‘Transformer’ rooms and robo-furniture are set to remake our homes – and lives – before our eyes The Ori ‘Cloud Bed’ is lifted and lowered from a ceiling recess to create space that doubles as bedroom and living room. Ori/YouTube (screengrab) Christian Tietz, UNSW Sydney With two-thirds of a global population of 9.4 billion people expected to live in urban areas by 2050, we can expect a...
Eco-friendly tech comes with its own environmental costs: that’s why it’s vital to cut energy demand now Mining and extracting metals has ecologically damaging consequences. Shutterstock Timothy Laing, University of Brighton If we want to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 or even 2℃, we’ll need a monumental shift in how our energy and transport systems work. The International Energy Agency...
Wherever you happen to live, though, the Earth’s largest wilderness, its atmosphere, is only the thickness of a pane of glass away...
Future cities could be 3D printed – using concrete made with recycled glass Matjazz/Shutterstock Seyed Ghaffar, Brunel University London; Mehdi Chougan, Brunel University London, and Pawel Sikora 3D printed concrete may lead to a shift in architecture and construction. Because it can be used to produce new shapes and forms that current technologies struggle with, it may change the centuries-old...
The necessary changes to our lives and economy won’t happen automatically by manufacturers saving money through improvements in energy efficiency.
Global citizenship is a concept that has produced varied and contested understandings, not the least of which is the argument that the privilege of legal status...
If I could go anywhere: Japanese art island Chichu, a meditation and an education Time/Timeless/No Time (2004) by Walter De Maria. Todd Lappin/Flickr, CC BY-NC Julian Meyrick, Griffith University In this series we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted. The Chichu Art Museum is located on the tiny island of Naoshima, off the southern coast of...
A building’s primary purpose may be to keep the weather out, but most do such an effective job of this that they also inadvertently...
The huge economic slowdown brought about by COVID-19 has resulted in companies around the world seeking help from their governments...
Imagine a house where the walls change colour depending on your mood, or your tablecloth changes shape when you’re having a dinner party...