The Global Sustainability Jam was incredible. People in dozens of cities and countries on six continents came together and had a great time doing good things.

More than 130 projects were created, the buzz reached tens of thousands, and the results can be seen in continued co-operations, projects and more and more fans working towards a design approach in so many circles of life. The Jams are rock-and-roll on a global scale. But we want to improve. We want to be better, hotter, wilder. We want future Jams to be even more fun, and even more productive. We might even want to change the world one day J.

Your jam hosts have meanwhile recovered from their jam efforts. We have been very busy sorting out jamjars, new ideas for a next jam, reading up on the projects of other jams, …  The second weekend of December (9-11^th of December) all Jam organizers will hold a Jam-Jam to discuss all positive (and negative if any) outcome from the two Jams we organized so far and try to use this info to make next year events even better and stronger ! For that we need your help ! All of you will be sent shortly a question list by MonkeySurvey to see how we can make the Jams even more powerful without losing the fun factor.  We would feel most obliged if you could fill in this questionnaire and send it back to us ? If you feel up to it we would like to extend the invitation we received and invite experienced jammers to the Jam-Jam weekend which takes place in Nürnberg. Please contact either Sebastiaan or Bruno if you would like to join and/or receive more practical information.

Being a Jam host is a rather energy consuming task but also a very rewarding one as it absolutely fantastic to see how people gather with just a few tools on them and start creating something new, out of the blue… It is difficult to find the right words to describe what happens when you are witnessing all of you shaping a new concept but we can try with a well meant ‘Thank you’ !  Thank you for being there and putting your effort in but also for helping accomplish that vibrant atmosphere in which the Jam is taking place. Thanks also for the helping hands ! It is good to know that they are out there and we might need them again in the future !

In order to thank you properly we plan to organize a get-together drink on Friday  16^th of December. We you can find your Jam Angels as off 17h45 at Het Duvels Genot, Sint Aldegondis kaai 56 in Antwerp (opposite the MAS museum).  We will update you on our next plans (please note the date of the upcoming Global Service Jam which is now final : 24 -26^th of February 2012) and fill you in on our adventures at the Jam-Jam in Nürnberg. If you would use any kind of online or offline agenda it might be worth jotting those dates down !

Your humble Jam hosts

FARM:shop is the brainchild of Something & Son — a sustainable-living focused design practice — and supported by the local council as part of Hackney’s Art in Empty Spaces project. Their mission is to see how much food they can grow in an urban shop, and to educate and inspire Londoners. They plan to have chicken coops on the roof, fish tanks outside the shopfront, and other live animals inside the shop. By employing a combination of new technologies and traditional methods, they will also grow fruit and vegetables inside the shop. Upstairs, a meeting room will be available for businesses to hire, and downstairs a cafe will serve up dishes using all the produce grown there. The whole space will be available to hire for events and parties, and all profits will go back into their farming outreach programme which teaches people how to grow food. Forty volunteers from the local community have been working to get the shop ready for launch at the end of October, and from then on FARM:shop will be open from Friday to Sunday with daily informative tours. The video below explains FARM:shop in more detail:

HELSINKI DESIGN LAB WORKED 10 SHIFTS TO MOVE TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE WORLD
source http://www.helsinkidesignlab.org/dossiers/sustainability

(Suomeksi) HDL Ageing Studio Recap from Sitra- Finnish Innovation Fund on Vimeo.

BREAKTHROUGH KITE UP IN THE AIR

source : www.good.is

Makani Power’s Wing 7 wind energy generator looks like it comes from a Miyazaki movie. It resembles one of the Wright Brothers’ earliest planes, but when it takes off, it rises vertically into the sky, then begins swooping and climbing in a circle. As it flies, the Wing 7 harvests the energy of higher-speed winds that grounded, conventional wind turbines can’t reach. It’s attached to the earth by a tether, which brings the power that it’s generating back to the ground.

Makani just won a Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics, but it’s not the only company that’s exploring airborne wind technologies. It’sone of five “gold members” of the Airborne Wind Energy Consortium, some of which are seeking to create airborne wind technology that can generate a megawatt or more of power within a year or two.

