Tag Archives: New York

Mushroom stuffed houses

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In Green Island NY, a company called Ecovative Design, has developed building materials derived from mushrooms. The company makes mycelium-based bioplastics and hopes to one day replace the world’s plastics with natural organisms such as fungi. There are a number of advantages to using the mushrooms over the conventional insulation. These  advantages include resistance to fire and settling, air-tight seal formation and no toxins.

What sparks our fire: A green and edible alternative to inefficient and toxic building material.

Will this trend catch on?

Enjoy!

-Canopy Team

Tweet maps

Locals vs Tourists

Languages used

Smart phones used

Eric Fischer and MapBox generated amazing visual maps made of metadata from 280 million New York tweets going back to 2011. The first, maps tweets sent by locals (those in NY for more than one month) and tourists (those in NY for less than one month). Popular tourist tweet locations included the World Trade Center site, the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Ferries and Staten Island Ferry. The next map captured the languages used in tweets. Although English and Spanish topped the list, the remainder included a wide variety of languages. The last map displayed that the majority of tweets were sent using iPhone and Android mobile devices.

What sparked our fire: The visual representation of social media.

What other social media data would you like to see visually represented?

Enjoy!

-Canopy Team

Pentagram gives NYC Beaches a Post-Sandy makeover

Last summer, Hurricane Sandy hit New York, heavily damaging the city’s coastline. To combat this, Pentagram’s Paula Scher was tasked with getting people back to the beaches without building big structures to guide them. This was no small undertaking. Follow the link to reveal her solution. Click here to reveal her solution. What sparks our fire:  The idea that “good design is mostly about being nice to people.”   – Paula Scher What do you admire most about Paula’s technique?

Enjoy!

-Canopy Team

Examples of Paula’s work

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