A Dutch startup is making concrete that grows its own moss
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Most building materials are designed to resist the elements, to stay sealed and unchanged for as long as possible. Respyre, a Dutch startup, is working from the opposite premise. The company has developed Mosscrete, a bioreceptive concrete coating that Read More...
DeafCity Hub and the fight to build a space where sign language can live and thrive
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Sign language interpreters at rap concerts go viral for a reason. There's something genuinely arresting about watching BSL in full flight: the expressiveness, the grammar operating in three-dimensional space, a face carrying as much meaning as the hands. Read More...
Elementic's MO6 is the building material claiming to lock away carbon for thousands of years
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Lignin is the part of wood that paper mills and timber companies tend to get rid of. It comes off as a byproduct when wood is processed, resists most conventional uses, and usually ends up burned for energy. A Finnish materials startup called Elementic Read More...
How Paris uses the Seine to cool thousands of buildings without AC
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Every air conditioner does the same thing: pull heat from inside a building and dump it outside. On a hot day, millions of units doing that together push street temperatures up, which makes the next hot day worse. “Everything that requires energy releases Read More...
Architects redesign their industry labor model
The architecture profession is often glamorized as a creative and lucrative job where individual designers get their names tied to monumental construction projects. The truth is that an individual’s effort, even their whole team’s collaborative work, is attributed uniformly to the firm. A Read More...
How slum residents in India are redesigning their future homes
How do you successfully help residents of a slum move into housing that improves their quality of life while maintaining a strong sense of community? You let them in on the design process and hear them out. At least that is what is happening in an informal settlement in the Indian city of Read More...
This MIT team designed a desert shelter for humans and animals
We have often written about animal agencies at The Optimist Daily and sharing our space on the planet with our furry or winged neighbors. It’s important to recognize the rights of nature and cohabitate with animals as peacefully as possible, but a design team from MIT just took it to the next Read More...
Architects transform old wine silos into apartments to minimize resources
Breathing new life into old things is one of the best ways we humans can reduce the number of resources extracted from the environment. A new development in Amsterdam did just that by creatively repurposing former industrial wine silos into residential buildings. Beyond reusing the obsolete silos, Read More...
Ukrainian architects build modular shelters for refugees
Since Russia’s invasion, more than 6.5 million internally displaced people in Ukraine have fled their homes to find safety. Many of them are currently crowded in large spaces like school gyms or bomb shelters, with bare amenities available. In a bid to properly accommodate these refugees, a team Read More...
These urban playgrounds might be why Scandinavians are so happy
We’ve written a good deal about “what makes people the happiest” at The Optimist Daily. We’ve enjoyed examining the lifestyle aspects of the Blue Zone countries or the joyous aspects of Finnish culture. While looking into Scandinavia, though, it’s important to check out their notion of Read More...