Our new project, Wild Blossom, will be Chicago’s first meadery. Believed to be the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, mead is a drink made by fermenting honey with yeast. Read more about mead at Wild Blossom’s website and then engage with this great interactive display on how mead travels from bee to bottle at Maine Mead Works.

Below are a few pictures of our inspiration wall, where we collect images and hang sketches to develop design elements before moving onto our next phase. Watch our blog for a more in-depth introduction to Wild Blossom in a few weeks!

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Our first finished project from our two Indiana reclaimed bowling lanes is a bench/console, perfect for sitting, reading, and displaying a TV, record player, or anything you don’t want on the floor.

We built it out of part of one of the lanes, acquired from Architectural Anarchy. It’s part of a series of furniture we’re making over the next few months, highlighting the lanes’ lovely maple wood, charming arrow detail and smooth, straight lines.

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source: “Blue Plan” in Copenhagen, from PK3 and Tredje Natur, from Dezeen.com

Audi got blessings from the forces that be to begin test driving its driverless cars on public streets. There are many implications of the entry of driverless cars into our daily commutes. More texting with less accidents is one. Perhaps decreased emissions from synchronized trips, but might this be offset by an increase in driving due to not having to park? Will they increase sprawl? Make cycling less attractive? Interesting articles on the subject from The Economist and Freakonomics. Via Design Taxi.

I tried to make Tarte Tatin (a caramelized apple tart) for Christmas and wound up with an impenetrable window of caramel, which was promptly thrown in the trash. Maybe you’ll fare better than I with this charming and hilarious tutorial from The Awl: Perfect Tarte Tatin in Ten Easy Steps.

Apparently, this is going to be a nasty flu/winter illness season. Here’s a list of common cold remedies from the creative community on Design Sponge, from essential oils to grated ginger to onion sandwiches.

A series of artificial islands called “Blue Plan” to be built in Copenhagen by architects Tredje Natur and PK3, is intended to draw attention to the city’s harbor, encouraging recreation, interaction with nature and a greater sense of awareness of the consumption of this precious resource. The islands will correspond to five zones, ranging from the sci-fi like House of Water (pictured above) to the plant-covered Bird Island. Copenhagen is one of the few harbor towns where the water is clean enough to both bathe and fish in. Via Dezeen.

We love this reclaimed oak tub caddy from makers of beautiful objects, Peg and Awl. It’s perfect for reading without drenching your book (or short wiring your kindle).

Happy Thursday!

We, and collaborators Studio Murmur, snagged CS Interiors Best In Design for Outdoor Space. Check out the full mag here, snippets below. More on the parklet here.

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The Andersonville Parklet is unveiled. We have added a robust .006 acres to Chicago’s park system.

Expanding on our one-day PARK(ing) Day installations, moss and Studio Murmur co-designed Chicago’s first parklet / people spot, a small urban park, that will transform former parking spaces into a semi-permanent, seasonal urban oasis. The parklet, which will be built in two parking spaces at Clark Street and Farragut Avenue, will serve as a green retreat in the dense commercial district of Andersonville. Parklet amenities will include an herb garden, native Illinois plants, built-in benches, bike parking, and a planted hill for lounging. The parklet was nominated for the Ford Community Green Grant in May 2012.

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moss started construction on Bar Pastoral today, the latest addition to the Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine family, an intimate 45-seat cheese and wine bar flanking their original Lakeview retail location.

For those of you who don’t know Pastoral, get thee to one of their existing three retail locations dotting Chicago for a slice of Morbier (a semi-firm Cow’s milk creation with a traditional layer of ash in the middle; trust us, it’s delicious) and find yourself in the position to craft the most heavenly picnic in Chicago.

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Our parklet is featured in Inhabitat!

See the article here. 

Check out our project progress report here from just last week.

Our first round-up of where the moss team has been on the web this week:

First, blazingly hot weather in Chicago had us dreaming of swimming pools, but without the eye-stinging, hair-slicking addition of Chlorine. Enter natural pools, mini-ecosystems designed for swimming that self-purify via water circulation. Via The Daily Green.

Another pool in the formerly industrial concrete cluster of Le Havre, France. Via Architectural Record.

Moby loves architecture.

A Stanford professor and a Dutch scientist both race to create test-tube meat, one from plant protein, the other from a mere sliver of animal tissue, which is then “cultured.” Gross? Genius? Maybe. Timely? definitely.

Laser-cutting is such a stunning way to “print” graphics and text without using inks or dyes. This  laser-cut map of Paris is a gorgeous example of the medium.

We’ve been researching nutrition label info for our concept, going up on the blog next week. We were excited to discover that the UK grocery chain Sainsbury labels its fruit and vegetable packets with the farmer, origin and variety (ignore the funky strawberry in the middle).

