Opening this month in a New York gallery, Jenna Spevack's urban agriculture inspired exhibition showcases in-home micro-farms.

Brooklyn designer and artist Jenna Spevack's solo show at Mixed Greens incorporates installation, sculpture and permaculture design to explore themes of  sustainability, accessibility to healthy food and artistic social expression within the context of a gallery. Spevack's purpose is "to provide healthy greens to extraordinary people with ordinary incomes".

An iteration of an experiment that began in her own home, the exhibition showcases efficient, sub-irrigated systems for growing microgreens, that have been built into everyday objects and furniture. The modified household objects are fitted with lights, providing necessary light for the plants but also creating a sense of spotlighting the greens similar to an art object lit within a gallery.

Spevack's work is intended to ask questions related to the value placed on food and creative effort. Rather than her work being priced by the gallery, the microgreens will be for sale at a price set by each individual purchaser. Each sale will have a copy of the receipt placed on the wall within the installation as an expression of the work's value as determined by the community.

Maintaining a commitment to urban agriculture and community building, all money received for the microgreens will be donated to local urban ag groups and participants can choose to donate the greens they purchase to a local food pantry. Materials and services used to create the exhibit were donated, bartered or salvaged and was funded in part by Spevack's Kickstarter campaign.

Source: Mixed Greens

A stunning installation in Tokyo's Sumida River created quite a visual  spectacle, but it has an important message too.

Kicking off the inaugural Tokyo Hotaru festival, 100,000 solar-powered LEDs were sent down the Sumida River last week. During the 18th century catching "horatu," Japanese for "firefly," was a popular past time on the shores of this expansive river.

Inspired by the fireflies that once inhabited the river, the LEDs were created to resemble those glowing creatures of flight that will always remind me of warm summer nights in Georgia. This luminescent sculpture speaks to a time before urban life and polluted waters pushed these tiny creatures from their homes along the banks of the Sumida. The LED horatu were provided by Panasonic and designed to illuminate upon contact with the water. To prevent further pollution of the Sumida, large nets were used to capture the LEDs further down the river.

Source: Spoon & Tamago

Photo Credits: makure, Mai Suzuki, tokyo-hotaru.com, Jeremy V. and ajpscs

It's not often that you actually want wildlife nesting in your walls. But a new concept in habitat-building just might change your mind.

Brick Biotope is a series of bricks designed specifically to provide a natural living environment for birds within the urban landscape. Inspired by the disappearance of the House Sparrow in the Netherlands, Brick Biotope responds to the desire to create hand-made objects in a digital world. As part of a three-month intensive, design students Micaela Nardella and Oana Tudose devised a brick-making technique using simple molds, plaster and sand. Each unit is made by hand and totally unique but the standard rectangular form allows for easy placement within a brick wall.

Recently exhibited during Milan Design Week as part of FABRIKAAT, Brick Biotope is intended to provide all the basic needs for a wild animal's habitat. Each unit has the potential to be used as shelter, a space for vertical vegetation or water collection. Brick Biotope is a simple and easy to implement solution to a problem seen in cities across the globe.

Source: Inhabitat

Capitalizing on the fact that LEDs offer more opportunity to reinterpret how light is embodied and delivered, a new design imagines LEDs of an entirely new shape

There's no question that LEDs are the energy-efficient lighting solution of the future. In fact some experts predict that by 2015, 5- percent of all residential homes will completely lit by LEDs. There have been some issues with price and versatility, but as cost of LEDs continues to fall, while selection goes up, we think this is a pretty realistic prediction.

For the most part, LED designs cling pretty tightly to our deep rooted notions of what a light bulb is supposed to look like. But a new design from Artemide shows that it's time to let this uber efficient light source out from under that lampshade.

Sisifo, Scott Wilson's new hybrid luminaire for Artemide, challenges conventional light bulb design with a new typology of light that blends task lamp with table lamp and leverages LEDs qualities to create a new icon in lighting. The design's large diffused disk of light seems to float in air and easily rotates 360 degrees to direct a soft, powerful source of illumination.

