Pallets No Longer Good For Just Shipping… Or Making Huge Fires

For this year’s Architecture Triennale, there will be an exhibition that focuses on humanitarian housing solutions. Ten architects have been chosen to design and build full-scale prototypes to be showcased. A few of the participating architects include Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, and I-Beam Design. I-Beam Design has their Pallet House that they will be showing in the exhibition. Pallets are found in most countries nowadays and make for cheap, available building materials. This house took one week to build and furnish. Homes like this show that there are quick, affordable ways to provide housing for poverty stricken areas that allow easy manipulation and customization.

The Pallet House

16 Green Home Products and Projects

Popular Mechanics has put together their 2008 list of 16 sustainable home products and projects. They give very reliable reviews of some of the newest green products on the market which are helpful for people looking to make quick and easy changes for a more sustainable home environment.

The Best of Green Design: 2008

Glow In the Dark Gravel

We all know that when the power goes out, we look for the emergency backup lighting to guide us out of the dark. These lights that draw power from a backup energy source could be replaced by glowing gravel in some buildings which would free up power to be used on other emergency facilities. Glowing gravel can be arranged in any shape to produce an image, sign, text, etc… S. Lovenstein BV, located in Gelderland of the Netherlands, is marketing the product as a “hidden saftey”.

Product page via Transmaterial