Big fans of artistic expression should check out these creatively painted wind turbines whose cylindrical towers stay green even when they’re multicolored.

Modern wind turbines pose unique challenges for artists: they’re outside, the “canvas” is an exceptionally tall tube, and anything visible from a distance requires a whole LOT of paint. Even so, painting wind turbines provides benefits beyond merely the aesthetic. These painted wind turbine towers from Germany, a world leader in green power, were snapped by Flickr member 100ee-Regionen in early October of 2008.

Finding Fine Folk Art in Findhorn

The ecovillage of Findhorn, in Moray, Scotland, was established in 1962 as “an international center for holistic learning, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future.” Along with solar panels mounted on building roofs, a nearby wind farm on the shore of the North Sea provides clean and green power to the sustainable ecovillage. “As we see from this fanciful painting on a wind turbine,” to quote the community’s website, “the sacred and mundane are interpenetrating realities at Findhorn.”

Artist Lisa Shaw, assisted by local groups of children and adults, painted murals on three of the Findhorn wind park’s turbine towers after they were installed in 2006. The murals combine educational ecological themes with a pleasing folk-art sensitivity that encourages community members to fully embrace sustainable electric power.

Milk of Human Windness

It seems Michael Schmidt, “the courageous man fighting the dairy board and health department for the right to distribute raw, whole milk,” according to Flickr member andres musta, has another claim to fame: his wind turbine.

This charming and pastoral painted wind turbine was captured by the photographer in August of 2007 and is located at Schmidt’s 100-acre “herdshare” (kinda like a timeshare but with cows and without annoying sales-people) at Glencolton Farms in Durham, Ontario, Canada.

Lemme Atom!

Towering (literally) over Wakasu Kaihin Park, you’ll easily find this 100 meter (330 ft) tall wind power generator in Tokyo’s Koto ward. The giant turbine – one of the largest in Japan and/or in any large urban area – is rated at 1,950 kilowatts of electricity. Bring on the typhoons!

Painted images of Astro Boy (“Mighty Atom” in translated Japanese) and associated characters created by anime legend Osamu Tezuka rise more than halfway up the turbine’s tower. Astro Boy made his first manga appearance in 1952 and the turbine was painted sometime after the tower was erected in 2004. Pink Tentacle profiled this er, windmill with character(s) in October of 2009.

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Blades Of Allegory 10 Artistic Painted Wind Turbines

Why stay tethered to the grid in a fixed location when you could live in a compact mobile pod that can be transported to the location of your choice? These modern capsules are what 21st-century off-grid dreams are made of, ranging from spacious self-sustaining retreats to accordion-like expanding shelters that are lightweight enough to tow behind a bicycle.

Tricycle House

Made mostly out of folded polypropylene, ‘Tricycle House’ by People’s Industrial Design Office is lightweight enough to be towed around like a bike trailer. The house can be expanded like an accordion to increase the space inside or make it more compact for travel. Translucent walls let in daylight and all amenities within – including a sink, stove, bath tub, water tank and transforming furniture – is manually powered. The firm also makes ‘tricycle gardens’ to tow alongside the house.

Egg-Like Ecocapsule

Shaped like a massive egg, the Ecocapsule by Nice Architects is a tiny off-grid living pod that’s equipped with all the comforts of home, including a bed, hot showers, flushing toilets and the capability to cook. Powered by solar panels and a built-in turbine, with a back-up battery for cloudy and still days, it can be shipped, air-lifted or towed and fits into a standard shipping container.

Diogene Hut by Renzo Piano

Designed by architect Renzo Piano for the Vitra campus in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, the Diogene cabin offers 80 square feet for an individual occupant as a “voluntary place of retreat.” Photovoltaic panels and a rainwater retention tank make it self-sufficient, and it’s highly portable. There’s just enough room inside for a bed, table and chair.

Portable Retreat with a Roof Hatch

Three hinged panels open this two-level off-grid retreat to the sky on both the top and bottom floors, enhancing the occupant’s connection to whatever environment they’ve chosen. This mobile wooden shelter by Allergutendinge features a bunch of fold-down elements, hidden storage and a bed that doubles as a staircase to the loft.

Camouflage Stacked Wood Cabin

This ‘invisible hut’ looks like no more than a stack of logs when it’s all closed up, but a hatch on one side drops down to become the terrace for a rustic cabin. The Yeta Log Cabin by Lab Zero can be set up virtually anywhere, and as small and minimal as it is, it comes complete with a kitchen, shower, toilet and solar panels.

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Mobile Modern Modular 15 Capsules For Off Grid Living

The entire city is your power source with an innovative gadget by designer Dennis Siegel that harvests energy from electromagnetic fields and instantly recharges batteries. These ‘energy parasites’ make use of electromagnetic fields produced as a result of information transfer, or as byproducts of electric equipment, from power lines to coffee machines.

