Inhabitat's Week in Green: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, floating eco-resort and a G-POD
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.
Next month, all eyes will be on London when the English capital hosts the Summer Olympics. In preparation, this week London officials unveiled an impressive new LED light installation on the Tower Bridge. The new lights, which cut the landmark's energy consumption by 40 percent, will be turned white to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee (her 60th year as monarch). Speaking of London, we also took a look at the new 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park. The maze-like underground pavilion is the first collaboration between Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and architects Herzog & de Meuron since they teamed up to produce the Bird's Nest at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion isn't the only subterranean architecture project we've been buzzing about this week. In fact, we were amazed to report that all of the apocalypse-proof condos in an underground converted nuclear missile silo in Kansas have been sold. The 1,820-square-foot units were purchased for an amazing $2 million apiece. If you prefer to spend your time (and money) above ground, may be suggest your very own solar-powered floating eco-resort? The aptly-named Solar Floating Resort sleeps six and it comes with an underwater observation room. And for the landlubber in search of a unique space to pass the time, feast your eyes on the spherical G-POD! The sleek, prefabricated structures are made of Norwegian spruce, and they'd be perfect for rooftops and gardens.
We've been shaking our heads at this story about Rayfish Footwear, a shoe company that provides customers with the tools to engineer a bespoke stingray of their own to be bred live and harvested for its leather. With a starting price of $14,800, we're hoping this isn't a fad that catches on. In other marine news, we learned that low levels of radiation from last year's Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan were detected in bluefin tuna near the California coast.
It isn't all doom and gloom, though. Maryland scientists harnessed thousands of invisibility cloaks to trap a rainbow and we discovered a remarkable musical pacifier that can improve the health of premature babies by helping them to feed properly. Germany set a world record last week by feeding a whopping 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour into the national grid, meeting nearly half of the country's weekend power demand. Meanwhile, Toyota's fuel-efficient Prius line raced into third place in cars sold worldwide. And in one of the most amazing stories that flashed across our screens this week, an Egyptian teenager patented a next-generation propulsion system that could send spacecraft to other solar systems without using a single drop of fuel. Beat that, Toyota.
