The Industrial Designers Society of America has announced the 2002 winners of their Industrial Design Excellence Awards. Note the Universal Bathrooms developed by the Kelley Design Group and University at Buffalo for the National Institute of Disability & Rehabilitation Research.

“The Universal Bathroom concept uses two entries, movable fixtures and movable panels to retrofit existing bathrooms for universal design. Because many people are aging, become disabled, etc., and do not want to move from their house, retrofitting the bathroom is an economically viable and a physically easier alternative than moving to another location.”

See also the PediaPod, Automatic Public Toilet, and Universal Bedpan.

Construction has begun on a “security barrier to separate Israel from the West Bank.” BBC: “As always, it boils down to a question of land: Israel taking Palestinian land to ensure its security.... In the absence of a peace settlement, the fence has raised all the old questions about where Israel ends and the West Bank begins.” Some villages will be split in half, or annexed entirely. VOANews: Yasser Arafat “described the $220 million fence as a ‘sinful assault on our land, an act of racism and apartheid, which we totally reject.’” News24: “Veterans from both sides of the Berlin Wall say Israel’s... plan to erect 110km of fence along the West Bank will fail ultimately, much as the Cold-War divide through Berlin eventually crumbled.”

Update March 23, 2003: While the first wall proceeds apace, Israel is planning a second wall.

Email from a friend in South Korea during the 2002 World Cup:

“The new national color of Korea is red. It used to be that red stands for communists in Korea and therefore, it’s a taboo color. We used to color communists in red in all the anti-North-Korean posters. When I was young, I even thought that communists had red faces. All of sudden, red became the color for Korean soccer, thanks to ‘Red Devil,’ the non-profit national soccer cheering association. The streets are filled with people wearing red T-shirts with ‘The Reds’ writing. I guess red is no longer a taboo.”

“Liberation Graphics began actively collecting Palestinian posters in 1974 and now houses what many experts believe to be the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Palestinian-published and Palestinian solidarity poster art.”

“Edwin Datschefski specialises in the development and promotion of sustainable product design concept.” His site Greener by Design has a couple of interesting lists of environmentally friendly products. My favorite: the ice cream cone as an example of edible packaging.

From Peter Hall:

“The news has become a worrisome visitor in our lives over the last few months, and it arrives in an ever-increasing variety of forms. TV news, according to one recent survey, still reaches most households, but text-based news provides the supplementary information — on web sites, newspapers, email, palmtop bulletins and even zipper signs. A cursory glance at this particularly rich array of printed and transmitted words reveals a genre of media in flux — the typography of news. Typography was never more important to us, and yet never less noticed.”

See also The News Aesthetic.

Found via xblog.

“GAIA is an expanding international alliance of individuals, non-governmental organization, community-based organizations, academics and others working to end the incineration of all forms of waste and to promote sustainable waste prevention and discard management practices. Since GAIA members are committed both to ending incineration and to promoting alternative safe, economical and just discard management systems, the name GAIA represents both a Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance and a Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.”

Some links about the “Diggers of the Underground Planet,” a group of urban adventurers exploring the tunnels beneath Moscow. Discoveries include a 3,000 seat bunker under a cathedral, deserted chemical warfare labs, ancient stashes of skulls, alternative housing, a ring of metro stations never used by the public, and possibly a mass grave from the Stalin era.

Found via Metafilter.

“The materials we use to build our buildings and the energy we consume to keep them comfortable take a tremendous toll on the environment. Since 1989, [the National Resources Defense Council] has showcased green features, including energy-efficient lighting and appliances and innovative building components, in each of our four offices. Now we work to make green design standard practice. We educate developers about environmental technologies and promote incentives for using them. We develop energy-efficiency and other green standards for buildings and fight for their adoption. We also work with homebuilders to develop forest-friendly building techniques to save wood in residential construction. And soon we will open a green design museum in our new state-of-the art Los Angeles office.”

“This is the story of brick producers and their families in Eastern Sudan, living in a context where brick production traditionally is in the hands of middle-class businessmen, who reap the main profits and pay little to the workers. [Intermediate Technology Development Group’s] project interventions gave support to a group of workers from the peri-urban village of Shambob to manage their own brick enterprise. Technological capacity-building aimed to improve brick quality, increase energy efficiency, and establish production in order to meet the demand of urban markets. The establishment of a formal co-operative assisted in small enterprise development. The significant rise in incomes, increased asset base and improved linkages with local markets and public sector bodies, has enabled the members of Shambob community to establish a primary school and improved health services. As relationships and development interventions have broadened women in the village have become co-operative members, acquired donkey carts and are now making an income from transporting and selling water.”