What Building Tree Houses Teach us About Sustainable Building

The basic tenets of sustainable building generally involve lists that go pretty much like this: Minimize disturbance of site, minimize energy use, zero waste, use long life-cycle materials, and above all – because smaller is better – don’t build bigger than absolutely necessary.

The Design Director of the Vermont-based period kit-home builder, Conner Homes, John Connell sees tree house building as the perfect blueprint for sustainable building– via Home Design Find

Squid Versus Shark by MATTY8080

A good fight should be awesome. An awesome fight should be great.

Have majestic squids ever wrestled with vicious sharks? And I am not referring to anything ever televised on the Sci-Fi Channel. I’m talking about real squid and real sharks and real, true fury — via Etsy

Omega Hour Vision Blue

The Omega Hour Vision Blue wristwatch is a special edition of the Hour Vision watch, part of Omega’s De Ville collection. The Hour Vision is a neat watch because the beauty of the movement is visible through the sapphire crystal case back as well as through sapphire glass apertures in the side of the watch case — via Perpetuelle.com Blog

Basel Preview: Perrelet Big Central Moonphase

Perrelet’s latest timepiece places the moonphase display front and center and scales it up dramatically for maximum effect. Developed and manufactured by the group’s affiliate, MHVJ, (Manufacture horlogère Vallée de Joux). The Big Central Moonphase combines a striking appearance with precision — via WatchTime

International Flower Auction Store / CnT

Project, designed by Chandavarkar and Thacker Architects, picks up its expression from the spirit of flower, a strong form that hovers above the ground and rests on slender supports. Slopes and berms dematerialise the wall to accent the hovering forms of metal sheet roof resting on slender steel columns. Given the slopping nature of eucalyptus wooded site and the large volume and scale of the required warehouse spaces, the programme is partly submerged so that it does not harshly impose on site — via ArchDaily

A Lange & Sohne Saxonia Dual Time

Presented last month at SIHH 2011 show, the new A Lange & Sohne Saxonia Dual Time is the first GMT watch in the Saxonia range of dressy timekeepers.

Powered by Lange’s in-house Caliber L086.2 automatic movement, the watch features a standard for this type of gadgets dial layout, which makes it easy to grasp its readings with a momentary glance — via World Watch Review

Shaken-Baby Syndrome Faces New Questions in Court

There are two irreconcilable versions of how that calm shattered. Rueda says that Noah was crying, and she picked him up, sat on the couch and gave him the bottle to help put him to sleep. While she was feeding him, she felt Noah’s arm go limp, and when she moved to take the bottle out of his mouth, he made a sound that she didn’t recognize. I could tell something was happening, she says. She stood up and put Noah on her shoulder, patting him on the back. As I did this, his body tensed up in a ball. It was as if he was looking for air, and he couldn’t breathe. Rueda put Noah on the floor and started CPR, at the same time reaching for her phone to call 911. She put the dispatcher on speakerphone so she could keep tending to Noah. I said, ‘Please, please get someone here’, she said. I knew it could hurt him if there wasn’t enough oxygen going to his brain.

Erin Whitmer’s account of the moments before Noah lost consciousness is entirely different. Around 2:30 on April 20, 2009, Noah was shaken, she wrote on her blog Noah’s Road, on the one-year anniversary of the incident. He’d been crying. He needed something that his day care provider wasn’t providing him. Maybe he was tired of lying on the mat where she’d had him. Maybe he needed a hug, a laugh, a kind touch. Instead, she picked him up, her fingers gripping him tightly, feeling the softness of his velour pants and his cotton onesie under her fingers, and she shook him.

Whitmer’s account of what Rueda must have done to Noah was based on evidence presented at Rueda’s trial and information from the doctors who treated him after he was rushed to Inova Fairfax Hospital. The doctors gave Noah a CT scan, which showed subdural haemorrhaging (bleeding in a space between the skull and the brain) and an ophthalmological exam revealed retinal haemorrhaging (bleeding at the back of the eyes). Also, his brain was swelling. For decades, these have been the three telltale signs linked to the kind of child abuse commonly called shaken-baby syndrome — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Hottest night on record, but relief only hours away

The southerly buster bringing a cool change to Sydney has finally arrived, dropping temperatures by 10 degrees in an hour to end a record week-long heatwave.

Since about 2pm, the temperature in the city has fallen to about 26 degrees – lower than the overnight minimum of 27.6 degrees which was the hottest night ever recorded in Sydney. — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Blue Ridge Farmhouse Addition / Robert Gurney Architect

Standing prominently on a hilltop just outside Washington, Virginia, the eighteenth century farmhouse is surrounded by five hundred acres of farmland providing vantage point views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The owners desired an addition, designed by Robert Gurney Architect, to their beloved farmhouse that would bring the outside in and enable them to share the landscape and its changing seasons with friends and family. In addition to entertaining, the owners, who enjoy gardening and horseback riding, required an area to clean up after days spent outdoors. It was also their experience of entry and threshold, both in the daily utilitarian sense and in a more occasional formal sense, which needed to be clarified — via ArchDaily

Letter O by JennSki

Spell out your child’s name with my A-Z letters!

These digital prints are made available on archival quality, matte, acid-free paper, and are printed using UV-stable pigment inks. Each print is individually signed and numbered by the artist. A certificate of authenticity is also included with each print. Actual image size is 5″ x 7″ — via Etsy

BMW R100 RT

BMW’s R series is seriously challenging the Honda CB as the custom platform of choice; over the past few months, a remarkable number of stylish 70s BMW customs have been popping up in the Bike EXIF inbox. This one was built by Karles Vives of Barcelona, Spain, and it’s an RT model—which in BMW’s complicated lexicon, means it’s a tourer — via Bike EXIF

Internet Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Study Concludes

A prestigious economics think-tank of the Japanese Government has published a study which concludes that online piracy of anime shows actually increases sales of DVDs. The conclusion stands in sharp contrast with the entertainment industry’s claims that illicit downloading is leading to billions of dollars in losses worldwide. It also puts the increased anti-piracy efforts of the anime industry in doubt — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Branson School Student Commons / Turnbull Griffin Haesloop

Turnbull Griffin Haesloop designed the Branson School Student Commons in Ross, California.

The Branson School is an independent high school occupying seventeen acres of hilly terrain in the residential community of Ross, California, just north of San Francisco. The new 7,550 s.f. Student Commons building is located in a narrow glen in the center of the campus, along the pedestrian path between the upper and lower campuses — via CONTEMPORIST