Icon Letter: Icon Paper + Icon Envelope (via Asobi)

As part of its overall strategy to become a carbon neutral city by 2025, Copenhagen has become the first Scandanavian city to adopt a policy that requires green roofs for all new buildings with roof slopes of less than 30 degrees. Copenhagen presently has 20,000 square meters (over 215,000 square feet) of flat roofs. It is hoped that as much as 5,000 square meters of new development each year will be covered with vegetation.

Read the rest of Copenhagen Adopts a Mandatory Green Roof Policyhttp://www.inhabitat.com/wp-admin/ohttp://www.inhabitat.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=better_feedptions-general.php?page=better_feed

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", building requirements, Carbon Neutral City, copenhagen, Green Building, green design, green roof policy, Green roofs in Copenhagen, living roof, scandinavia, sustainabel design, vegetated roof

1. don’t make anything evil. everything people love was made with love.

2. try to think of what you make as art, not a business. art inspires the heart, but business doesn’t. if it’s good, it will be worth it.

3. create in a field you’re passionate about. love music? make something related to music.

4. embrace constraints. constraints force creative thinking. tight on budget or time? awesome! don’t know a skill yet? wing it! let creativity drive you.

5. take baby steps. build a prototype first. see if that gets you excited. if it does, keep going.

6. try to take some risks. make sure you are doing at least one thing someone else says is crazy.

7. make something that you wish existed. nothing compels creativity like knowing you’ll be the only person on earth with that thing you just made.

8. stay humble. don’t let your ego let you fall in love with something too quickly. it’s probably not genius, and someone else can do it better, and that’s ok. still want to do it? good.

9. do something to make your work stand out. if you show something fresh, people will forgive some of the imperfections of your early work.

10. be a mad scientist. cross breed existing ideas. just start smashing parts of existing things together. itunes for ebay, a drum machine for a fax machine, see? 

11. take feedback. if a few people don’t get it, then lots of people won’t get it. listen to other people, and remember you always have something to learn.

12. make many different things, of various completeness. at first you’ll feel like you “never finish anything” but you’ll soon realize that this is all just practice.

13. be excited by your work. if you lose the flame, put it on the shelf and come back to it later, or just leave it forever and consider it practice!

14. have fun. if it’s not fun any more, either make it fun again, or move on to something else.

A most welcome return for Peter Kay.

A lovely idea: Google Maps envelopes (only a concept at the moment) would let you send snail mail through an button right in gmail and print evelopes showing the route between the two addresses.

Cosy Floor Lamp by Andreas Saxer. Simple. Playful. Yay.

Here is something that we want you to want – how best to do this? The hard sell. Infomercials are entertaining. We made some for the Wimbledon students during week 5.

YouTube Link

via andrezza.com

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The digital age has changed the ways in which we share our most important opinions and innermost secrets. The latter are usually reserved for our closest of acquaintances, but we don’t necessarily use the most personal approach to broach these delicate details. The combination of technology and weight of information has given us new rules for just how to break the news. Ji Lee’s 10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication is both an interesting and absurd display of the redefinition and possible redistribution of how we continue on with our most cherished connections.

Great concept for a desk or wall light, the Spoticam created by Antrepo Design Industry.  Thanks Scott!

Growing Jewelry is a redefinition of modern values. It is a clash of jewelry and gardening; couture and organism. The collection of this hand jewelry is designed for people in metropolitan cities and is an experiment in drawing nature toward man, as nature being the presupposition of life.

Even the store is awesome. Via Trend.Land

Update:  Doh!  We scooped this on our own last year.  Silly me.

Two trends are still holding strong in 2009 - the popularity of Twitter and mashups. Using only XHTML/CSS and Javascript, the clan at Quodis Labs has created a beautiful real-time visualisation of updates in the Twitterverse. Dubbed Tori’s Eye, visitors simply click each origami bird as it “flies” across your screen and read the message it’s carrying. You can always change the default search (twitpic) to anything that interests you. Truly a different and quirky way to present information.

No, these are not wooden handlebar mustaches. They’re bad ass handcrafted wooden handlebars for bikes. Check out more at Workerman and buy them on Etsy. (He also seems to make some great t-shirts).

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