(Image via: Planetary Gear)

Now that Winter is drawing in, we start to appreciate the things taken for granted in the balmier months – such as well-sheltered bus stops. The good news is that the latest designs are more luxurious and more eco-friendly than the soulless gappy cubicles we known so well, as these three designs show.

(Image via: Planetary Gear)

Firstly, the solar-powered Eye-Stop currently being testing in Italy. It is comprised of a dazzling array of interactive screens that let you plan your route, check your e-mail and monitor local air quality. If you want to get updates on the move, you can synchronize your cell-phone with it to receive timetables and updates. As well as the walled & ceilinged version, the Eye-Stop will also come in pole form – which will glow brighter and brighter as the next bus approaches.

(Images via: Keetsa)

For areas with less than ambient environmental conditions, the new bus shelter by Trueform offers air-con (maintained at 20 degrees Celsius whatever the weather), electronic displays and even a washroom. It can be fitted without the need for costly earthworking – and all that techno-wizardry comes courtesy of solar power.

(Images via: Christopher Fennell via EcoFriend)

But if municipalities want to go for a lower-tech green option – what could be more appropriate than recyling buses and turning them into bus stops? Sculptor Christopher Fennell has taken three decommissioned vehicles and turned them into the above shelter in Athens, Georgia, with deliciously retro results. Buses become bus stops – so we have to wonder, is there anything that bus stops can become? Upcyclers, we await your suggestions (in an orderly queue, of course).

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(Image via: Inhabitat)

As world-savingly admirable as wind turbines are…well, they kinda stick out. Putting aside the question of whether the colossal wind-turbines we are growing accustomed to seeing are bad for our health or for local wildlife – they’re definitely bad for the view. In fact they’re as incongruous as lamposts in a field of corn. But maybe we don’t need acres of whirring behemoths – we should just design our homes a little differently. Here are three examples of how we might achieve this.

(Image via: Inhabitat)

Released last year, the Broadstar Aerocam (pictured above and top) is a multi-layered horizontal turbine that follows the wind around at a price translating to less than $1 per watt. Its blades continually adjust to find the optimum pitch to bite into the wind, collecting energy the same way the surface of an aircraft wing collects lift. The Aerocam units can be positioned at points between or atop buildings where the wind is strongest – but unobtrusively, never lifting above the skyline.

(Images via: Cleantechnica)

Taking the idea a step further is the Ridgeblade, a turbine that is part of your roof. The genius of this design is the unit’s length – potentially as long as a traditional sky-high turbine – and the Ridgeblade has already won its designers (the UK’s The Power Collective) a prestigious $750,000 award.

(Image via: Ecofriend)

But why stop at houses? Think of all the bridges, road-signs, walkways, billboards and lamposts out there. Think about the artificially-induced wind of road-traffic – as utilized by this design by Arizona State University – or from the passage of trains or aircraft. If we could work horizontal turbines into our existing structures in such a way that they’re out of sight and out of mind, then could we meet our energy needs while keeping our treasured natural views…and bequeath the sky to the next generation?

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(Images via:  YLighting)

Are we making the most of the creative possibilies of LEDs? From the fan-cooled SoL R38 to the coolant-filled 360 Degree Light, the shape of the next generation of home LED lighting is looking decidedly familiar. Maybe that is to be expected, considering the green, practical need to fit all those screw and bayonet fittings in existing lamp designs – but are we missing a chance to rethink our lighting needs and come up with something neater, energy-thriftier and much more fun? Take the Abyss table lamp – like a corkscrewing paper sculpture (or if you want to be less kind, a length of glowing intestine), it can be bent into exactly the shape you require.

(Images via:  Technabob)

Or the Fragile Future 2 wall-lamp, an ivy-like sprawl of square-edged modular “circuitry” (you can assemble it to fit your wall-space), set with lamps that shine like dandelion heads? This dazzling effect is achieved in the most obvious way possible – by surrounding LEDs with dandelion seeds!

