Bridget Borgobello

An international team of scientists led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours. This remarkable new discovery suggests that habitable planets could exist in a wider variety of environments than previously believed. Read More

The Swiss design firm ROB GmbH (Robust Outdoor Brands), which created the portable kitchen unit Cuebe, has come up with a simple low-impact housing solution. Named the PODhouse, these prefabricated modules create a great sustainable micro home for the garden, a backyard office or even a secret holiday hideaway. The prototypes have been in development since 2003 and have since been optimized, tested and improved to create this final product now available for purchase. Read More

Whilst most of the Northern Hemisphere is rugging up from the cold weather and dreaming about summer and sun, here are some outdoor ideas to add to your wish-list this year. Be it an indulgent lounge chair or your ideal cocktail bar, these designs will revive your backyard in time for summer. Read More

Italy and France have joined forces to create the "Astonyshine" 100 percent solar home concept as part of the 2012 Solar Decathlon Europe. The international competition is open to universities from around the globe and promotes research into the development of efficient housing. Astonyshine is a modern reinterpretation of the classic Mediterranean villa, and is the result of the combined efforts from Polytechnic of Bari (Italy), University of Ferrara (Italy), Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais (France) and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech (France). Read More

While the McGee house may look like any other new designer home in the neighborhood, its walls tell a different story. Designed by husband and wife team Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger of Leger Wanaselja Architecture, the upper outside walls of the house are made from over 100 salvaged car roofs. In a pursuit to build a house that utilized green technologies and reused materials, the couple sourced car roofs from a selection of gray-colored cars that had been left for parts in local junk yards in Berkeley, California. Their biggest challenge was sourcing car scraps that were in relatively good condition, without dents and with a good paint finish. The scraps were then cut into long tile-like shapes and used to complete the upper outside walls of the house, rendering a similar appearance to slate. Read More

Danish architectural firm MLRP has come up with a novel way to prevent graffiti and vandalism of a local town hall. By turning the outside walls into mirrors, the team successfully transformed a "drab" building into a local attraction that is hopefully resistant to future graffiti attempts. Read More

The creators of the original TOOB (Think Out Of Box) have spent the last two years researching and developing what they call the “world's first affordable dome screen.” Dubbed "TOOB Earth," the 4 foot diameter mini-IMAX screen is big enough for two people to sit in front of and, while it will obviously grab the attention of gamers and film-fanatics, its makers also see applications for the screen in simulation, medicine and education. Read More

Although we have entered 2012 approximately 1.5 billion people around the globe remain without access to a stable or safe source of light. Commonly in some of the world's poorest regions, kerosene lanterns are the standard form of night time lighting, which leads to the possibility of fires, explosions, asphyxiation and toxic fumes. Cheap, accessible solar lighting presents an obvious solution to this problem and the latest tilt at making this a reality is WakaWaka - a solar LED lamp concept that can fit snuggly onto a soda bottle. Read More

We were pretty impressed by the potential of these flying robots when we first covered this story in late November. Now the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France has released a video of the robot swarm in action during its current exhibition. Titled "Flight Assembled Architecture," the live installation showcases a fleet of quadrocopters building a six meter-high tower made up of 1,500 prefabricated polystyrene foam modules. Read More