The Lyrebird - Amazing Jungle Mimic

This viddy is so hot right now.

Baumraum - a Tree house

At some point in your life you probably built a tree house. Or wanted to. It's just cool to have your own space above the ground separated from the rest of the world, right?
That's probably the exact thing that Andreas Wenning thought when he created Baumraum. Wenning is a German architect and furniture designer who started the previously mentioned Baumraum. It's actually just a tree house, but for grown ups.


This is one of the many designs Baumraum offers. All the designs are more or less custom made, that means that there is a list of designs that are fine-tuned to your wishes and your tree. I must say I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the houses. Take a look at this picture taken from a Baumraum house in Austria.

You can actually sleep in it! How does that do on the awesome-scale?! And look at those windows. You are waked and the first thing you see is a sea of green leaves, you hear a variety of birds and all of a sudden you feel a little closer to nature.

It should be noted that Baumraum houses are tree-friendly (yay!) their construction requires no nails or screws in the tree. So the tree's vessels stay intact and it certainly won't get sick. But how does your house stay up in the air then? An intelligent question, Baumraum uses steel cables that are connected to the ground and pieces of extremely sturdy textile that are montaged onto the tree.

For €20.000 (roughly $25.000) Wenning's company will make sure you get a professional tree house up your tree.
Think about the possibilities such a 'baumraum' can give you. It's an awesome sleeping place, you can use it as a terrace and have a drink while the sun sets on that warm summer day or you can make it into a place where you can break away from the stressful day-to-day life.

-jdh

Interspecies Appreciation! (Doggy Kisses)

Baloo the SuperForest Hound and friend.



Nature... check.
Humans... check.
Technology... check.

Have a great evening.

The DutchTub

Did you ever took a hike in the mountains and, while hiking, thought: "Oh boy, I wish I had a hot tub within reach now!"

In the rare case you did the DutchTub is probably a good solution.

Under the motto of "boundless bathing" the Dutch designer Floris Schoonderbeek designed this special tub. So, how does one realize "boundless bathing"?

The DutchTub is basically half of a sphere to which you can connect your garden hose. You turn the hose on and the bath is filled with cold water. You get some wood, stuff it in the destined compartment and set it on fire. Around this fireplace there's a spiraling pipe containing the water from the tub. Due to physical liquid laws the cold water comes in at the bottom, is heated, spirals up and enters the tub again.

With two and a half hours of warming-up time the tub hasn't been designed for hasty bathers. The tub is available for a rough €4450 (which should be about $6400) and comes in six colors.

-jdh

Green Bling-Bling

If you live in a metropolitan city there's a very big possibility that you don't see trees and plants all that often. Luckily for the metropolitans the Icelandic product designer Hafsteinn Juliusson came up with a solution.

Growing Jewelry

This is indeed jewelry with grass growing out of it. With his project Juliusson wanted to experiment with pulling nature toward man, since nature is the source of all life. Or as he says himself:

"Growing Jewelry is a redefinition of modern values. It is a clash of jewelry an gardening; couture and organism."

Awesome. Possibly the best part is that you have to water your rings in order to keep them green and shiny.

Hafsteinn Juliusson

-jdh

Wet Bugs

This morning Environmental Graffiti, one of my favorite blogs, had an amazing post with photographs of insects taken in macro. Well, I hear you think, there's an awful lot of photos like this on flickr and such. Though they're kinda special. Have a look.

The German Martin Amm, the extremely creative being behind these pictures, must have gotten out of bed real early to catch a glimpse of the morning dew on the insects. Anyway, Amm delivered a good job showing us the beauty of insects, and nature in general.

-jdh

Swedish Wind!

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I'm talking about wind power!

The New York Times has a cautious article on Sweden's big push towards an all-renewable energy infrastructure.

Now, wind power does have its naysayers, (although, I've yet to meet one,) but wind power's plusses here so far outweigh its minuses, I say when it comes to nice, clean turbines heating my bath water and providing me light to read, the more the merrier.

Here's the article: nytimes.com



Which would you prefer in your backyard?
Coal Power.


Wind Power.


Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

-Jackson