It has been a while since i last posted something. I`m sorry for the absence but i was visiting Portugal for one week and it involved quite a bit of time consumption...



BMW's Idea: Pioneering a carbon-free future

BMW has a history of not just being a pioneer in car technologies but also thinking ahead into the future. That is why in terms of a long term vision BMW has invested in a 20-year R&D project to develop sustainable transportation for a post-carbon world. Their proposed solution: Hydrogen. It's a plentiful resource. And the exhaust produced by a hydrogen engine is 99% water. It's not an uncomplicated solution. But provided we can figure out how to extract it from water cheaply, manufacture it efficiently, and build out the infrastructure of hydrogen fueling stations that will make deployment practical, it could be viable.

As a first step toward making this a reality, BMW developed the Hydrogen 7, which runs on gasoline and liquid hydrogen. It's not an end solution, but a manufacturable proof-of-concept. One they wanted the world's influencers to see up close and try for themselves.

But BMW does not stop here. In keeping with their pioneering spirit BMW launched Club of Pioneers (be sure to check it out, it`s worth an insightfull peek), an open dialogue platform all about future mobility - encouraging people to discuss, share and spread their ideas and visions on sustainable concepts.



GINA stands for "Geometry and Functions in 'N' Adaptations", which basically means that designers from both BMW and BMW Group DesignworksUSA were allowed to throw out the rulebook. This is most evident in the GINA Light Visionary Model's outer skin, which is made entirely out of textile fabric that's pulled taut around a frame of metal and carbon fiber wires. The skeleton of the car is controlled by electro-hydraulic devices and can actually move and change shape beneath the fabric skin. For instance, the headlights of the concept can be exposed or hidden by the car's skin just like blinking eyes, and the hood opens from the center as the fabric parts to expose the engine. This idea extends to the interior, where BMW designers have made visible only those instruments that are required at a certain time, while the rest of the time the same fabric interior "blinks" them out of view. The car itself looks somewhat like a Z4 Roadster, though after viewing the extensive gallery of high-res images below, you'll be amazed how much the outer skin looks like normal sheetmetal. Until, that is, you see how the doors open. They lift up in a semi-scissor fashion and since there are no exposed hinges, the fabric artfully binds up as the door swings open. While the design of the GINA Light Visionary Model is very Bangle-esque with concave and convex surfaces intermingling everywhere you look, it looks appropriate and natural here. The car is very much a concept, meant more to inspire BMW's own designers and engineers rather than excite the public, but now we're excited about shape-changin, fabric-covered cars, anyway.

BMW at TED2007: From top to bottom: Test driving the Hydrogen 7; Dr. Frank Ochmann, BMW's VP of Clean Energy, discusses hydrogen at a special lunch; The Hydrogen 7 in the conference Simulcast Lounge.

Larry Burns: Reinventing the car


It's always interesting to take a peek at the TED website.

Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Cameron Sinclair demonstrates how passionate designers and architects can respond to world housing crises. He unveils his TED Prize wish for a network to improve global living standards through collaborative design.

Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green, beautiful and "basically pollution-free." From the 2007 DLD Conference, Munich; www.dld-conference.com

William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle



Green-minded architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "all children, all species, for all time...
Architect William McDonough believes that green design can prevent environmental disaster -- while also driving economic growth. He champions “cradle to cradle” design that considers the full life cycle of a product, from its creation with sustainable materials to a recycled afterlife.

Architect William McDonough practices green architecture on a massive scale. In a 20-year project, he is redesigning Ford's city-sized River Rouge truck plant and turning it into the Rust Belt's eco-poster child, with the world's largest "living roof" for reclaiming storm runoff. He has created buildings that produce more energy and clean water than they use. Oh, and he's designing seven entirely new and entirely green cities in China.

Bottom-line economic benefits are another specialty of McDonough's practice. A tireless proponent of the idea that absolute sustainability and economic success can go hand-in-hand, he’s designed buildings for the Gap, Nike and Frito-Lay that have lowered corporate utility bills by capturing daylight for lighting, using natural ventilation instead of AC, and heating with solar or geothermal energy. They're also simply nicer places to work, surrounded by natural landscaping that gives back to the biosphere.

In 2002 he co-wrote Cradle to Cradle, which proposes that designers think as much about what happens at the end of a product’s life cycle as they do about its beginning. (The book itself is printed on recyclable plastic.) From this, he is developing the Cradle to Cradle community, where like-minded designers and businesspeople can grow the idea. He has been awarded three times by the US governemt, and Time magazine called him a Hero of the Planet in 1999.
"His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that -- in demonstrable and practical ways -- is changing the design of the world."
Time



This is personally one of my favourite talks from the TED community and it hints (if not, shows) the change that the architectural world is currently undertaking.