Infographic provided by Staveley Head

“A desktop computer that addresses sustainability during manufacturing, usage and disposal;the full life cycle of an object.”

Recompute started as a student project that grew into a full-fledged online store. It offers 4 cardboard PCs – from a Linux PC that supports Fedora 12 and Linux Mint for $499; a machine with Windows 7 Home for $799 or no-OS for $699 that’s powered by an AMD Athlon x 2 Dual Core 2.8GHz; an AMD Athlon II Quad Core 2.8GHz model with Windows 7 Pro for $999 or without an OS for $875; or a DIY almost-empty case with a 400-watt power supply for $199.

The following is some further information from the developers’ website:

Won’t cardboard catch fire or overheat the circuits?

The design of the Recompute case takes advantage of the fluting (aka the slots in the cardboard) to work as natural ventilation for the machine. In a traditional computer case, the ventilation is often limited to a small port and fan in the back of the machine. As the computer heats up, the hot air collects inside the case. It then must be forced out with a fan to make room for fresh cooler air. This system of cooling is inefficient, and cooling fans have to work extra hard, creating excessive noise. The case of Recompute is similar to that of a honeycomb. Cool air easily flows in and hot air quickly radiates out with minimal load to the system fans. During our long-duration stress testing, where we ran the computer at 100% load twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the maximum heat measured from a single part was (155 F/68C), cooler than a fresh cup of coffee which is about 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 93 degrees Celsius.

The ignition point of cardboard is very high, higher than most of the plastics used in traditional computer hardware design. Recompute cases have been tested safe to over 400F/200C. Most of us don’t think anything of putting a cardboard pizza box in the oven, or boiling hot coffee in a paper cup, yet the internal components never reach a temperature higher than an oven or boiling liquid. Still, as a safety precaution, each Recompute case is thoroughly treated with a non-toxic UL-tested flame retardant made by our friends at Flame Seal, who also supply flame retardants to NASA.

What happens if my Recompute gets wet?

Well, we hope that you are not using your Recompute outside in the rain, or beside a swimming pool. Nevertheless, Recomputes are made using cardboard with a waterproof adhesive. Assuming that you didn’t spill your coffee down all over the circuit boards, if the case gets wet, simply let it dry out and it should be fine. In fact, the cases get completely soaked when we treat them with the non-toxic flame retardant. We give them twenty-four hours to dry and they are good to go!

Can I buy a Mac version?

No, Macintosh is proprietary software system and will only run on an Apple computer. However, if you are tired of the issues that surround Windows, and don’t want to pay the inflated prices for an Apple product, we suggest making the switch to Linux. Linux works and looks similar to Windows or a Mac. It is not a pure DOS type system where you have to type commands (a common misconception about Linux). Linux is stable, secure, and best of all, free! See our Linux page for more information.

Michael Green Architects (MGA) is a 14 person architecture and interior design firm based in Vancouver BC. The office is the latest design company to promote the use of wood in the construction of tall buildings.

Michael Green’s design calls for a 30-story tower, based on laminated composite wood. Mass timber products using layers of wood fused together at right angles are strong enough to handle load-bearing infrastructure, walls and floors, he told CNN.

“We think we can go higher than 30 stories,” Mr. Green told the network. “We stopped exploring wood around 100 years ago (with the advent of steel and concrete); now we’re looking at a whole new system using mass timber products.”

Cutting down trees doesn’t sound like the most environmentally sensitive approach, the reporter notes. But Mr. Green argued that using wood from sustainable forests and the carbon dioxide savings make wood an eco-choice.

Last week the Canadian Wood Council released a detailed study suggesting a wood-based structural system “represents the first significant challenge to concrete and steel structures since their inception in tall building design more than a century ago.”

Green has documented his research and design specifications and generously published the results in an open source paper – a kind of instruction manual for building really tall wood buildings.

To read the full paper published by Michael Green go to wecbc.smallboxcms.com.

Jihyun Ryou is interested in food preservation. “I’ve learned that we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator,” she explains. “We don’t observe the food anymore, and we don’t understand how to treat it,” she adds. To Ryou, design is not about making life easier but about propagating knowledge. Instead of concealing, design reveals time-tested rituals, processes and traditions, finding new ways to elucidate them.

Thus, for her ‘Save Food From the Fridge‘ project, Ryou has crafted a series of food storage contraptions that counter the hidden, black box technology of the refrigerator by relying on “traditional oral knowledge [that] has been accumulated from experience.”

“Observing the food and therefore changing the notion of food preservation, we could find the answer to current situations such as the overuse of energy and food wastage. My design is a tool to implement that knowledge in a tangible way and slowly it changes the bigger picture of society. I believe that once people are given a tool that triggers their minds and requires a mental effort to use it, new traditions and new rituals can be introduced into our culture.”

This project is about traditional oral knowledge which has been accumulated from experience and transmitted by mouth to mouth. Particularly focusing on the food preservation, it looks at a feasible way of bringing that knowledge into everyday life.

Through the research into the current situation of food preservation, I’ve learned that we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator. We don’t observe the food any more and we don’t understand how to treat it.

Therefore my design looks at re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food, which is closer to nature. Furthermore, it aims to bring back the connection between different levels of living beings, we as human beings and food ingredients as other living beings.

Through the objects of everyday life, design can introduce traditional oral knowledge into people’s lives through their experience of using it. Objects make invisible knowledge evident.

Get the book here.

The ‘Metromorph’ concept car from designer Roman Mistiuk solves several sustainable transportation problems all at once in a really creative way. The ‘Metromorph’ concept is designed to face the ever growing issues of metropolitan cities. When the user is home the vehicle becomes a balcony thus addressing parking restraints and real estate value.

The unique concept car doubles as an elevator to quickly transport you from the street to your high-rise apartment, but it also parks itself to double as your balcony when it gets there. That wall-climbing function takes the car off the street, clears up the issue of limited urban parking, and creates an extra efficient living space as well.