In 2013 the furniture giant IKEA, in collaboration with the United Nations Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) developed the so-called Refugee Housing Unit (RHU), a flat packed shelter for housing refugees, which is much easier to assemble and a lot more durable than other such shelters currently in use. Since then, the shelters have been tested in areas like Iraq and Ethiopia and have been deemed a huge success.
With the new elevator proposed by ThyssenKrupp, elevators as we know them could be a thing of the past. While the invention of the elevator made the skyscraper possible, this new elevator could once again redefine the urban architecture and design. The new elevator would be able to go up and down, as well as side to side, and do so without any cables or pulleys, or the need to wait for the elevator in case you just missed it.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have come up with a new kind of spray-on colloidal quantum dots (CQD), which is a breakthrough in the field as it doesn’t bind with oxygen atoms. The later is a problem with CQD as it causes some dots to forgo their electrons and become useless. Tests of this new method revealed a solar efficiency of eight percent, which may be low compared to other technologies, but the researchers are still hopeful their method will prove very useful.
Survival is mankind’s most important goal, and now some of us will be able to do so in style and comfort. US-based Vivos Group is transforming former Atlas missile silos into luxury survival shelters, which will allow inhabitants to whether most forms of natural disasters. They’re building an entire network of these Survival Condos, and so far they have completed one entire such shelter, which is already fully booked.
Studiomobile, an Italian design firm, has joined forces with Stefano Mancuso, a professor at the University of Florence and the director of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology, in an effort to create a prototype floating greenhouse. The main aim of the project is improving food security for people living in areas with little arable land, though the usefulness of this greenhouse goes much farther.
Güte, a Canadian home builder recently unveiled a unique tiny home, the design of which was inspired by shepherds’ huts of the past. Their creation is a prefabricated hut that rests on a trailer and can be used as a tiny home, office space, or guest room. It has the option to connect it to a power source, but it can also function off-the-grid, exactly like the shepherd’s huts of old did.
