If we could just get beyond pesky hiccups like catastrophic climate change and wanting to obliterate each other with nuclear weapons, we humans could learn from our mistakes and create a future that’s actually cooler and more sustainable than anything we dreamed up during the 20th century. Making the most of microalgae, one of the most ancient and prolific organisms on earth, we could produce abundant clean energy and healthy foods while also reducing the amount of CO2 in the air and producing more oxygen. These designs show just how this symbiotic process could manifest in our lives.

Living Chandelier Filled with Algae

Embedded with LED bulbs and sustained by daylight, ‘Exhale’ by Julian Melchiorri is a living chandelier with beautiful glass components filled with various shades of green algae. The glass ‘leaves’ take in CO2 from the room and release oxygen, too, making it a striking air purifier. Melchiorri is a designer and engineer, but he’s also a leading biochemical technology researcher, and he’s been working on his ‘artificial leaf’ concept for years.

‘Algae Green Loop’ Proposal for Chicago’s Marina City Towers

Architecture office Influx Studio imagines a dramatic makeover for the Marina City Towers in Chicago, retrofitting them to absorb CO2 through loops of bioreactors to help mitigate climate change. The closed-loop system sequesters carbon from the air, absorbs it through vegetal photosynthesis and produces its own energy through the same wind turbines that suck in CO2 and through the algae bioreactors that process it.

Photosynthetic Algae Furnishings

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‘Living Things’ is a series of bio-powered furnishings exploring ‘symbiotic living,’ his which micro-algae help light up our homes. Presented in a series of vignettes, the project contains furniture and lamps that are both beautiful and beneficial. “The morphologies of hand-blown glass vessels function both as lighting and heating elements for the human occupants, and high functioning photobioreactors which provide heat, light, agitation, air supply nutrient and waste control to the living algae inside.”

World’s First Algae-Powered Building

Lots of concepts tout the ability to power an entire building on algae, but have you ever actually seen one built? BIQ House in Hamburg, Germany by Austrian firm Splitterwerk features the world’s first iso-adaptive facade in the form of algae-filled glass panels shading the southeast and southwest faces of the building. The algae is sourced from a nearby tributary of the Elbe River and constantly changes color as it grows. The panes produce biomass as the algae multiplies, and reduce the amount of energy needed for cooling inside the building.

Living Portraits Made with Microscopic Algae

Living algae cultured in petri dishes clump together to form images in a living twist on traditional photography techniques. Artist and researcher Lia Giraud places a mix of chemical nutrients in the dish and exposes them to an image, and the cells react to the light and form solids of various densities, resulting in the different shades of green that produce the image.

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Its Alive 14 Algae Powered Inventions For Food Light Energy Oxygen

Even while it feels like certain things are moving backward, efforts to power the world with solar energy instead of fossil fuels continue to reach for the sky, innovating advancements that make a renewable future more achievable. Tesla’s Solar Roof tiles are about to become commercially available, flexible solar panels are cheaper and more efficient than ever, we’re several steps closer to transparent solar power-producing windows and there’s even a product so thin and tiny it’s called ‘solar glitter.’

Solar Blinds by SolarGap

Designed with apartment-dwellers in mind, these smart solar blinds are inexpensive, easy to install, and work best when the blinds are open. If you have a window that gets a little too sunny at some point in the day, these could be an ideal gadget to reduce your electricity costs by up to 70 percent. They work best on the outside of your window, producing up to 100 watts of electricity, which is enough for one window to charge your laptop. You can use a smart app to control the blinds and monitor how much power they’re producing.

Plug and Play Smart Flower Solar Device

The Smart Flower features solar panel ‘petals’ that unfurl at sunrise, automatically directing themselves toward the sun and continuing to move throughout the day for optimal placement to produce 40 percent more energy than a static solar panel setup. Taking its inspiration from the shape of a sunflower, the smartflowerPOP will juice you up with 3,400 to 6,300 KWH per year.

World’s Largest Solar Storage Facility Works 24/7

Tesla and SolarCity opened a 13 MW solar far in Kauai, Hawaii featuring 54,978 solar panels and a 52 MWh battery bank, large enough to run twenty-four hours a day and provide up to 44 percent of the island’s power, compared to its 92 percent dependence on fossil fuel in 2011.

Wattway: The World’s First Solar Panel Road

There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of a solar panel roadway, the first and foremost being that integrating an emerging technology into infrastructure may not be the best idea for long-term success. Solar power is rapidly changing, and the tech used for France’s ‘Wattway’ and similar projects will likely soon be obsolete, not to mention the probability of the panels being damaged. But The idea could still have weight for some applications, and Wattway is expected to generate 280MWh per year.

Solar Glitter Can Make Almost Anything Solar-Powered

An innovation called Dragon SCALEs by Sandia National Laboratories acts like solar glitter, shrinking solar panels down to tiny, flexible snowflake-inspired cells that could theoretically be applied to just about anything. Making use of recent advancements in micro design and micro fabrication, the panels can be folded like paper, rapidly and cheaply installed, and turn just about any object into a solar power generator.

