Posts Tagged ‘Visions’
A City of Short Distances: VEIL at the Stringybark Sustainability Festival
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on October 15th, 2009
Design: Jessica Bird, RMIT
Knox City Council’s Stringybark Festival is spread across five acres of the Rowville Community Centre reserve.
Attracting more than 20,000 visitors, the festival is one of the most significant community environmental festivals on the national calendar. In 1984, Rowville sat on Melbourne’s semi-rural fringe and Stringybark was Australia’s premier conservation- based environmental festival. Today, Knox City Council is at the apex of one of this country’s largest suburban growth corridors and Stringybark now showcases a contemporary sustainability program that more accurately reflects its own current day suburban context both in practical terms and future vision.
“As the suburbs are where most people live, we believe they hold the key to our future.”
The Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) is proud to exhibit a selection of student designs from University of Melbourne, RMIT, Swinburne University and Monash University. The designs are set in the year 2032 and explore how Rowville could become a sustainable community, able to prosper despite peak oil and the inflation of petrol prices to more than $5.00 a litre. The 2009 way-of-living with cars is no longer affordable.
Food Futures: an Australian approach
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on July 29th, 2009
Source: Rural Climate Network
Abstracts and conference registrations are invited for the PHAA conference, Food Futures: An Australian Approach, 20-21 April 2010 in Canberra.
Concerns about the relationship between food and the food system, nutrition, and population health are part of the motivation for the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) to facilitate a national conference seeking an overarching approach to food policy that looks well into the future. Although health may be the driver for the PHAA, any such national policy or approach must also take into account issues such as agriculture, scientific research, production and manufacture, environment, retail and community concerns, to appropriately encompass all aspects of food.
Abstract submission closes October 5
A Local Car for the Silent Highway: Alfred Deakin Eco-Innovation Lectures
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on July 17th, 2009
It won’t be long until we all drive the silent electric highway.
Richard Canny presents a compelling demonstration of the near future of the family car. Canny is CEO of TH!NK, the Norwegian company that produced its first prototype TH!NKCity electric car in 1991. TH!NK is a car company that aims to change the way people think about cars, by designing emission free and highly efficient modern-city vehicles to meet consumer needs, producing environmentally friendly vehicles in a small-scale ‘low carbon’ production centre.
Electric Horizon: Alfred Deakin Eco-Innovation Lectures
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on July 16th, 2009
Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, shares his inspired vision of freeing cars from oil, reducing harmful exhaust, and ushering in a new era of sustainable transportation. He will discuss the economic factors, industry dynamics, geopolitical pressures, and mounting environmental concerns that are combining to drive this profound change, as well as the challenges we face in realising this vision.
VOTING ON THE FUTURE – Audiences responses from the ECO-CITY Melbourne Exhibition
Posted in Visions by Ferne Edwards on March 24th, 2009
At the recent Sustainable Cities Round Table on Sustainable Sharing, 26 February, which was held in collaboration with the ECO-CITY Melbourne Exhibition by VEIL, the audience was asked to identify from the posters “What is the most exciting, positive and desirable aspects / ideas of what life could be like?“. Their responses – a sporadic list of vibrant topics and themes – can be read below. To learn more about the VEIL ECO-CITY Melbourne exhibition read this article in The Age and check out the VEIL website here.
1. Water solution – storm water recycling, wetlands
2. Water solution – visible water tank
3. Eco-business – “more than onceâ€
4. Office-farm
5. Vertical farm
6. Community initiatives e.g. nature strips/rooftop gardens –reducing food miles, encouraging interaction + public health initiative all in one
7. More than once eco-friendly supermarket
8. Visible water tanks and pipes
9. EBD mobility
10. Fridge
11. Bikes
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Living for our Future Sustainability Expo
Posted in Events by andrea.lomdahl on March 19th, 2009
Come along to the City of Borondara’s Living for our Future Expo.
When: Saturday 21 March
Where: Patterson Reserve, Auburn Road, Hawthorn (close to where Auburn Road meets Toorak Road)
Time: 8am-1pm
The Expo, run in conjunction with the Boroondara Farmers Market, brings together a range of businesses specialising in sustainable products and services as well as local environmental not for profit organisations. Free showbags to the first 500 visitors along with entertainment and workshops for children.
Additional highlights of the event include the Earth Hour Future Spark Trailer which will be used to generate (by peddle power), energy to offset electricity used at the Farmers market. Well known TV personality, Vasili, will also be at the Expo to promote sustainable gardening and the Healthy and Sustainable Gardening Program run by Council and the Metropolitan aste Management Group Meeting.
For further information visit our website
Eco suburb plan unveiled for city
Posted in Visions by Ferne Edwards on February 25th, 2009
The article below announces the ECO-CITY Melbourne Exhibition – an outcome of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab. To read the full article click here.
Eco suburb plan unveiled for city
Jason Dowling and Natalie Craig, The Age, February 25, 2009
A VISION for a suburb of the future with no cars, an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and the ability to grow its own food has been unveiled by a State Government-funded thinktank. And it could happen on a site just two kilometres from the centre of Melbourne.
A 20-hectare site for the new green suburb has even been identified on land owned by VicTrack, the government body that owns the state’s rail assets. The lease on the site known as E-Gate, just off Footscray Road, expires in 2014 and Major Projects Victoria has been working with VicTrack on possibilities for the land.
Now, the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, a university-based thinktank funded by the Government, has come up with ideas for a new environmentally friendly suburb at the site.
An exhibition of the proposals from 200 university students, known as Eco-City Melbourne, will go on show from tomorrow.
ECO-CITY MELBOURNE – building a low carbon future
Posted in Events by Ferne Edwards on February 20th, 2009
Wednesday 25th of Feburary until Saturday 28th Feburary
Shed 4, North Wharf Road, Victoria Harbour, Docklands.
An exhibition of designs for an Ecological Business District neighbouring Docklands. Visions from the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab.
* An eco-city of the future beside the CBD
* 6000 -10000 residents and workers
* low-carbon living now: 2050 in 2020 :
* diverse life-styles and built form,
* resilient – socially, culturally, physically
* A model of sustainable prosperity: ‘living better – consuming less
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A new look to the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab website
Posted in Visions by Ferne Edwards on December 22nd, 2008
The Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) has recently launched a new look to their website. Beautifully designed and easy to navigate, the new website features news about VEIL activities, showcases the VEIL visions, reveals the present at VEIL in terms of project work in current sustainability initiatives and has heaps of resources for public access such as publications and videos. The parent of Sustainable Melbourne and Sustainable Cities Net, the ongoing outcomes of the VEIL project are beautifully presented for all to enjoy. Visit the new look VEIL website here.
The Ecologies Project Exhibition
Posted in Events by Ferne Edwards on September 3rd, 2008
Monash University Museum of Art, MUMA, Clayton Campus
Ground Floor, Building 55, Wellington Road, Clayton
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Free entry
Pre-opening curator’s talk – Curators: Geraldine Barlow and Dr Kyla McFarlane
Saturday 20 September at 1.30pm
Opening function
Saturday 20 September at 2.00pm
Monash University Museum of Art, Clayton Campus
With opening remarks at 2:45pm by Professorial Fellow John Thwaites, Chairman of the Monash Sustainability Institute, and Former Deputy Victorian Premier and Minister for Environment, Water and Climate Change
What is this project that we are now undertaking, as we globally seek a new balance with the ecological systems that sustain us? Will endgame, apocalyptic visions drive change, or can our wonder in the natural world inspire the creation of a brighter future?
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