In a series of images, Siegel holds out the device to gather energy from home appliances and power plants, even hovering creepily beside a cell phone user. An LED light on top of the device will let you know that electromagnetic fields are nearby, and even how strong they are.

The energy gathered is stored in a conventional battery, so you can gain ‘redundant’ energy from the power supply of all kinds of electronics and then use the battery to power something else.

Siegel created two types of harvesters, one suitable for frequencies below 100Hz, like those produced by home electronics and appliances, and one for higher frequencies like radio broadcast, Bluetooth and WLAN. Imagine if this capability could be built into devices like smartphones, so you never had to worry about losing your charge while out and about.

via Pop Up City

Soon, you’ll be able to charge your iPhone at strategic locations around New York City – but you’ll have to put in a little leg work. The Charge Cycle is a stationary bike equipped with an iPhone dock, so users can charge their phones with the power of their own muscles, without plugging into the grid.

The Kickstarter-based project by David Krawczyk and Navjot Kaur aims to get at least 30 of these bikes out into the city where anyone can use them by early May 2013. Prototypes have already been placed around New York in locations like Washington Square Park, Zuccotti Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The bike is equipped with micro-USB, 30-pin and 8-pin adapters, so virtually anyone can charge their phones. It takes about the same amount of time cycling as it does plugging into a wall charger to charge up a phone, since most phones have built-in charge limiting functions to prevent overheating. The Charge Cycle will be free for public use.

To use it, you attach your phone to an adapter ad secure it to the bike with a silicone band. A 10-segment LED display bar tells you how much charge you’ve accumulated as you pedal. The basket in the front holds your belongings as you ‘ride’. Watch the video above to see it in action.

Want to support this project? Check out the Charge Cycle Kickstarter page.

Apartment buildings as thin as blades, towers topped with wind turbines, sky-high viewing platforms that gather energy from visitors’ movements: are these unlikely-seeming designs a glimpse at the skyscrapers of the future, or just fanciful concepts that will remain unrealized? While some are just dreams, others are actually in progress, and a few narrowly missed becoming a reality – because they were just a tad ‘too intense’.

Singapore Scotts Tower by OMA

(images via: world architecture news)

By eliminating most of the lower floors of this 36-story residential tower for Singapore, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has created a design that looks almost as if it’s floating. The Scotts Tower was to feature 68 high-end apartment units with panoramic views of the city from its location on Scotts Road. It includes four individual volumes attached to a central core, lifting the living areas above ground level to provide communal leisure activities at the base. OMA’s design has been replaced by a new one from UNStudio.

Incheon Tower by Francois Blanciak

(images via: blanciak)

What would otherwise be a fairly standard, if a bit skinny, tower is transformed into something jaw-dropping with the addition of a knot shape near the pinnacle. Francois Blanciak Architecture gave the Incheon Tower this unusual feature in order to make the tower seem longer than the maximum height of 450 meters which is regulated by the city of Incheon in South Korea. The space provided by the knot will not only give visitors a panoramic view of the city, but will also feature a large outdoor terrace.

Vertical Omotesando by Wai Think Tank

(images via: archdaily)

Wai Think Tank’s proposal for the Fashion Museum Competition at Tokyo’s chic Omotesando Street is a 100-meter-high tower with volumes of various sizes and shapes that give the appearance of stacked boxes. Each of these volumes acts as a floating boutique. In addition to museum space and retail shops, the tower includes administrative offices, a runway and a skybox.

Convection Slum by Atelier UM+D Architecture

(images via: render 4d)

Among the winners of the 2009 eVOLO skyscraper competition, the Convection Slum tower for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil envisions a new, modern home for the residents of one of the nation’s largest slums. The tower addresses the pressing need for inhabitable land, providing not just housing but also integrated food-growing gardens. The tower would be built gradually according to the needs of its residents, adding volumes for education, trade, culture, sports and other uses.

Alternative Tower for MoMA 53W53 by Axis Mundi

(images via: dezeen)

What if you scooped up all of the different forms of architecture that can be found on any given city block, and threw them together into one tower? It might look something like this: the Alternative Tower for MoMA at 53 West 53rd Street in Manhattan, by Axis Mundi Architecture. The tower is essentially a vertical neighborhood, envisioning the 73-story expansion of the Museum of Modern Art as a diverse community turned on its side. The outside is covered in references to the art treasures held within, like Andy Warhol’s infamous Marilyn Monroe portrait.

