MNN - Mother Nature Network

Core77 takes a dip in +Pool, an audacious, ingenious public swimming pool concept designed to literally float in New York City's East River, a polluted waterway "lined at the bottom with cement-shoe-wearing mob informers." Explains the project's Kickstarter page: "The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality." 

 

Curbed embarks on an ironic shopping trip, picking up "Six Fascinating Lawn and Garden Products from As Seen on TV." First on this illustrious list? Aqua Globes, naturally. 

 

TreeHugger saddles up to the When Nature Calls Urinal, a pee-filtering, plant-feeding urinal concept from designer Eddie Gandelman. Although the concept — "approved by a professor of toxicology" and geared to "make the very notion of urination a better experience" — is meant for public applications, I'm sure it would come in handy in households with plenty of dudes and a need for extra greenery. 

 

Fast Company rattles off "Nine Example of Whacky Container Architecture." All nine are just a small sampling of what's on display (in mostly photographic form) at Container Architecture, an exhibition at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf in Germany. Writes Suzanne Labarre: "The show argues that for architects, shipping containers represent the best instincts of globalization. They’re cheap, strong, standardized, stackable, and available anywhere in the world."

 

The Los Angeles Times welcomes the newly opened Seed Library of Los Angeles where members "borrow seeds, grow plants and allow a plant or two to go to seed at the end of the season." Asks SLOLA founding member Sarah Spitz: "What could be more poetic and life-sustaining than a seed library?" 

 

CasaSugar lusts after 10 lovely DIY headboards crafted from wood of the salvaged variety — think barnwood, fences, pallets, and even old doors. 

 

Mocoloco marvels at Martín Azúa's Inner Life Chair an odd- and somewhat uncomfortable-looking seat that "can harbor life of both vegetal and animalistic character." From looking at the prototype photos, it's essentially a dining room chair with a giant plant sprouting out of the side and a turtle habitat underneath.

 

The New York Times takes to the rooftops on a tour of four of the Big Apple's finest, scrappiest "urban pastorals." Writes Penelope Green: "These doughty survivors tell stories of a time when 'green roof' wasn’t a buzz term or a reason for a tax credit, when Brooklyn hipsters weren’t farming acres of kale on tops of warehouses and when the owners of multimillion-dollar SoHo penthouses weren’t laying in multimillion-dollar 'instant' gardens, as one longtime SoHo renter and roof gardener put it."

 

Jetson Green shares news that Water-Based Acrylic Alkyd Technology, a new VOC-eliminating paint technology from Sherwin Williams that swaps petroleum-based oil for soybean oil and recycled PET, has won a 2011 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in the Designing Greener Chemicals category from the Environmental Protection Agency. This innovative formula uses 320,000 pounds of soybean oil and 250,000 pounds of PET while saving 1,000 barrels of oil.