FutureHero Steve Rader: NASA, Mars – and you
The things NASA want to do next are “really, really hard”. That’s why Steve Rader – NASA’s Deputy Manager for the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation – appreciates the way the space agency harnesses people power and diversity. We circumnavigated the mighty Saturn V rocket with the crowdsourcing evangelist to find out about NASA’s current challenges – and The Martian.
Aquawoman: Fishy FutureHero
In the sprawling high plains of the Free State province of South Africa, Conchita Milburn is playing a key part in freshwater aquaculture projects – sharing knowledge and implementing sustainable practices. Aquaculture is exactly what it sounds like – farming fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae and other organisms – under controlled conditions. Combined with agriculture,
AtlasQ&A Dan Barber ► 6 questions for a food FutureHero
From culinary creativity and food fads to a dystopian future soil crisis, friends of the Atlas ask Dan Barber – Blue Hill chef and co-founder of Row 7 Seed Company – their burning questions… 1. Ande Gregson, founder of GreenLab, an experimental space in London for urban agriculture: “Is urban agriculture future or fad?
FutureHero Dan Barber: The chef planting hope
To read The Third Plate is not only to take an extraordinary journey in the company of chef and writer Dan Barber. It is to be a guest at the birth of a brilliant and important idea. His travels, investigations, reading and thinking go beyond an exploration of what ails our food systems – and
FutureHero Dougie McMaster: Ethical Jedi chef
Britain’s most ethical restaurant doesn’t have a bin. Founded by ex-St John chef Dougie McMaster, the team at Silo brews its own booze, mills its own flour, churns its own butter and even has chairs made from jeans and plates formed from plastic bags. At the UK’s first ever zero waste restaurant, all materials are digestible by
FutureHero Jessi Baker: Blockchain’s spies for good
Blockchain isn’t just about finance and Bitcoin, but when Jessi Baker started Provenance that wasn’t the case. That’s why her idea was considered crazy at first. The software company uses technologies like the blockchain to help businesses share truths about the people, places and materials involved in their products. Labelled as one of the UK’s ‘coolest female startup
FutureHero Agamemnon Otero: Dynamo of renewables
“If you want to be Che Guevara, stop walking around pointing to what’s bad. Want to be a true revolutionary? Rip up the paving slabs, plant a garden and cover your roof in solar panels.” In South London a Uruguayan-born, New York-raised community entrepreneur and artist is tackling fuel poverty with renewables – while catalysing
Adventures with FutureHero Gaia Vince in The Age of Humans
This year it will be ten years since environmental journalist and broadcaster Gaia Vince began her 900-day journey around the world to take stock of humanity’s impact on the planet. Back then she never expected to see the important changes now happening globally – the explosion of renewable energy production, the rise of electric vehicles, tariffs
FutureHero Nelly Ben Hayoun: Designing the impossible
Faster-talking than the speed of light, louder than a sonic boom and sparkier than a volcano, extreme ‘experience designer’ Nelly Ben Hayoun has simulated all of the above. The hyperreal world is her disaster playground. From the safety of her East London pad, the French space enthusiast catapults us through her flights of fancy-made-real – including
FutureHero Richard Ballard: Growing greens in bomb shelters
A microgreen-fingered hydroponic hero is proving that ‘zero km’ is possible – in London’s disused bomb shelters. With his groundbreaking subterranean farm Growing Underground, Richard Ballard demonstrates how plants don’t need sunlight and that urban agriculture can help tackle food scarcity. Located 100 feet (33 metres) under the streets of London in a disused World War II air raid shelter,
