A one-minute summer interlude from your Monday:

Following on the heels of yesterday’s post about windmills, a beautiful and enigmatic film on friendship, fütball, and the energy in the wind:

(via Vimeo)

Think renewable power is complicated, expensive and ahead of its time? Far away, in a Malawi village remote from the politics of cap and trade, environmentalism and the global warming debate, one young man has taken matters into his own hands to create an energy solution for his family. As this beautiful stop-motion film illustrates, perhaps we in the developed world can learn something from this simple approach to energy independence:

William was interviewed at TED last summer, and it must have been funny for him to find a room full of wealthy Americans inspired by his straightforward ingenuity. ‘You mean, we can build windmills for ourselves?’ Well, duh.

(thanks to G4C grant recipient Sara Joy Steele for the link to the first film)

[For this, the second installment of The Thought Kitchen's ongoing conversation about design, Josie sat down with Nau designer Peter Kallen to discuss the finer points of the Succinct Trench. For More of The Design Eye, check out last month's inaugural post, on the Lightbeam Jacket. —Ed]

Josie: So tell us about the Succinct?

Peter: Ok, well, just so you know, only the Succinct Trench for women is new this year—the Succint Trench for men is so genius that we didn’t change it. When we find something we like, we run with it! But they’re both inspired by this use of new technology: the lightweight 2.5-layer recycled polyester fabric. The reason why we chose 2.5 layer is the fact that it’s waterproof, it’s breathable, but it’s really light. You can compact it, compress it, take it with you: it packs down to the size of a small cantaloupe.

What we decided what we wanted to achieve with this was a trench with the silhouette of a longer length coat, something not unlike what you would see back in the Quadorphenia, mod scooter days.

Josie: ???

Oh, you know the old longer length jackets they used to wear on scooters? That whole ‘mod’ movement? These jackets take on that kind of role, but with new technology. They’re a very refined, modern approach to a trench that’s not trying to be so stuffy or uptight but a bit more spirited and on the move. And that’s why the 2.5 layer fabric was used—the fact that you can stuff it into your bag or your pack or whatever. And it’s kind of cool that while this fabric performs really well in any kind of condition, and it has this really cool style. It’s just an opportunity to make a silhouette that fits really interestingly into your wardrobe: the trench style allows you to be really professional in it, but you can use it for other things too.

We wanted to make something really precise and pointed in this versatile way.  Use the cues that it’s a trench, and then keep it vague in the sense of how you would interpret its use in your wardrobe. It becomes really versatile in that way.

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If there’s a lesson to be learned from nature, it’s this: Things work best when they’re beautiful. But if you want to be inspired by nature’s complexity, sometimes you have to look up close:

(via Mirko Faienza)

Last year’s inaugural Grant for Change brought 294 projects of change into the national spotlight. Reflecting the spirit of the Nau Collective and coming from athletes, artists and activists dedicated to their causes, each project was distinctly unique, and we were inspired, educated and wowed over and over again. After an exciting three-month process, we awarded Seattle-based Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele $10,000 for their multimedia storytelling project, Facing Climate Change.

The winter flew by and now we find ourselves gearing up once more for the Grant for Change. Ever evolving, this year’s focus shifts to an intrinsic infatuation for Nau: Design.

Change by Design digs into the Nau commitment to and infusion of beauty, performance and sustainability in all aspects of business. So in this year’s Grant For Change we’ll be seeking nominations for projects that provide creative, compelling, effective, and replicable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Architecture, energy, transportation, visual arts: the theme of change-inspired design taps into industries and crafts so numerous I can only imagine what we will see.

The grant launches in only a few weeks, so stay tuned for more details—we want to get you as psyched as we are. Last year it was urban farmers, butterfly crosswalks, bicycle energy and the like. This year, who knows?! We look forward to a river of submissions and a summer of inspiration.

Like many of you, I like my food fresh, organic, and LOCAL.  If you find yourself with little to do this Saturday morning, hop on the streetcar and head toward PSU.  The Portland Farmer’s market has recently re-opened!  http://www.portlandfarmersmarket.org/

Looking for a local Farmer’s market in your area? Check out localharvest.org to find one near you.

File under “pure unadulterated fun”: April 3rd was World Pillow Fight Day. So here, for your viewing enjoyment we present to you two and a half minutes of feather-flying awesomeness.

(via Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo)

Yards were the topic yesterday on Oregon Public Radio’s call-in show, “Think Out Loud,” and the conversation got me thinking about the design criteria we all bring to our yards. (Well, those of us who have yards…mine includes about 10 square feet of planter and a few potted plants on the balcony.) We all know what the suburban standard for ‘beauty’ is for an American lawn: a well-trimmed carpet of grass, free of weeds and leaves, punctuated by manicured shrubs and flower beds. But what about ‘performance’ and ’sustainability?’ Shouldn’t our yards—currently populated by asexual grasses that often can’t even reproduce on their own—be as productive as they are attractive? And can’t we find beauty in the complexity of a self-sustaining ecosystem, rather than the homogeneity of a Kentucky bluegrass monoculture?

To maintain their lawns, American’s spend 40 billion dollars a year on grass—by comparison, a little more than half what the federal government spends on education. Grass has its own trade association, its own university departments offering degrees in turf management, and more than it’s share of books dedicated to its cultivation and maintenance. It’s advocates argue that grass is a carbon sink, absorbing 37 billion pounds of CO2 each year. But perhaps it’s greatest statistic is its ubiquity: over 128,000 square kilometers of America’s surface are planted with grass—nearly three times more area than corn—making it the country’s single largest irrigated crop. (stats here).

But a growing number of people have begun challenging the wisdom and necessity of converting our front yards into meticulously mowed fairways. Since Michael Pollan published his essay Why Mow over twenty years ago, a tangle of books have grown up around the edges of America’s infatuation with lawns. They have expose the chemical chain of fertilizers and herbicides that we have bound ourselves up in to keep our lawns green, and offered alternatives from gardens to meadows to ‘Freedom Lawns,’ left to seed. Elizabeth Kolbert surveyed the landscape of anti-lawn tracts in an informative essay for the New Yorker titled Turf War, tracing the history of the lawn from its roots in nineteenth century ideas of self-improvement, Perfection and Beauty. Yet as we’ve changed other parts of our culture in response to changing ideas of perfection and beauty, the grass lawn has remained as ubiquitous as ever.

So what do you think? Is it time to design a greener yard, or is a grass lawn still the best? Are productivity and sustainability attributes you think about in laying out the plots in front of your home? And, even if you accept that lawns are probably not the best use of our yards, are you willing to give up that lush carpet of green?

New today: Portraits of our Friends on nau.com. We invited ten of our friends here in Portland to interpret the new spring line in their own style, and got ten completely different takes on how nau’s new offerings can work into your wardrobe. Check it out.