In Colombia, people have invented a new alternative green construction method for their homes, using old tires. Small buildings resembling igloos are becoming more and more frequent in the outskirts of the Colombian capital. View the video below for more information! 

A London-based architecture firm says it can eliminate the shadows that buildings cast over urban areas starved of sunlight. The firm devised a plan to build paired skyscrapers in such a way that sunlight reflected by one fills in the shadow of the other. Thought the shadow of the reflecting building would remain, calculations show that the concept would reduce the total amount of shade produced by the buildings by up to 60 percent, according to the NBBJ firm.

Slated at $10 billion, construction on the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link could start as early as this year. At 11 miles long, the completed project will be the longest immersed tunnel in the world. It will run beneath the Baltic Sea and connect Denmark to Germany between the islands of Lolland and Fehmarn. Long in the planning, the bill finally giving the project the green light passed its first reading in the Danish Parliament this month. Construction could be completed as early as 2024.

The state of Oklahoma’s energy and environment cabinet unveiled a new website this week that hosts scholarly articles and an interactive map of earthquake and injection well locations. The conclusion: the frequent earthquakes that have been hitting the state are mostly due to the underground disposal of billions of barrels of wastewater from oil and gas wells according to scientific consensus. This is a departure from years of official skepticism from the state government.

A residential model unit built exclusively out of recycled steel shipping containers is now a reality on the southwest corner of Trumbull and Pine, just north of Interstate 75, in Detroit. The housing unit consisting of three storie  was constructed in the record time of six hours and 15 minutes and will serve as an example of what this new building approach is all about. 

Track for Detroit’s M-1 Rail, a new light rail line on the city’s lower Woodward Avenue, is projected to be laid before Thanksgiving of this year. The M-1 Rail will be the first streetcar line in Detroit since the last remnants of a sprawling system was torn up in the 1950’s. The cost of the project is expected to total $140 million and will stretch for 3.3 miles from downtown Detroit to Grand Boulevard in New Center. Total completion of the rail is expected around the end of 2016, shortly before a massive Detroit Red Wings arena and entertainment district along its route is supposed to be finished. The new rail will service 12 stops with 20 stations via a 60-foot-long, driver-operated train.

The project is seen as a major catalyst for development along the Woodward corridor. “This is not just a transit project, it really is to drive economic development,” M-1 Rail president and CEO Matt Cullen remarked earlier this year.

According to the UK exploration company, Oil & Gas Investments, a major oil reserv has been recently discoveres very close to Gatwick Airport in West Sussex. The discovery news caused both excitement as well as some sceptisism by industry experts with regards to the exloitability of the reserve, while environmentalists express their own concerns over the impact to the local ecosystem.