The power generated by wind turbines is proportional to the cube of the wind’s speed, so faster wind generates exponentially more power. The fastest winds are the hardest to reach: they’re out at sea, where the water is too deep to anchor wind turbines on the ocean floor, or high up in the atmosphere. Conventional wind turbines have been growing bigger in order to reach the faster winds, but there are limits to how high they can climb.

Airborne wind energy technology promises to reach winds more than 1,000 feet above the earth’s surface, where winds are not only faster, but more reliable. For offshore wind farms, airborne technology might make more sense than large floating turbines that have to contend more directly with unbalancing waves. Airborne turbines, which are smaller and contain less material than conventional ones, also have smaller initial carbon footprints.

Questions about the technology remain. The energy-generating components, usually called kites or wings, have to stay up in the air for long periods of time and either deal with harsh weather or land return to Earth when a bad storm comes by. But both the government and the private have already shown interest in these ideas. Makani received $3 million in funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy in 2010, and millions more from Google’s investment arm.

Large aerospace companies have also shown interest in the technology: Honeywell, a defense contractor, recently designed an airborne wind prototype with a body design inspired by unmaned military drones. One company, Windlift, is designing its technology for more mobile use by the military or disaster relief organizations.

The idea of using wind energy from higher in the sky is hardly new: Makani advisor Miles Loyd first wrote about it in the 1970s, for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It’s long been apparent that the strongest, most consistent winds are in the upper reaches of the sky. Soon we might be able to fly up and catch hold of them.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user CafeYak.com

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE CONSUMER PLATFORM
source : www.nudge.nl

AN EMPTY BOTTLE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

WINDSTALK CONCEPT REMOVES BLADES OF WINDMILL

source : www.treehugger.com

Atelier DNA/Promo image

Like Awesome-Looking Giant Blades of Grass
Wind turbines are probably here to stay. Over time they’ll become more efficient by moving offshore, where the wind blows stronger and more constantly, and by becoming bigger and more sophisticated (special blade shapes, lighter materials, better internal components in the nacelle, etc). But the general principle of using rotating blades to capture the kinetic energy of the wind and convert it into clean electricity probably won’t change too much… But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t other ways to harness the power of the wind!

Atelier DNA/Promo image

We’ve covered vertical wind turbines and all kinds of special kites that either move ships or generate electricity, but I don’t think we’ve seen many wind power concepts that are based on giant stalks that just oscillate in the wind.

The Windstalk concept was created by a New York design firm called Atelier DNA. Our colleagues at Discovery News explain: “The designers came up with the idea for the planned city Masdar, a 2.3-square-mile, automobile-free area being built outside of Abu Dhabi. Atelier DNA’s “Windstalk” project came in second in the Land Art Generator competition a contest sponsored by Madsar to identify the best work of art that generates renewable energy from a pool of international submissions.”

Atelier DNA/Promo image

Windstalk Specifications
The project as submitted to Madsar includes 1203 stalks that are 180 feet high (55 meters) and are anchored on the ground with concrete bases that range between 10 to 20 meters in diameter. They are made from carbon fiber reinforced resin poles, about a foot (30 cm) in diameter at the base and 2 inches (5 cm) at the top. There are LED lights at the top of the stalks, and their intensity varies with the force of the wind. If there’s no wind, there’s no light.

How does it generate electricity? The creators explain: “Within each hollow pole is a stack of piezoelectric ceramic discs. Between the ceramic disks are electrodes. Every other electrode is connected to each other by a cable that reaches from top to bottom of each pole. One cable connects the even electrodes, and another cable connects the odd ones. When the wind sways the poles, the stack of piezoelectric disks is forced into compression, thus generating a current through the electrodes. Within each concrete base is a hollow chamber that houses a torque generator. The generator converts the kinetic energy of the swaying poles into electrical energy by way of an array of current generating shock absorbers, which convert energy produced by the forced movement of fluid through the shock absorber cylinders.

To smooth out the power delivery, underground chambers and pumped hydro provide a way to store energy.

Atelier DNA/Promo image

It’s a very interesting concept. I doubt that it would be very affordable, especially compared to the more traditional wind turbines that are produced in large enough numbers to benefit from economies of scale, but it’s very good to explore alternatives. I’d love to see some small-scale tests done to see how much power this could generate.