"With its spherical central articulation, Sisifo guarantees maximum freedom in directing light with minimum encumbrance at the base, allowing use on both larger tables and smaller bedside surfaces," writes Wilson on Behance. "The lamp head and light source utilize micro lenticular surface details to amplify the light output. Sisifo’s generous adjustable diffuser eliminates unwanted harsh shadows and provides a soothing familiar feeling."

No longer will you have to deal with the harsh glare of a light bulb peeking out from your desk lamp, creating a blinding spot on the page or wall. Instead, the Sisifo provides bright, ambient light with a tiny carbon footprint.

Image via Scott Wilson/Behance

Has glaring sun or pesky mosquitoes or gathering dusk ever driven you away from your back yard? A spherical concept in outdoor living spaces puts the gazebo to shame.

When the weather is nice, even working next to an open window doesn't cut it for me. I want to be outside, feeling the sun on my skin...and who says I can't answer a few emails while I'm at it? The only problem is that after a few minutes I'm too hot (or too cold), the wind blows my hair in my face, or the sun makes it impossible to see the laptop screen. With a frustrated sigh I inevitably gather my things and slink back inside.

The Garden Pod (or G-Pod) envisions a world where just the right amount of shelter, and the magic of a rotating building, allows us to enjoy our green spaces all day, every day, regardless of the weather.

Available in the United States for the first time in the summer of 2012, the pod is constructed simply from several arcing pieces of responsibly farmed wood. It features a stainless steel roof to reflect heat, as well as a 90º open entrance that welcomes the sights and sounds of your surroundings. The G-Pod's mobile design allows it to be rotated into different positions for a change in view, or to avoid wind, rain, sun glare, and other harsh natural conditions.

The G-Pod is available in several different sizes, from a compact "Garden Seater" to the luxurious "Summerhouse" or large pod "Diner." Each comes with seating and a removable oak or stainless steel table, just in case you'd like to schedule an impromptu backyard camping trip. And the best part is that the footprint of each pod is no bigger than a traditional set of patio furniture.

Visit the G-Pod website to learn more.

It's Earth Month, and all over the world, businesses that normally ignore environmentally issues are making an effort to show their "green" intentions. Some efforts are pathetic, while some are truly worth a second look.

From April 15th through May 11th, visitors to the ten-story glass-vaulted atrium at New York's World Financial Center will be treated to an up close and personal viewing of one of the largest recycled plastic sculptures in the world. Chandelier, a 21-foot tall and 15-foot wide sculpture by Katharine Harvey, is made from thousands of water bottles, sandwich trays, muffin tins, salad boxes, egg cartons, and other "disposable" plastics.

The installation is designed to both amaze and remind the viewer of the consequences of our throw-away society--namely, that there is no 'away' in which to throw any of these plastics. Only a tiny fraction of these petroleum-based products are recycled after use, while most end up in landfills or the ocean.

Chandelier made its original debut as a site-specific installation at Toronto's Brookfield Place in 2009, and incorporated used plastic collected from the office tenants of that building. The exhibition in New York is part of an ambitious Spring lineup from Arts Brookfield, which has established the World Financial Center as one of the Big Apple's leading showcases for important visual arts installations and exhibitions.

The installation can be viewed for free by the public between 7 am and 10 pm.

Two German interaction design students have re-envisioned the grocery store shopping experience.

In response to increasing consumer demand for detailed product information, German design students,  Benedikt Burgmaier and Fabian Kreuzer, have reinvented the process for purchasing meat, cheese and fish. As part of this concept, the glass case surrounding the fresh meats and cheeses, also functions as an interactive screen. Through simple interactions with the glass case, customers can simply point to an item to see more information including price and product description. Small books in front of the case can be lifted for more detailed information about origins and recipes to appear on the screen.

Although just a prototype, this project is an imaginative and inspirational look at the future of consumer experiences. What do you want to see in the grocery store of the future?

Source: food + tech connect