Posts Tagged ‘tree’

SonUmbra Solar Powered Tree Lights up the Night

Monday, September 28th, 2009

SonUmbra, sustainable design, green design, sonumbra, solar tree, lighting, london design festival, solar power tree, lighting installation, eco art

As advancements in lighting technology unveil fresh materials, we’re thrilled to see designers exploring new ways to light up the night. SonUmbra is a solar-powered tree composed of strands of light-emitting fabric woven into a lucent web of branches. The installation’s canopy of photovoltaic panels captures light during the day, and once the sun sets the tree blooms in an interactive flourish of light and sound.








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Eco Architecture: Modernized treehouses offer sustainability in the wild

Monday, August 31st, 2009

v house_1

Eco Factor: Sustainable treehouses generate solar electricity.

Do treehouses always have to be constructed by nailing a room into place, thereby jeopardizing the life of the tree? Heinz Legler has a different thinking, the designers have unveiled their latest treehouses, dubbed V-Houses, which do offer the same adventure as a treehouse does but without actually constructing the house on a tree.

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Farms Around the World Have More Trees than Expected

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Trees along a farm road in New South Wales

The World Agroforestry Centre has recently released a paper titled ” Trees on Farm: Analysis of Global Extent and Geographical Patterns of Agroforestry.” The researchers used five global geodata sets to estimate the percent tree cover on 22 million square kilometers of agricultural land around the world.  They were surprised to find that nearly half of that land had 10% or more tree cover (which is considered “significant” from an agroforestry point of view).  The area involved is vast – as large as the Amazon basin.

Even for North America, the percentages were surprisingly high (39% over 10% cover, 17% over 30%).  Values in Europe were similar. The highest levels are in central America (98% above 10% cover), South America (81%), and Southeast Asia (82%).  Overall, the lowest tree cover is in the most arid areas, but even there >20% of the farmland has 10% tree cover.

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