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Sustainable Culture is a column by super/collider, exploring the intersection between science, culture and ecology. Please do not print

  • Spring Sunrise over South Pole

    Sustainable Culture | Reasons to be Cheerful: The Days are Getting Longer

    The end of the Mayan calendar seems to have had little effect on planetary systems. Here in the Northern Hemisphere we passed our darkest day on December 21st and thankfully the earth continues on its yearly voyage encircling the sun...

  • BioCouture

    Sustainable Culture | Biomaterials

    Fermenting bacteria spinning solid skins, plant stalks interlocking to form home-grown lace, human bone grown bangles: just a small selection of the ideas that are born when textile designers meet biologists, material scientists and...

  • Dovecote Studio, Suffolk 2009

    Sustainable Culture | Recycling Landscapes

    Crumbling brick walls, plants weaseling their way into every nook and cranny, a once used fortress elegantly evolving into a state of ruin – and then a monocoque weathered steel lining is lowered in from above, sitting snuggly within the...

  • Still from Catalytic Clothing

    Sustainable Culture | Catalytic Clothing

    Imagine walking down a bustling city street, wearing a chic but very normal-looking white dress. As cars, buses and delivery trucks rush past and the exhaust fumes swirl around you, tiny particles on the dress fabric slowly filter the air...

  • Dakkin Patil Bari, Bangladesh – August 2011

    Sustainable Culture | In Search of Hope

    The rhythmic whirr of a helicopter as it lifts a stranded villager to safety from the midst of a drowned settlement, crops wilting into the drained dehydrated earth...

  • The Bar

    Sustainable Culture | Back To Nature: Barking Bathhouse

    From the Roman era to Victorian times, the English bathhouse was a whirlpool of discussion and activity. The constant trickle of meetings and massages, relaxation and rejuvenation were all part of daily life, and in many countries in the...

  • Aesop

    Sustainable Culture | Plastic Beauty

    Every piece of plastic ever made still exists in the world today – unless it was burnt and its toxic fumes flittered into the atmosphere. Even biodegradable plastics that make it to the oceans will be swirling around below the surface of...

  • Still from Lung Neaw visits his neighbours

    Sustainable Culture | In The Land of Rirkrit Tiravanija

    Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work involves projects and discussions that nurture community and explore ways of living – with a core principle of “doing less”. In the late 90s, Rirkrit helped establish The Land Foundation...

  • Can We Keep Up by Hal Watts and Matthew Laws

    Sustainable Culture | Wonderwater

    After years of dutifully measuring our carbon footprint, a new raft of art and design projects is putting our (surprisingly large) water footprint under the microscope. Mapping the demand for urban domestic water needs in 2030 may not...

  • Marbre d’Ici, Stefan Shankland

    Sustainable Culture | Coal

    Every year the COAL prize is awarded to an outstanding project exploring art and the environment – and with almost 400 submissions from over 40 different countries standards soared in 2011. This year’s winner was Stefan Shankland’s Marbre...

  • Staines, After The Fall

    Sustainable Culture | Battlegrounds

    Driven by a fascination for strange spaces and guided by satellite mapping, Malaysia-born photographer Hin Chua has spent the past four years venturing out to capture what he describes as “the ongoing environmental struggle taking place...

  • Still from Gasland

    Sustainable Culture | Under Pressure

    Imagine waking up to find that the water coming out of your kitchen tap is as flammable as petrol. You strike a match, turn the tap and find your sink full of flaming liquid, coming straight from your municipal water supply. Or imagine...