Grenelle Tower by AZC Architecture

(images via: architizer)

Reminiscent of the tunnels in an ant or termite nest, hollowed-out areas with transparent glass run through the Grenelle Tower by Atelier Zündel & Cristea (AZC) Architecture. These large atriums are bright and sunny enough to enable trees to grow inside. Say the architects, “Within this solid and uniform texture, we applied a dynamic formation process utilizing an empty tube of manifold geometry. In motion, this cavity becomes a generator of space, a dynamic, fluctuating, and evolving construct. Its topology will help us delineate such properties as proximity, contiguity, continuity. More concretely, we are able to liken the tower to the diversity of the city: the uniform fabric of Parisian homes, the rapid transportation network, the squares, the parks, the avenues, the public meeting places of Parisians known and renowned.”

IABR Parallel Cases – Lotto Turm by Lars Behrendt

(images via: architizer)

A Jenga-like configuration of solid and hollow volumes, the IABR Paralell Cases – Lotto Turm tower by architecture student Lars Behrendt is a playful idea for a lot in Stuttgart, Germany that is currently used for parking. Taking this prime land and giving it back to the people, the design consists of 55 stacked shipping containers that can be re-arranged as the needs of the community change. Open to the public, the building features a park, terraces, a capsule hotel and various types of entertainment.

EcoPods by Eric Höweler

(images via: dezeen)

A stalled construction project could be used to generate clean, renewable energy in the EcoPods concept by Boston architects Howeler + Yoon and Los Angeles digital designers Squared Design Lab. The unfinished building at Downtown Crossing could serve as a skeleton for a series of parasitic, modular pods that grow algae for biofuel. Robotic arms powered by that biofuel would constantly arrange and re-arrange the pods to ensure optimal growing conditions, and ideally the pods could be moved to a new site once the construction project is re-started.

COR by Oppenheim Architecture & Design

(images via: archdaily)

Built-in wind turbines take advantage of the height of this innovative tower design by Oppenheim Architecture. Located in Miami’s Design District, the COR tower is a sustainable mixed-use development that gets much of its power from wind energy and sola rpanels, and also features solar hot water generation. Large circular openings covering multiple floors throughout the facade give the tower a polka-dotted appearance.

PTTEP Headquarters by Hassell Pty Ltd

(images via: hassell studio)

You might not associate carpets of lush green grass, fresh air and bright sunlight with petroleum exploration, but the employees of Bangkok’s PTTEP (national petroleum exploration company) certainly do now that they’re working in this stunning office space every day. This competition-winning design by Hassell features a number of large open-plan workspaces that place an emphasis on the enjoyment of nature.

Stone Towers by Zaha Hadid

(images via: dezeen)

Surprisingly organic and yet fittingly monolithic for the setting, Zaha Hadid’s Stone Towers rise like an artificial forest in Egypt’s capital city of Cairo. The towers, which bend and curve, were inspired by the patterns and textures of Egyptian stonework. Each curve was carefully designed to create patterns of sunlight and shade throughout the office complex.

Cloud Over London

(images via: world architecture news)

Designed for the London Olympics in 2012, ‘Cloud Over London’ is a concept for an energy-producing ‘cloud’ of inflatable, light-emitting spheres attached to towers with spiraling ramps that bring visitors to the top. The idea is that the bubbles will grow and reproduce based on crowd demand expressed through social media like Twitter and Facebook. Visitors can walk or bike to the top, and the energy produced by the way back down can be converted into electricity by elevators with regenerative braking. Inside the ‘cloud’ itself will be a variety of LED displays transmitting data like energy use, spectator numbers and decibel levels, which can be seen from all over London.

Jury Berkeley Court in Dublin by Henning Larsen

(images via: henninglarsen.com)

A super-skinny skyscraper resembling a blade was set to be built in Dublin, but was ultimately rejected for being “too intense.” Jury Berkeley Court was to be a 37-story skyscraper with leisure facilities, offices and over 500 apartments. Designed by Henning Larsen, the tower would certainly have been a departure from most of the architecture currently found in the city.

Russia Tower by Foster + Partners

(images via: world architecture news)

It would have been the tallest tower in Europe, a stunning statement of modernity in Russia’s capital city. Rising over 2,000 feet into the air, Russia Tower by Foster + Partners was due to be completed by 2012, but credit issues and lack of funds stalled it for years, even after ground was broken. Though the architecture firm is said to be very disappointed, many Russians aren’t too sad to see the project fail. Says Professor Eugene Asse of the Moscow Institute of Architecture, “It would dominate over Moscow skyline as a terrible symbol of bureaucracy, national complexes, the Mayor’s ambitions and high prices of oil. Since I hate all these symbolic issues I’m really happy that it will never be built. Construction of the parking garage instead of the highest tower in Europe is also a rather symbolic action which demonstrates modest victory of the common sense over senseless pathos.”