(Images via:  3rings)

Or how about hiding your lighting away in the walls? The appropriately-named Torn Lighting pretends that your wallpaper is hiding a brightly glowing wall, by hiding an LED behind a tailored, faked rip in the fabric. (This would also work nicely with furniture). Those who had nightmares after watching Poltergeist may wish to sit this one out.

(Images via:  Pieke Bergmans)

But for sheer irreverent cheek, it is hard to beat the work of Pieke Bergmans. Her Light Blubs (that’s not a typo) poke fun at conventional lighting by being victims of the “Design Virus”, an affliction that makes them sag and drip like candlewax.

(Images via:  Pieke Bergmans)

Crafted individually to suit their surroundings, these Blubs are made from handcrafted crystal inset with LEDs, and therefore at the other end of the scale from mass-produced domestic lighting – but they crack a much-needed grin at our obsession with ‘bulb-shaped’ bulbs. Maybe it’s time we joined in the fun.

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Solar energy may seem freely available to anyone with the right tools to collect it, but there is still a price we have to pay – and it is geography. Researchers may be pushing solar cells technology to ever greater levels of efficiency, but even the current leader in the field captures less than half of the sunlight reaching it. To gather practical amounts of power, solar panels still need a huge surface area – so, still no good for our favorite modes of personal transportation? Not so, say these three cutting-edge vehicle designs.

(Images via: Gizmodo)

Problem: as you drive your panel-studded car around, your angle in relation to the sun changes and your solar cells fail to fulfil their (modest) potential. Solution? Change the shape of your car. The BMW Lovos concept car may look like it lost a fight with a combine harvester, but in fact all those metal plates are individual solar panels that independently rotate to capture the maximum possible sunlight, and even double as airbrakes. (Presumably they would require a lot of power – well, you see the problem).

(Images via: TechFresh)

Or you could stick to a more conventional design by flattening your vehicle and sweeping your solar panel in an unbroken arc over the top of it, as with the Quaranta from Italdesign Giugiaro. It looks gorgeous, but it is still a long way from being an electric car – that huge panel only collects enough juice to charge the battery and feed the onboard electronics. Under the bonnet the Quaranta is a cutting-edge 4WD 268-horsepower hybrid.

(Image via: Autoblog Green)

No, the designers of the SunRed solar powered motorbike do not expect you to squint through a tiny window as you gun your wheels down the road. The clamshell cover only opens out fully when the bike is at rest, providing an impressive 3 square metres of solar panelling. Nice idea if married with a bigger battery (this concept design only stores enough power to propel you 13 miles) and it focuses on the longest part of a vehicle’s life, the time it is at rest. So how about a design that blends all three of these innovations – and would it make garages a thing of the past?

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Regular readers of both WebEcoist and WebUrbanist are going to get a double-dose introduction today to the newly-launched Gajitz dot com, a fresh site from the founder of Webist Media. Ecoist fans are familiar with the timeless lists on far-reaching topics that are at the heart of this site. Gajitz, like Dornob (its sibling site focused on design), takes a bit of a different approach, covering more of the latest and greatest discoveries and inventions as well as creative transportation and world-changing vintage and retro tech.

In short: Gajitz brings you most sensational, educational and inspirational content featuring the past, present and future of gadgets, science and technology – from history-shaping photo-edits of centuries gone by to a just-discovered cure for color blindness to self-driving concept cars, space elevators and teleportation devices of the not-too-distant future.

The new site will feature two familiar faces/names: Kurt (often known simply as Urbanist or Ecoist on each of the two Webist sites) and Delana (a long-term veteran author and editor on both sites as well). Like its sibling site Dornob | Design Ideas Daily, Gajitz will be updated multiple times a day with relevant targeted articles on specific subjects – you will be able to sign up for the main site feed as well as following particular topics via main categories and category feeds: Gadgets, Science, Technology, Transportation, Vintage & Retro.

