5 Shipping Containers + 3,0000 acres = Retreat

Cinco Camp, Roger Black’s West Texas retreat, is made of five shipping containers on his 3,000-acre ranch. “I wanted something that blends into the landscape and could be installed and eventually removed with minimal disturbance to the environment,” he said. Here's the NYT slideshow of Black's retreat.

Here's the NYT article relating the details of the project.

Rare Orchid Discovered on Eastern Shore

The "B'More Green" column in the Baltimore Sun provides this delightful story. Read it slowly. For those environmentally oriented, it is sheer poetry. It's here. Platanthera x canbyi: fewer than a dozen of these plants have been found in the last 70 years.

FAR FOOD

Click on image to enlarge.

A way to consider the real cost of food to the environment. Far Foods is an alternative packaging concept for supermarket produce, highlighting the distances that some foods travel and the resultant carbon dioxide released during the journey. The receipt features a boarding card style tear-off strip. By James Reynolds.

(via swiss-miss.com)

An Incomparable Chair Blog

For all of us who love them, the best chair blog, ev-ah. HERE.

First Floating Wetland Education Center

The Elizabeth River in Virginia is one of the most polluted in the country, but help is on the way. The University of Virgina School of Architecture (UVA) has established the Learning Barge as the first floating wetlands learning center in the country. There is a good podcast interview with founder of the project, Phoebe Crisman here explaining the ambitious goals of project and the dire situation of the river (the Crisman interview begins at 00:15:15).

Where others have placed structures directly on the wetlands, UVA decided to put people on the river. Floating on the river, one experiences the full impact of the river crisis and its effect on the wetlands. One begins to grasp the larger picture. A terrific idea.