Israeli Invents Cardboard Bike! Creativity counts! It’s exciting when you see someone take a resource such as recycled corrugated cardboard and create bikes out of it. Folding the board in a particular way gives it great strength and then a coating (resin?) makes it waterproof. A final coat of paint makes it spiffy… He plans […]
Author Archives: Alexis Wittman
Engineering Infallability
In local issues related to new sewers, river restoration projects, road design, bridges and dams, we turn to the engineering consultants with that same unquestionable focus we used to bestow upon doctors. “Well, that’s what the engineer says”, becomes the standard answer when you challenge a civic decision, even when so-called common sense lights the warning lights.
Being Local…
Last night I attended a talk by economist Michael Shuman in Traverse City. His latest book is Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity. (These are my notes and reflections from his presentation 02OCT12 at the Haggerty Center on beautiful Grand Traverse Bay.) […]
The Natural Cottage Build – 2012
Cob wall defines a small garden for the strawbale and timberframe guesthouse. The garden wall will eventually have a green growing roof to shed water. You see the wood supports for that roof. Living small in a big way — We hear sustainability preached far and wide these days….but how much does it really mean […]
Creating place on a small scale–
As I write this I am sitting on a lovely covered porch perched over the Boardman River in Traverse City, Michigan. It is my home of the moment. It’s actually a coffee shop/cafe called Morsels. I recommend it for the atmosphere alone…. A home of the moment. This speaks of many things– place making at […]
http://www.ted.com/talks/ayah_bdeir_building_blocks_that_blink_beep_and_teach.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/ayah_bdeir_building_blocks_that_blink_beep_and_teach.html
Design Accessibility! See how changing play into learning can change the world. Electronics so easy to understand and USE, it’s child’s play….
Halfway to the North Pole!
Here in Sutton’s Bay, Michigan this sign proclaims: “You are SOMEWHERE”. I used to see it’s mate back in Oregon on the road to Salem, OR.
Wanting to be in Michigan instead, I would put my hand over my heart, thump it a few times…..(kinda like clicking my heels together), and think, Michigan.
AIA Advocates for the Construction Economy – Rebuild and renew!
Most people are so busy trying to save energy with their cars what they don’t realize is that buildings account for 40% of the energy use in this country. The American Institute of Architect’s [AIA] plan to lobby for a ‘Rebuild and Renew’ effort doesn’t place as great an emphasis on sustainable design as it […]
The “Technium”
Just like plants like light, and tend to lean towards it….Does Technogy lean??? That’s really the issue here.
Biology, like technology, has tendencies. Complexity, increased diversity, specialization, mutual-ism, ubiquity and sentience just to start naming a few. Turns out even computer code evolves. Microsoft Office, ubiquitous as it is, evolved code within itself. Codes created other codes with tendencies to write other codes… Tendency is probably not the right word, but ‘who knew?’.
Memory and Home ~
Why we are so deeply imprinted with memories of home? Much like salmon swimming up the streams their grandmother salmon traversed, we [may] go about recreating our sense of own unique home wherever we go. The same sense of home.