Any time we have news related to new projects within or outside of Webist Media, it is always essential to note how indebted these sites are to the core authors including Angel, Chris, Delana, Mike, Stephanie and Steve, who make this weird and wacky website work Click here to check out Gajitz, and be sure to follow up on Twitter, friend us on Facebook, subscribe to the new RSS feed and spread the word around the interwebs however else you wish. Once again, thanks for reading, sharing your thoughts and lending your support all along the way – you are what keeps us going!

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(Image via: Zedomax)

In our search for the best way to array our new-fangled solar paneling, we’re going back to the oldest design of all. A few years ago the solar tree was little more than a stylish concept drawing, as with the above gadget-charging proposal…

(Images via: Metaefficient)

…but now you can find solar trees lining streets. Artificial trees are making headlines for other reasons, but the variety featured above are designed to light our sidewalks, not scrub the air. With luck these are the shape of Northern European streetlights to come – by day trapping the energy from sunlight, and by night expending it downwards using directed LED lighting. For anyone having problems with the phrases “Northern Europe” and “sunlight” occupying the same sentence, the lighting allegedly stores enough during one full day of sunshine to be able to illuminate for four nights running. Efficiency? Getting street lighting off the grid will reduce European electricity demand by a whopping 10%.

(Images via: Yanko Design and EcoTech Daily)

But we can all join in the fun. If you want to charge your favorite gadgets while you hit the surf, stick the Solar-Tree in the sand, hook everything up, and away you go. The device promises to fit every conceivable gadget. Top marks for the idea – but we have questions. Exactly how much energy can you collect from a panel that size – and how much will it cost in the shops?

(Image via: Inhabitat)

Individual solar trees are all very well – but what happens when we make a forest of them? Designer Neville Mars has developed the idea of a photovoltaic “parking grove” – a place where electric vehicles can tap into a constantly renewing source of energy. The overlapping panels automatically rotate to find the sunlight. Who would believe a car-park could look like that? Stunning. There is only one thing missing, a piece of sustainable, eco-friendly technology that has served our planet well enough for the last few million years – because there is no beating the original.

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The push to create and implement greener energy sources has mostly centered on thermal, hydroelectric, solar and wind power. But innovators are always thinking of ways to produce and/or harness power to fuel our world. UK grocery chain Sainsbury’s has begun using kinetic power from their parking lots to fuel checkout stands in one of their new locations.

The Sainsbury’s in Gloucester, which opened in June 2009, has several kinetic energy plates installed in their parking lot. Each time a car drives over the plates, the motion of the plate creates energy. The energy is then stored and sent to the store to provide power to the checkout stations. Sainsburys says that the plates can supply 30 kWh of energy per hour. This type of kinetic energy-gathering isn’t entirely free: it does bump up the fuel consumption of each car a very small amount when driving over the plates. And, of course, since most cars are still fueled with eco-unfriendly fossil fuels, the weekly shopping trip is still hard on the environment if you’re driving there. But if we assume that the kinetic energy plates are being used in place of speed bumps that are frequently found in supermarket parking lots, the energy expended by each car will be the same as it was before.

(image via: Daily Mail)

Highway Energy Systems, the company that designed the kinetic plates for Sainsbury’s, also designed an electro-kinetic road ramp for widespread usage on public streets. They address the question of whether this type of energy costs users money in this way: “The ramp is designed to be situated in parts of the roadway where vehicles are having to slow down, for example on downhill gradients, when approaching traffic lights or roundabouts as well as replacing sleeping policemen and traditional traffic calming measures. In the these situations, the kinetic energy of the car is being dissipated into heat (i.e. through the braking system) anyway; the ramp at this point scavenges a degree of kinetic energy as the car passes over it, but this is far less than is lost through other mechanisms.”

