Inhabitat's Week In Green: cities in the sky, a cloned Chinese village and a few green DIY Father's Day projects
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.
As the race to develop new, more efficient modes of transportation heats up, it could soon become even easier (and greener) to jet around the globe. This week saw the Solar Impulse -- that broad, funny-looking airplane -- complete the world's first solar-powered intercontinental flight. Meanwhile, Boeing's hydrogen-powered 'Phantom Eye' drone aircraft successfully completed its first flight, releasing only water as a byproduct. Both developments signal growing confidence in employing new green technologies in air travel. Now that green airplanes are taking flight, what will we do with all of those old fuel-guzzling planes that are currently in use? One Oregon man may have found an answer -- Bruce Campbell transformed an entire Boeing 727-200 into his home, converting one bathroom into a shower and installing a computer monitor in the middle of the control panel.
In other unexpected architecture news, Hrama Architects unveiled a vision for a futuristic City in the Sky -- a world in which glassy lotus flower-shaped towers soar above New York and London. We'd call it pie in the sky, except, well, it isn't pie -- it's flowers. In a different, but perhaps equally bizarre story, we learned that China has completed the world's first cloned village. Every detail of the charming Hallstatt village in Austria has been copied and replicated in Guangdong Province. Why? Because they could. Meanwhile, the austere-looking Bayer Building in India received the world's highest LEED score, and the city of San Francisco announced plans to light up the Bay Bridge with a massive, shimmering LED installation.
In the world of green tech, Anthony Mutua, a recent graduate of Mombasa Polytechnic University College in Kenya, developed an energy-harvesting chip that can turn a shoe into a cell phone charger. A team from Arizona State University created the world's largest flexible color display screen using OLED (Organic Light Emitting Display) technology, possibly paving the way for a new generation of screens that deliver high-quality video using very little power. And we were excited to discover Eyejusters -- a new type of adjustable glasses that (much like a tilt-shift lens) allow you to alter the focus with the twist of a dial.
For the parents out there, here's a safe alternative to a pocket knife that you might want to consider for your kids: Designer David Suhami's Animal Pocket Knife replaces sharp blades with animals. And we'd be remiss not to drop a gentle reminder that Father's Day is fast approaching. We've rounded up 14 stylish wearable presents, 11 green gifts, and eight DIY projects that you can make to remind your dad that he's still the man.
