A short film from the INDEX site about the award winning, low cost indoor stove designed by Phillips Design.  The stove is filters the smoke before it is released inside the house, or vented outside via a chimney.  It is a modular design that can be built quite easily by the end-user.  Built with low income users in mind who do most of their cooking inside their houses.

Via Design Observer

Indeed, as the Oxford, Alabama Mayor Leon Smith says, "What it's going to be is more prettier than it is today."

via Archaeology Magazine.

Just a note that the Built Furniture Teak Table Lamp has been showing up at a few design websites that I really love.  Some links:

materialicious

DeZona

modern echo

A somewhat mysterious blog, full of beautiful images.

Via things magazine.

Interesting article at Popsci.com about Disaster City, an extensive facility at Texas A&M used to train disaster responders.

Via Pruned.

This image is from the endangered ancient city of Chan Chan. An article in the Smithsonian says this:

During its heyday, about 600 years ago, Chan Chan, in northern Peru, was the largest city in the Americas and the largest adobe city on earth. Ten thousand structures, some with walls 30 feet high, were woven amid a maze of passageways and streets. Palaces and temples were decorated with elaborate friezes, some of which were hundreds of feet long. Chan Chan was fabulously wealthy, although it perennially lacked one precious resource: water. Today, however, Chan Chan is threatened by too much water, as torrential rains gradually wash away the nine-square-mile ancient city.

This image is taken from a really fine photo set from Flickr.

Via a twitter post from Gunnar Engblom, who leads birding expeditions in Peru.

Via Natural Building Network, on twitter.