Designers and artists have always looked to nature for inspiration and materials, but only recently have they been able to alter and incorporate living organisms in their work. In a world with finite ...resources and a growing population, design that mimics or appropriates the sustainable template of nature is likely to prove as vital as it is novel. 'Bio Design' examines some seventy projects (concepts, prototypes and completed designs) that cover the fields of architecture, industrial processes, education, fine art, material engineering and bioengineering. Each project is illustrated by a short text, images and captions that combine to explain the problems the venture tackles, and how living materials and processes were harnessed to solve them in sustainable and aesthetically pleasing ways. Many of the solutions also provoke thought about manipulating life for human ends.
Restless China Link, Perry; Madsen, Richard P; Pickowicz, Paul G
2013., 2013, 2013-03-08
eBook
This compelling book explores the explosive pace of change in China and how its citizens are grappling with a dramatically new world, both in the public and private spheres. China’s stratospheric ...growth has made it the second largest economy in the world—and one of the most unequal. Marxist ideology and socialist ideals have almost completely collapsed, replaced by a combination of materialism and assertive nationalism. The vast migration of labor from countryside to city has continued apace. The pressures of a hypercompetitive market economy are ripping apart the traditional family and threatening the environment. Corruption has reached new heights. The political system is even more rigid, but perhaps more brittle, than a decade ago. There is enormous popular pride in the ascension of China to the rank of global superpower and general satisfaction in the material benefits that the poor as well as the rich have been gaining from an expanding economy. But there is also great restlessness, anger about structural injustice and political corruption, and a search for new forms of spirituality and ethics to replace a collapsing moral order. The question “What does it mean, in the new day, to be Chinese?” lurks just beneath the surface. This unique interdisciplinary book frames this central issue through an innovative set of case studies on such cutting-edge topics as reality dating shows, countercultural invented language, star bloggers, faith healers, and subversive jokes.
School Food, Equity and Social Justice provides contemporary, critical examinations of policies and practices relating to food in schools across 25 countries from an equity and social justice ...perspective. The book is divided into three sections: Food politics and policies; Sustainability and development; and, Teaching and learning about food. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics with practitioner backgrounds, the chapters in this collection broaden discussions on school food to consider its educational and environmental implications, the ideals of food in schools, the emotional and ideological components of schooling food, and the relationships with home and everyday life. Our aim is to provide enhanced insight into matters of social justice in diverse contexts, and visions of how greater equality and equity may be achieved through school food policy and in school food programs. We expect this book to become essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers in health education, health promotion, educational practice and policy, public health, nutrition and social justice education.
