We're huge fans of Bruce Munro's dazzling light installations, which populate fields and forests with thousands of glowing LED flowers - so we're excited to announce that the artist will be unveiling his largest project to date next year at Ayer's Rock (Uluru)! After a series of acclaimed installations around the world, Munro will be bringing his Field of Light back to the project's birthplace in the heart of the Australian red desert - and it will be entirely powered by solar energy. Field of Light Uluru is currently at the fundraising state, so if you'd like to support this epic endeavor check out the Field of Light crowd-sourcing page and donate today.

 

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If you read our enlightening “how to switch to LED bulbs” tutorial, you’ve hopefully already seen how much money and energy you can save by replacing your incandescent bulbs, but we wanted to make it even clearer how easy and effective a home light bulb makeover can be. We headed over to Brooklyn to give a light bulb overhaul to the managing editor of Inhabitots, our very own Julie Seguss! Julie is going to be a new mom in just a few months, so saving money is of the utmost importance right now, but she still wanted to keep her Park Slope home illuminated with a warm, bright glow. In just a few hours, the Inhabitat lighting makeover crew (aka Inhabitat editors Jill & Yuka) were able to swap out all of Julie’s electricity-guzzling incandescents and halogens with energy-efficient Philips LEDs, and we think you’ll be impressed with the monthly savings we tallied up for Julie at the end of the day. Check out our video above to see the whole makeover, and find out how much extra cash Julie and her husband will have after the makeover to spend on diapers and baby clothes!

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Shio is a series of extraordinary lamps crafted entirely from pure salt by Daniel MacDonald's Seattle-based Studio Shio. Inspired by the dramatic landscapes of Yellowstone Park, MacDonald harnesses the same natural physics behind the intricate mineral formations found in hot springs and geysers to craft the organic, ethereal lights. MacDonald has launched a Kickstarter campaign to expand production of the recyclable Shio series, so if you're interested in these fascinating lamps, please click through to support them!

 

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Carbon nanotubes have been used in everything from energy-free lights to oil spill clean-up technology, and now a team from Rice University has used them to develop a paint that transforms any surface into a lithium-ion battery! This transformative paint holds the potential to create a functional, rechargeable solar battery on just about any surface.

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In 2010, the London Olympic Authority announced plans to make the London 2012 Olympics the "Greenest Olympics ever" by ensuring that they were fully sustainable and carbon neutral. Now two years later, controversy has arisen over whether or not the 2012 Olympics will be able to fully live up to these goals. Read on for 6 ways that this year's summer games have failed to be 'The Green Olympics'.

 

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By now, we hope that most of you know that swapping incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs saves money and energy, but there’s still a lingering misconception that LED bulbs emit a cold, bluish light that is just not as warm or attractive as the old filament-filled bulbs we grew up with. To dispel this fallacy, we sought out a group of people with a critical eye for light bulb color and ambiance – lighting designers on the show floor of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at New York Design Week. These meticulous designers take light warmth and quality very seriously (that is their job after all), so we couldn’t think of anyone better suited to give an honest opinion about the latest generation of high-tech LED light bulbs. Watch our video above to see how we retrofitted five gorgeous designer lamps with new Philips LED light bulbs – and in the process saved $1,732.86 in energy costs and won over some designer converts to the future of LED lighting.

 

 

Connect:Homes seeks to transform contemporary prefabricated homes, and based on how the company’s debut at Dwell on Design went last weekend in Los Angeles, the company is sure on its way with the fantastic Connect 2.0. The company’s founders chose DOD to launch their company, and so far they have impressed us with this responsibly built and customizable home that could work as a studio, guest house, or even a vacation home.

 

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The Austrian designers at Hans Sapperlot have given traditional loden fabric a cool and modern twist. By creating ‘invisible’ stitches in the woolen material, they turn the simple textile into a textured wonder. Their Smok range includes chairs, lamps and carpets, but we can think of plenty of new uses for this soft and biodegradable fabric!

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Felix Groll and Felix Hardmood Beck’s Mategon reinterprets the shape and material of traditional Argentine Mate vessels, which are traditionally made from dried calabash gourds. The modern faceted cup is a clever twist on the classic South American design that takes tea drinking to a new level. We spotted Mategon at this year’s bustling DMY Berlin design fair.

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However you feel about eggs – love ‘em fried with onions, hate ‘em in anything, or are morally opposed to consuming them at all – one thing you can’t argue about is that they are an incredibly effective package for embryonic animals of all kinds. They are so successful, in fact, that female animals as diverse as birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians all evolved eggs to mature their young outside their bodies, which presents a number of evolutionary advantages (and some disadvantages; namely that mammals, especially, like to eat eggs).

The 20th floor of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria now accommodates some rather unusual residents — around 250,000 bees living on the roof of the prestigious hotel. Transported to their new midtown Manhattan digs by a Lincoln Towncar, the pollinating inhabitants of the six beehives were placed there to support the PlaNYC initiative to plant 1,000,000 new trees over the next decade. The hotel will benefit directly too, with their own in-house supply of sustainable honey!

Viennese design duo Mischer’traxler teamed up with Rozet & Fischmeister jewelers to create a beautiful line of leafy green jewelry that you can grow yourself! The beautiful organic jewelry starts as a lacy framework silver embedded with seeds instead of gems – as the seeds sprout the foliage crawls up the chain like a trellis to fill out the design.

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Polish designer Justyna Poplawska has been experimenting with light and glass for several years now. Her latest creation is a cool pendant lamp called ‘Luna’, and it looks good enough to eat! While the sugar-like material isn’t edible, it is just as sweet with its recycled glass and bio-resin structure. The stunning lamp emits a soft and calming light, creating the perfect ambience for late night dinners.

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