If you read our enlightening “how to switch to LED bulbs” tutorial, you’ve hopefully already seen how much money and energy you can save by replacing your incandescent bulbs, but we wanted to make it even clearer how easy and effective a home light bulb makeover can be. We headed over to Brooklyn to give a light bulb overhaul to the managing editor of Inhabitots, our very own Julie Seguss! Julie is going to be a new mom in just a few months, so saving money is of the utmost importance right now, but she still wanted to keep her Park Slope home illuminated with a warm, bright glow. In just a few hours, the Inhabitat lighting makeover crew (aka Inhabitat editors Jill & Yuka) were able to swap out all of Julie’s electricity-guzzling incandescents and halogens with energy-efficient Philips LEDs, and we think you’ll be impressed with the monthly savings we tallied up for Julie at the end of the day. Check out our video above to see the whole makeover, and find out how much extra cash Julie and her husband will have after the makeover to spend on diapers and baby clothes!
Avocados are one of the wonderful fruits of summer. High in nutrition and flavor, nothing signals the start of summer like a zesty lime guacamole dip with tortilla chips. The next time you’re making guacamole or slicing an avocado for a salad, try saving your pits to grow into avocado trees. It’s surprisingly easy to grow your own avocado tree from seed, and it makes a great educational project for home and classrooms. Check out our handy-dandy guide below, complete with photos, to learn how to grow an avocado tree from seed.
By now, we hope that most of you know that swapping incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs saves money and energy, but there’s still a lingering misconception that LED bulbs emit a cold, bluish light that is just not as warm or attractive as the old filament-filled bulbs we grew up with. To dispel this fallacy, we sought out a group of people with a critical eye for light bulb color and ambiance – lighting designers on the show floor of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at New York Design Week. These meticulous designers take light warmth and quality very seriously (that is their job after all), so we couldn’t think of anyone better suited to give an honest opinion about the latest generation of high-tech LED light bulbs. Watch our video above to see how we retrofitted five gorgeous designer lamps with new Philips LED light bulbs – and in the process saved $1,732.86 in energy costs and won over some designer converts to the future of LED lighting.
Bloot Architecture recently collaborated with mypizzaoven.nl to develop a kiosk-like temporary pizza buffet that comes complete with a built-in greenhouse. The design is fully sustainable; you can cook without electricity and grow your own toppings for the pizza. When the kiosk is closed, the building works as an elevated greenhouse. When it is opened the plastic greenhouse slides up and the sides of the building turn into a bar filled with ingredients for pizza, like tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and herbs. The pop-up project is set to be constructed in Hoofdorp, the Netherlands, and it won a Dutch architecture competition organized by Podium Voor Architectuur for De Dag van de Architectuur (National day of Architecture).
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Soon there will be a day when you’ll be able to jump in your car, turn it on and let it do driving for you. Ford’s new Traffic Jam Assist technology is a step in that direction – it uses radar and camera technology to help a vehicle keep pace with other vehicles in traffic and provide automated steering control to stay in the current lane, reducing driver stress and potentially improving vehicle flow.
Sandbags aren’t an obvious choice when it comes to furniture, but these unlikely cushions get a colorful redesign by Antenna Design. Created for an installation called SPECTRE, and located in a cell of a former Torino, Italy prison, the bags were covered in soft felt cases and stacked up like furniture for visitors to interact with and enjoy.
For all the times you’ve thrown out beer bottles by the dozens, Patrick Lehoux has designed Kinkajou, a bottle cutter that can easily turn all those empty bottles into a set of really cool drinking glasses. Named after a small South American mammal with big teeth, the Kinkajou, unlike the other bulky glass cutters, is streamlined, intuitive and easy to store in the kitchen!
Danish design and development team Urbanbotics has created a series of urban lights called ORBs that look like glowing underwater jellyfish! Designed for marinas, water fronts, lakes, river banks,
These quirky dinosaur planters become a brilliant way of combining gardening with an imaginative prehistoric creature. Spotted at this year’s Dwell on Design, the clever decorative plant pots
The Miami Science Museum is seeking a qualified design firm to provide expertise and design services for the ‘Flexible Exhibit Furniture System Design‘ for the new $275-million Miami Science
These scaly public restrooms in New Zealand look like giant sea monsters, but their form actually follows function, as the shape of the tail promotes natural ventilation. When commissioned to design a
Designer John Meng has come up with a series of gorgeous and green lamps made with upcycled wine bottles. Each lamp carries the appeal of a contemporary sculpture and can serve as great interior
Big news from the Cooper-Hewitt today – the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum announced that it has selected New York City-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro as the designers of the gallery and
The Urban Agriculture Curtain is a brilliant indoor vertical gardening concept where fresh produce can be grown year-round while hanging in a window. London-based architecture studio Bohn and Viljoen
City Systems is a multi-year project conducted by the Institute without Boundaries (IwB) at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. The project helps students studying ‘Interdisciplinary Design
This week Cisco Systems cut the ribbon on its Toronto Innovation Center — a place where developers and tech professionals can come together to integrate different building technologies in order to
Mayor Bloomberg isn’t the only mogul who wants to ban certain kinds of drinks in NYC – now hip hop business baron Russell Simmons is proposing that the mayor’s plan to ban sugary drinks
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