That intriguing magazine floating around Chicago is The Chicagoan, an exciting new publication fueled by our city’s creative minds. Little did we know, The Chicagoan is actually a revival: the original launched in the 1920s, just a year after The New Yorker, but due to staff and quality inconsistencies it flitted out of existence until now.

Happy Friday!

Three years ago, we held Chicago’s first PARK(ing) Day in Lakeview, where we transformed a few parking spaces into a fun, public green space for a summer day. Now, we, along with Studio Murmur,  eco-Andersonville and the Andersonville Development Corporation, are excited to announce a semi-permanent iteration of PARK(ing) Day: a parklet in Andersonville at Clark and Farragut. Parklets, which are popping up all over the world (SF tour, here), are mini urban retreats, complete with plant life and seating areas. They provide more green space in the thick of cities, which often lack communal places to sit and watch the world go by. Watch the video, learn more about the project, and support our kickstarter here. We’re gathering funds for seasonal plantings, park seating and future parklets, three of which are in the works in the coming years.

UPDATE 06/07: The parklet ordinance allowing us the occupy the right-of-way passed City Council yesterday!

UPDATE 05/18: Our parklet project is featured in Treehugger.

UPDATE 05/04: Our parklet project has been nominated to win Ford’s Community Green Grant!

There are lots of great bags you can hang on your bike, but some things are really awkward in bags. Coffee cups and smoothies, for example, or wine bottles that clang around. Six Packs and U-Locks also make the list. This week’s edition include biking accessories that help a two-wheeled commute run a little smoother with less than optimal cargo.

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Despite this year’s lack of buzzer beaters, I’m a sucker for the NCAA basketball tournament.  Cinderellas, upsets, March Madness, Capital One, all that. I don’t think my Mom ever realized I would always have to stay home sick from school around the third Thursday of March (sorry, Mom). During the three weeks of the tournament 63 games (add 4 for the new play-in round, or whatever they’re calling it now) are played at 13 different venues.  However, starting in 2009 you would think they are all played in the same arena. That’s because the NCAA has rolled out a standard, featureless court at every tournament venue. From Portland to Grensboro, Phoenix to Boston, its black and blue and boredom.

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moss’ newest brewery project, Begyle Brewing (formerly Argyle Brewing Co.) models itself after the increasingly popular CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and is Chicago’s first “CSB” (Community Supported Brewery). Founders Matt Ritchey, Kevin Cary and Brendan Blume decided to start their subscription based brewery after a few brainstorming sessions. Like CSAs, members will receive a share of craft beer on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. Begyle is expected to open its craft beer programs starting this summer.

Though it’s new to Chicago’s shores, community-sustained brewing finds its roots deep in German history. In the 13th and 14th centuries, central brewhouses in each town would produce the liquid base of beer, called the wort, which was then collected by individual citizens. These select few would ferment the wort, and then place a special sign on their door (Zoigl, pictured above.) The six-pointed star looks just like a Star of David, but it’s actually a brewer’s star, one point for each beer-making element: hops, yeast, malt, grain, water and brewer. The Zoigl signaled to townsfolk that their neighbor had opened a temporary, communal pub in his home, a.k.a., to come over and have a cold one. After the beer from that house was gone, the next homebrewer would collect his wort and so the good people of the town were never without local beer (one hopes.)

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The refrigerator present in most Western kitchens today wasn’t invented all that long ago. Carl Van Linde developed the technology in the 1870′s, but his ammonia-based fridges still required separate motors, and inhaling the toxic gases within led to a few deaths—not ideal. The first freestanding, commercially available fridge hit shelves (well, floors) in 1913, and wasn’t really perfected until the 1930′s. Iceboxes and burying perishables in the ground preceed both models by thousands of years.

But the current model isn’t done evolving yet. Refrigerators still consume about a 6th of the energy used in the average American home. This week’s edition includes inspiring fridges that use little to no electricity, instead keeping food cold/preserved using methods from sand to biopolymers.

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Our work at Flirty Cupcakes dessert garage featured in Design Sponge.

Check out the article here.

Original project post here.

The web may not be climate change-combat’s poster child, but it may be its knight in shining armor. On the one hand we know that outlet usage has increased a lot since the internet and its buddies (smartphones, bluetooth keyboards, ipods) burst onto the scene; on the other, it has saved trees, and more to the point, whipped global communication into a frenzy the likes of which the pre-internet world never dreamed of. Even more to the point, sourcing and spreading data has become a whole lot easier. But the connotations of data, once a word reserved for Dexter’s Laboratory, have changed, too. The Internet has infused it with a new sense of community, accessibility, and at the very least, made it prettier. The idea that the web community and data interact with each other as that data is being accrued is revolutionary for anyone wishing to tread lighter on our planet.

The Tragedy of the Commons need no longer apply when it comes to acting more sustainably; these websites allow people to watch their little actions make a big difference.

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