Air Bee & Bee lets you live in a cabin safely surrounded with bees

Bees are pretty interesting creatures (except of course if you’re allergic to them) especially if you think about their role in our ecosystem. A lot of plants, including wild ones, rely on these insects for pollination and they are a large contributor to our biodiversity. While they will not be extinct anytime soon, a lot of cities are inadvertently driving them out of their spaces. If you want to spend a day or weekend surrounded by the creatures, you can now go to Southern Italy and book a property especially created for that.

Designer: Davide Tagliabue

Cutely called Air Bee & Bee (and listed on Air BnB), the house, or more specifically, the self-standing room, is located on an olive farm in a village called Grottole. The room fits two people, and the house itself has an exterior that looks like a honeycomb. But aside from just having a bee theme, there are actually nine apiaries or beehive boxes surrounding you. There’s even one of those boxes hanging from the ceiling near your bed. So if you’re a bit scared of bees, then this is definitely not somewhere you should go to.

You won’t get stung by bees though as these apiaries are netted. The beehive only houses the room where you can sleep in or hang out in. To go to the bathroom, you have to go to a separate cottage nearby, where you have an outhouse and a private bathroom. The house has no electricity, but you’ll get solar-powered LED lights, a cooler bag so you can store your food, and you’ll have the sound of the bees to keep you company.

To give you the complete bee experience, the owner, who is also the beekeeper, will give you lessons about the importance of bees. You will also be served breakfast that includes homemade biscuits, ricotta strawberries, and of course, honey made from the local bees. The accommodation was actually built through a crowdfunding campaign and the help of 25 volunteers. The goal, aside from having a cool Air BnB listing, is to spread more awareness about bees.

If you’re going to Italy and want to experience this beehive, you can book it at $145 per night. All proceeds will go to local bee conservation projects. Just expect a “100% rural” stay at the house and of course, spend some time with all those bees.

The post Air Bee & Bee lets you live in a cabin safely surrounded with bees first appeared on Yanko Design.

This sustainably designed, modular, ecological tiny house gets assembled & dismantled in 5 days!

Proto-Habitat is a sustainable and innovative tiny house prototype designed to be modular, ecological, and affordable. And the best part? It can be assembled and dismantled in 5 days! The tiny prefab house is completely transportable and another step forward in a sustainable lifestyle. The goal was to create flexible spaces for living and working and Proto-Habitat achieved that with a floor area of ​​30 m² which can be extended up to 90 m² if needed. It is constructed using only locally sourced wood from sustainably managed forests and even offers exemplary traceability for the comfort of use and healthy life.

Wald.City is a French design studio that built the prototype project as part of a one-year research program at the French Academy in Rome to explore new forms of housing. Proto-Habitat is unique because it is scalable and adaptable to several different settings – it can be used for everything from individual housing to collective buildings to remote workplaces! Since sustainability was a key focus in this design, it was made using 100% timber materials which were sourced within 500 kms of Bordeaux in southwestern France. All other products and elements of the house were also carefully chosen from local industries that followed responsible waste management and sustainable forestry practices. Wood is the primary material here and brings a warm, cozy, minimalist cabin aesthetic to the contemporary interiors.

Apart from sustainability and scalability, the next important element for Proto-Habitat was mobility. The base unit of the modular house can be assembled in five days by three people and a truck crane – it does not require a foundation. The base module features an open-plan ground floor, a mezzanine, and an elevated sunroom that has a curved roof. “Shifting the role of the architect to ‘facilitator,’ the prototype and research aim to explore new forms and spaces to live together, and alternative financing methods,” the architects explained in a project statement. Proto-Habitat tries to develop a possible solution for the growing needs of a flexible lifestyle. It allows you to match your space to your life’s pace, your work, and your wallet.

Designer: Wald.City

If Only Costner Made WaterWall…

… the result would have been a new ecological water heater for the bathroom! Apparently this wall integrated water storage has a coating on the glass surfaces to help absorb solar energy. This of course means that the water sandwiched between the glass panes will also get heated. Moreover the translucent glass allows natural sunlight to stream into the bathroom. So nice!

Designers: Shi Qiang & Liu Zhong Liang for TOOUT Industrial Design Co. Ltd.

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Sprint and LG launch Optimus Elite: entry-level specifications, planet-saving hopes

Sprint and LG launch Optimus Elite: entry-level specifications, planet-saving hopes

The successor to 2010's Optimus S, LG's readied another low-middleweight smartphone. Main features on the Optimus Elite include Android 2,3, a 3.5-inch screen, an 800MHz processor, NFC and a five-megapixel camera. So there's nothing particularly thrilling, but 50GB of free storage from Box could sweeten the deal for some. Eco-friendly nods include sustainable build materials, with 50 percent made from recycled plastic, with the hazardous likes of mercury, PVC and halogens also nixed from the device. Like other Sprint-LG team-ups toting green credentials, the charger ekes out minimal power when not charging the phone. Planeteers can pick up the Optimus Elite online -- in "Titan" silver and white -- from April 22, priced at $30 on a two-year contract. Sprint will also hand over a $50 reward card for your troubles and LG says the Optimus Elite will eventually arrive, at least in silver, on Virgin Mobile too. For a few more details, you can catch LG and Sprint emoting over Mother Earth in the press release below.

Continue reading Sprint and LG launch Optimus Elite: entry-level specifications, planet-saving hopes

Sprint and LG launch Optimus Elite: entry-level specifications, planet-saving hopes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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