on Re. the other day. Belgian designer Xavier Lust showcased an effective way to create very sculptural and dynamic furniture at the Mode Design Brussels.

Xavier Lust’s Website

How to attract top-notch talents?

An interesting story on BusinessWeek about Patagonia, an outdoor clothing and equipment company, headquarter in California with 39 stores in 7 countries. Yvon Chouinard is the founder and chairman of Patagonia, who wrote a book called Let My People Go Surfing as a manifesto of sustainable business practice. The 1275-employee, $240 millions revenue-per-year company has a simple yet challenging mission: to produce the highest-quality products while doing the least possible harm to the environment. Are they just hollow words? How about a 2-month full pay sabbatical for employees who choose to work for environmental groups as volunteers (among other things)? The result is a highly motivated and passionate workforce who is not only in for the money but higher ideals, which in turn provides an edge in a highly competitive apparel market. Not a bad company to learn from…

Image Found

Can't find enough beautiful images on Flickr.com, by Lilian Staerck.