Sainsbury’s expects that the kinetic energy plates will have paid for themselves within two years of their inception. The supermarket giant is doing more than just harnessing the energy of passing motorists, however. The Gloucester Quays store also boasts a rainwater collection system that will use rainwater to flush its toilets. The store is equipped with large windows for letting in natural light and decreasing the dependence on artificial lighting, and solar thermal panels will heat the store’s water in the summer.

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(Image via: Inhabitat)

Isn’t it about time airships took off in a big way? While report after report comes out condemning aviation as a grave threat to our natural world, the number of airline passengers worldwide is rising (set to double by 2030 in the UK alone). Surely we don’t need bigger airplanes or greener biofuels that save the skies but risk plunging the world into a food crisis. Why not rise above all of that with the oldest invention in the history of aviation?

There is no shortage of ideas for turning back the clock and ushering in a second age of zepplin travel. Everyone remembers how the last one ended – but these days, we aren’t so foolish as to fill our human-carrying vehicles with explosive substances (no, wait). Inert helium is cited as the safest way to get modern airships aloft – but we have come a long way from Hindenburg technology, and if we can render petrol safe to use under our very feet, surely cheap, versatile hydrogen has a place in our green future in the skies.

(Image via: Inhabitat)

From the sinuous Airbia (top), aiming to supplant commuter trains and gridlocked frustration, to the helium-filled Aeolus (above), modern airship designs are spectacularly other-worldly (looking like effects shots from ABC’s upcoming reboot of “V“) – and spectacularly green. For energy efficiency, it’s hard to beat a balloon.

(Image via: Popular Mechanics)

And all those acres of airship skin, lofted high into the air – what better place for solar paneling? Designs such as the Turtle Airship and the Aeroscraft (above and below) utilize layers of solar film to help generate power for the operation of the vehicle. In the latter case, the “air” (in fact helium) is completely conserved by way of being compressed, changing the lift of the airship and eliminating the need to take in more helium. Plans are underway for the Pentagon to view a test model.

(Image via: Business Week)

Downsides? Speed is the major problem, and a world of airship travel would certainly be a more leisurely-paced one. There is also the thorny question of weather. Fancy being in an airship during a thunderstorm? This is why designers are looking at the middle ground with well-powered rigid-framed dirigible hybrids (such as the Aeroscraft) offering powered flight and greater maneuverability. Could this finally be the design to capture the public imagination and start shifting those queues at the airport?

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If you thought power-generating bicycles were brilliant by themselves, imagine if you could turn the energy you produce while bicycling into credits you can use anywhere else in the public transit system. Essentially, users are reimbursed for riding, emissions are reduced and everyone wins.

The system (by Chiyu Chen)  is simple: a user rents a bike with an ID or credit card, charges it simply by using it, then plugs it back into the grid from which the energy is transferred to electric city buses. More riding makes more power means more credits the next time it is too cold, hot, wet or whatnot to ride a bike.

Beyond the sustainability benefits of such a system, there would be a net positive impact for the health of citizens who would be further encouraged to bike (because of the availability and credits) and for the city as a whole that would benefit from less congestion and pollution caused by vehicles.

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Fusion reactors are the stuff of science fiction or the far-off future, right? Not according to General Fusion, a company that has raised millions of dollars to build a (hopefully) working prototype, possibly breaking down the ultimate energy barrier by accessing what may be the most cheap, easy and abundant source of fuel the world has ever seen.

The design itself is almost disturbing in its simplicity: a metal sphere just ten feet in diameter contains the entire reaction, with everything a sci-fi geek or script writer could hope for inside (including plasma rings, magnetic fields,  liquid lithium and a central vortex). This lower-budget approach is, best of all, known as magnetized targeted fusion.

A fusion burst is triggered within this relatively low-tech device by impacts from the outer shell. The heat generated in the process generates power to turn a piston. Simple, right? Well, no one is completely sure it will work but clearly enough private investors and public funding sources feel secure enough to invest millions into the prototype.

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