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The Skys The Limit 14 Promising New Advancements In Solar Power

Off-grid housing is almost always relegated to remote areas due to strict urban building codes and access to affordable land, but sometimes self-contained structures pop up in parks, on rooftops and in canals anyway – or the owners of more conventional city dwellings simply cut the cord. There are already a lot of different ways to go off-grid in the city, most explored by necessity due to poverty, others seeking a more sustainable way of life without giving up community and convenience. From rooftop structures and mobile housing to entirely new self-powered city blocks, these solutions work within cities that already exist rather than envisioning expensive futuristic eco-cities from the ground up.

The Mobiators

Somewhere between a DIY cabin, a tent and a mobile home, this strange structure by The Mobiation Project travels through Amsterdam, setting up in locations all over the city as a statement about the increasingly broken global economy and damage to the environment. Built by an artist/architect and a carpenter/designer, The Mobi-01 acts as an interactive, inhabitable, ‘open-house’ example of an off-grid structure that can set up virtually anywhere.

Off-Grid Rooftop Penthouse in Canada

Reclaiming the rooftop space atop urban structures isn’t a new idea, but it’s rare to see them disconnected from the power grid, like this former mechanical room on a 19-floor office building in Edmonton, Canada. Architect Vivian Manasc saw potential in the structure when doing a technical evaluation of the building, and ultimately transformed it into a home for herself. The home horseshoes around an existing elevator core, which warms the space passively, and gets its power from solar panels.

Free Off Grid Camping on a NYC Rooftop

Bivouac is a pop-up campsite rotating to different rooftop spots around New York City, consisting of little more than six waterproof canvas tents with wooden frames and wool floor mats, a kitchen area with a table, and a small library. There’s no internet, electricity or showers, and you can’t have a campfire, but at least there’s access to a toilet within the building. It’s entirely free, and an interesting concept, though one wonders what this project says about accessing urban spaces when you’re well-off just for fun versus the tent cities created by homeless people who have nowhere else to go.

Off-Grid Urban Block for Dallas, Texas

What if entire city blocks could be designed to power themselves, built in areas that were previously disused, like former industrial properties or rail yards? Winner of the Re:Vision Dallas competition, ‘Forwarding Dallas’ envisions a complex of living spaces inspired by rolling hills, with vegetation-covered roofs, solar panels, wind turbines, and passive solar louvers covering the building’s glass facades to regulate heat. The block also has its own rooftop water catchment system, a greenhouse, a swimming pool and other communal spaces. The 40,000-square-meter complex could sustainably house 854 people within the space of a typical city block.

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Urban Off Grid 12 Creative Solutions For Self Sustainability In The City

Well, here’s one way to get some exercise and simultaneously enjoy views of a beautiful city without getting rained on or dealing with traffic.  Gliding along the surface of the Seine in Paris, past such landmarks as the Notre Dame Cathedral, ‘The Paris Navigating Gym’ gets most of its power from the humans operating the stationary bicycles inside. Supplemented by rooftop solar panels, the boat is designed to be a mobile exercise facility and relaxing tour of the city all at once, separated from the noise and chaos of the streets.

Architect Carlo Ratti collaborated with fitness manufacturing company Technogym, non-profit Terreform ONE and urban generation institute URBEM to develop the project. Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, which describes itself as ‘urban imagination and social innovation through design & science,’ Ratti aims to explore the potential of power generation through the movement of human bodies.

The boat itself is pretty cool, accommodating up to 45 people on the bikes and other fitness equipment made by Technogym. As they work out, they can keep track of how much energy they’re producing as well as their fitness progress. An inverter converts the pedal power into utility grade electricity, powering the electronic elements of the equipment and propelling the boat. Excess energy is fed into the grid.

The design of the boat is based on that of Bateaux Mouches, ferry boats for tourists that have dotted the Seine for nearly a century. The panoramic glass facades looking out onto the water sure beat the views of parking lots and televisions at most local gyms.

Tiny phone chargers that you slide onto your keyring, store on your belt buckle or snap onto the spokes of your bike can help feed your addiction to technology when wall chargers aren’t available. Since most of us can’t go ten minutes without using our phones, staying juiced up is crucial. These 12 offbeat and innovative portable cell phone chargers use everything from kinetic energy to boiling water to make sure you’re never cut off from your emergency contacts and all of your favorite apps.

World’s Smallest Emergency Phone Charger

Shaped like a gasoline can, the tiniest cell phone charger yet fits easily onto your key ring and provides an extra 20-30 minutes of talk time or a few hours of standby time per charge. It plugs directly into your phone and can hold its own charge for 1-3 months between uses.

Siva Cycle: Pedal Power Charger

A compact gadget snaps onto any bicycle within minutes to harness the kinetic energy you create while you ride. You can either plug your phone or any other USB-powered device directly into it, or store the energy in a detachable battery pack. The creators envision it as the perfect solution for bike commuters who miss out on the phone-charging time that other commuters get in the car.

Belt Buckle Phone Charger

An ordinary-looking belt buckle pops off and plugs into the wall to charge your cell phone. The Volt Buckle eliminates the problem of being unable to carry a charger without a purse or bag of some sort, keeping it as compact as possible. A hook on the belt ensures that your pants stay up while your phone is charging.

Flame Stower: Charging with Fire

Going a step beyond solar power, the Flame Stower is a portable phone charger designed with campers and hikers in mind. One end of the charger is placed in a campfire, and the other connected to your cell phone. Any flame source will do, so you can also use BBQ grills or candles.

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Juice To Go 13 Ultra Portable Phone Charger Designs