I just read the links, and omg this is even better.
So I looked at it and knew it was using the open courtyard and the pools and fountains to do a lot of the work of cooling the house, but it’s also got drip irrigation for all of those plants (which adds more moisture to the air and also helps cool it in addition to being an effective and efficient way of watering the plants), it’s got a roof garden and other eco-conscious stuff. It combines modern construction techniques with classic Arabic art and architecture.
And his home is a cultural center.
He holds lectures, concerts and salons in his home, with guests and speakers from around the world. He’s founded multiple institutions to preserve Islamic history and architecture. He’s an activist against the extremist factions he says are trying to hijack Islam.
His home is going to be part of an international institute offering degrees in Islamic history and science, as his legacy, housing a collection of over one hundred thousands of his photos, drawings and writings about Islam and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
This is serious real-life Islamic solarpunk for real.
Tumblr likes the idea of solarpunk, even if there’s not a real body of work about it yet. Well, we’re missing that people are already doing this for real, and have been for a long time.
I am not generally an architecture fan. It’s nice and all, but it doesn’t do a lot for me, especially modern American stuff. But I am totally bowled over by this and must now go look at everything he’s ever designed.
the problem with listening to my folk music playlist(s) on public transit is that they contain 90% of the songs in the world that I have serious difficulty NOT singing along with, and that shit is embarrassing
when I was a kid I was largely allowed to free-range through our woods so my mother decided to teach me to respond in kind to a barred owl call (in lieu of, presumably, just yelling my name into the forest and hoping I’d yell back)
to this day I can’t hear a barred owl without instinctively wanting to respond to it
it occurs to me that I’ve somehow managed to end up with a thesis project that means I get to go hiking, birdwatching, write about nature, AND draw, all in the name of grad school. I’m having so much fun that I keep having the vague feeling that I’m Getting Away With Something and that I ought to be far more miserable and stressed than I actually am.
So I’m on the TV Tropes page for “Small Taxonomy Pools” and it reads like it was written by the saltiest troop of biologists ever. It’s a fucking gold mine of taxonomical nerd rage. Observe:
We’ll see now I feel like I’ve been issued a challenge.
ohhh man my arctic studies professor is a bird researcher and I’m just brimming with the need to Talk About Birds with him but I don’t know how to begin without just bursting out with something like “LAST WEEK I ID’ed MY FIRST KITTIWAKE” which would be a distinct lack of cool even for me
A Pretty Taste for Paradox 