First sighting of the season! Hello Spring!

(If you’re interested, I have more pics on instagram at @itcaughtmyeye)

Seen around town: BC Place stadium all lit up for the season

A merry Ho Ho Ho to you and yours!

here are some recent reflections from around town

I’ve got some more pics here if you’re interested in checking ‘em out.

Here a few brick-heavy shots of Portland, Oregon from late April of this year. I was down there with a posse to explore the city and feast at the annual food cart festival. Good times, good times!

Around town: Six shots from the weekend

Public Space: ‘Shower of colour! Artist creates illusion of floating umbrellas in vivid art installation’

From Daily Mail:

Suspended from mid air these stunning colourful umbrellas certainly put other art installations in the shade.

Looking as though they are floating above the ground the brollies are held in place by wires between buildings in Agueda, Portugal.

The installation is an initiative by the council, in the small town just south of Porto, and is part of an art festival call Agitagueda.

Check out the rest of the photos here.

Urban Farming Goes Big in Brooklyn: ‘World’s Largest Rooftop Garden’ 

From Urban Farm Online:

A new hydroponic greenhouse set atop an old warehouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Sunset Park is set to begin construction this fall — and just might transform New York City into the new model for urban agriculture. Announced in April, the greenhouse will break ground in September and is scheduled for completion in early 2013. When it’s finished, it promises to be the world’s largest rooftop farm, spanning 100,000 square feet and producing up to 1 million pounds of produce per year, including several varieties of tomatoes, lettuces and herbs.

…

Created by BrightFarms Inc., an organization that designs, finances and manages hydroponic greenhouse farms across the United States, the farm will produce enough vegetables and herbs to meet the vegetable consumption needs of 5,000 New Yorkers. And with a newly announced partnership with A&P stores, it truly will. The partnership with the New Jersey-based chain to sell the farm’s produce locally will allow BrightFarms to fulfill its mission of “eliminating time, distance and cost from the food supply chain.”

Check out the rest of the article here. Above is one of a series of TEDxManhattan talks themed ‘Changing the Way We Eat’ featuring the CEO of Brightfoot Farms, Paul Lightfoot.

(Video source: TEDx via YouTube; photo via ArchDaily)

Public Space:

When they built the urban plaza in the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood (2010 Olympic Village) here in Vancouver they “put a bird on it.” Actually, they put two birds on it, but you can only see one of them in this photo.

I’m a big fan of artist Myfanwy MacLeod’s ‘The Birds’. Every time I’m down there I see people and kids especially reacting to them in such fun and curious ways, as if they are trying to figure out if they are friendly, menacing or something in between. I also like the reminder that they offer that nature is larger than us humans. As for the official explanation of the piece:

The work highlights both the lighter and graver sides of what can happen when a non-native species is introduced to an environment, how the beauty of birds can sometimes mask their threat to biodiversity.

If you’re interested, I’ve got more pics here.

Green Infrastructure: The 10 Largest Green Roofs in the World (Infographic)

From McGraw-Hill Construction:

Green roofs are gaining acceptance in dozens of countries, joining other forms of green infrastructure that are being used to mitigate environmental problems of urban centers.

For example, vegetated roofs “are very good at managing stormwater. Most extensively planted green roofs will hold the first inch of rainfall and slow any additional rainfall, thus reducing peak flows and lowering the stress on combined sewer overflows,” says Steven Peck, founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC).

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Many cities throughout the U.S. and Europe have green-roof mandates or incentives in place. Stuttgart, Germany, requires green roofs on all new flat-roofed industrial buildings. In 2007, Pittsburgh enacted an law establishing stormwater volume reduction standards for properties greater than 10,000 sq ft, including on-site retention of the first inch of rainfall through any combination of infiltration, evapotranspiration and rainwater harvesting. Portland, Ore., requires new city-owned buildings and existing buildings in need of a roof replacement to install a green roof on at least 70% of the roof area.

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Green roofs trace their origins back several centuries, to sod roofs on homes and barns in Scandinavia—or even further, if we consider the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But modern green roofs, involving manufactured layers of growing medium and vegetation, developed in Germany in the 1960s. And Germany is believed to be the country where green roofs are most popular, with about 10% of the roofs “greened,” encouraged by a system of government grants to property owners.

Check out the rest of the article and a slideshow of the 10 largest greenroofs in the world here.

Related:

• ‘Green Roofs & Solar Panels: The Future of Renewable Energy?’ (Clean Technica)

(Infographic source: McGraw-Hill Construction) 

Report Card: Who is the Most Energy Efficient of Them All? (Map)

From ACEEE:

The ACEEE 2012 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard will rank 12 of the world’s largest economies representing over 78 percent of global gross domestic product, 63 percent of global energy consumption, and 62 percent of the global carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions.

The rankings will include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Over 25 different energy efficiency indicators or “metrics” have been analyzed for each economy ranked in the report. The rankings are determined by a total score out of 100 possible points.

Points can be earned in four difference categories including buildings, industry, and transportation, as well as metrics that track cross-cutting aspects of energy use at the national level. 

Check out the ACEEE’s report here.

Related:

• ‘UK ranked most energy efficient of world’s largest economies’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Of the world’s 12 largest economies, the U.S. is the ninth most energy efficient’ (Grist)
• ‘Canada scores 2nd last on energy efficiency study’ (CBC) 
• Video: ‘Energy efficiency vital for businesses’ (video) (ABC - Australia)
• ‘The Objectives: Energy Efficiency’ (Sustainable Energy for All)