By 2050, the UN expects the global urban population to be 6.3 billion – the same size as the world’s entire population in 2004. Quite apart from the demand on natural resources, significant amounts of new housing will be required to accommodate this explosive level of growth. Architects are already delivering a new generation of high-rise building able to generate their…
Incumbent technologies are prone to underestimate the threat posed by smaller, disruptive alternatives. Europe’s five major utilities lost £85 bn in the five years to 2013 because they did not prepare for an 8 per cent increase in renewables. A 10% loss of market share was enough to cause the collapse of the coal mining industry in America. The same…
You don’t need to fly to the other side of the planet to undertake an expedition; The Hold-Up Paddle is an inflatable paddle board and tent that packs into a backpack. Once its fins have been removed, the paddle board becomes a mattress over which you can erect a specially designed tent. In the morning you need only fold up the tent and…
Electric cars, bicycles, scooters and skateboards may offer a quieter and cleaner alternative to the internal combustion engine, but does battery technology threaten to make us even lazier than we are already? Gita means ‘short trip’ in Italian and the name Piaggio has given to its latest project; a smart, self-propelled shopping trolley. The Gita is an electric cargo vehicle designed to…
As the debate in Britain over the high-speed rail project HS2 continues to simmer, in America, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has turned his attention to rail travel of the near future and a high-speed connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco code-named Hyperloop One – a 800 mph-concept referred to as “a cross between a Concorde, a…
