Here is a good mental health break: Have a look at the work of the Israeli designers at
Junk+ion.
...
Governors Island, New York, sign 'LAND! Pioneers of Change' by Experimental Jetset
A Repairing Manifesto, six-feet-long needles knitting sheep wool into a huge rug, the possibilities of urban farming in New York and an original Slow Food café (image below) are projects of
Pioneers of Change, a group of Dutch designers exhibiting their latest work in new York. No one less than Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of the Dutch conceptual design company,
Droog, curated the show, exhibited in and around 11 officer's houses. Take a walk around and discover a different kind of luxury; that of space, fresh air, respect, caring, silence, slowness and time. Here's what we liked:...
(Images: Dezeen)
Warehouses, schoolhouses, and factory buildings repurpose well into lofts and art studios, but draftiness and patchy temperatures often come with the terrain. Berlin architecture firm
Davidson Refaildis devised this concept, Selective Insulation, to help with this problem. The result: a thermally cloistered space for desk work, built around a window. Installed in the Old School House in Hexham, UK-an 1849 structure where it is "difficult to maintain warm working conditions for much of the year,"-this angular pod creates an insulated microenvironment....
I don't know how I missed Toronto artist David Trautrimas' wonderful Habitat Machines; not only are we in the same city but he has been in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail and half a dozen blogs I follow. Gary Michael Dault describes his work in the Globe:
Trautrimas's digital prints of forlorn structures, complexes and communities begin as photographs of castoff, abject, superfluous objects like old coffee pots, electric razors, oil cans and waffle irons, which he then repositions by re-imagining them at vastly different scales.
...
Claims Prototype Cost Only £23
This smells like a hoax. I'm hoping it's not, but reading the
Daily Mail piece, things don't quite add up... But let's start at the beginning: The story is that Milan Karki, a 18 years old from a village in rural Nepal, has invented a new type of solar panel that uses human hair - or more precisely, hair's Melanin pigment - to replace silicon in a solar panel....
Image via Tom Fishburne of Method
Design is a powerful agent for positive social and environmental change. But, for design to achieve that, the intention must be broadened. It cannot be just designing something we experience in the present; it must be considered across past and future, too. In a recent post here on TreeHugger, I talked about
design as intention rather than object. If intention defines the design exercise, then it will be those with the talent to design with the broadest intent who will create our generation’s design icons. And those icons won’t just be tangible objects, but anything that creates positive impact. ...
Image via DK Ahn
Rather than ship an object to your door or local store, imagine downloading the underlying info, procuring the materials locally, and then letting a machine build it. Maybe even on your kitchen table. This technology is not ready to turn the manufacturing world on its head quite yet, but it is becoming less absurd. London-based designer
DK Ahn has conceptualized such a device; he calls it MICROFACTORY. This elegant home manufacturing appliance is, in effect, a sort of CNC router for the DIY enthusiast, artist, or inventor. The image above is a concept only, but Ahn has built a working prototype (not quite so slick, but impressive nonetheless) that he calls MOW (video and more pics after the jump). ...
Image via Oeuf
The husband/wife design duo responsible for
Oeuf (pronounced "like the uff in stuff") has excitedly announced a new collection of baby furniture. The Robin Collection is European-made with sustainable wood and is treated with water-based paints. We're told that the French-American, New York-based designer pair struggled and strived to keep the price of the Robin collection down while preserving quality and adaptability. Sophie Demenge and Michael Ryan "went back to the drawing board, rethinking every component to minimize cost without sacrificing functionality, safety, and style." The crib and dresser cost in the mid to high $500 range, and $145 buys a conversion kit that turns the crib into a toddler bed (not unlike products from
Muu)....
Exclusive: The Architect Behind the Solar-Powered Stadium
As if the U.S. wasn't going to look bad enough at this month's World Games, with sports like
tug of war,
netball ,
orienteering and
Latin dance: the host city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, will be debuting
its new stadium -- the world's first to draw most of its energy from the sun.
Almost every inch of the stadium's dragon-scale roof is covered by 8,844
solar panels, providing 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year while turning the page on solar architecture, as
Lloyd noted in May. But, as the designer, Japanese master Toyo Ito, explained to TreeHugger, the stadium has other, perhaps greater ecological implications too....
MAKEA stands for fixing it, customising, personalising, tuning things, adapting or basically making it beautiful yourself. It is an alternative to the throwaway culture (hence the reference to
IKEA!). MAKEA, active since 2006, is a multidisciplinary group from Spain, fed up with our current way of consumption, the brands and their products that loose personality when they are not associated with the brand name any more. But MAKEA is a brand that sells nothing, they are doers and warn us about the infectiousness of the MAKEA virus (see
MAKEA video on YouTube)....
Photo by David Baker + Partners
Surely these eco-structures will get you drooling. There's everything from prefabulous bamboo huts to towering vertical gardens. And yes, I called you Shirley.
...
Jenny Lemieux and Leo Corrales of Hero Design Lab
We love solar powered dryers, AKA clotheslines, but many people don't have room to string one up. Drying racks are an alternative, but many are flimsy things and few are attractive. The Hero Design Lab has developed its 365 Series powder coated aluminum rack that works as a privacy screen when flat, or opens up for flat drying and with opening rods....
Graphic from USGBC
The
USGBC, and their insanely popular rating system
LEED, have been on the frontlines of the green building movement for quite a while. Everyone has taken a shot at them at least once. There’s all the talk about how the credits are weighted incorrectly, or that a
LEED rated building doesn’t always mean it’s a green building. For all the shortcomings of the older system, the
USGBC, better or worse, has been a major contributor to putting
GREEN into the lexicon of every developer, real estate owner and building professional in the United States (and other countries). Their new approach to rating the
greenness of a building is overcoming some of those pesky complaints. Actually, with the release of newest version of
LEED, all those naysayers may get left in the dust!...
Photo by Yours Truly
If you’re looking for a vehicle that has the heart of a bicycle and the soul of a scooter – do I have the thing for you! The
A2B by Ultra Motor is a
Light Electric Vehicle (LEV) that addresses the need for
zero-emission transportation while offering high torque pickup, extended range and reliability. ...
Images from ECObyCosentino
Cosentino, one of the world’s largest natural stone importers, announces the launch of
ECO™, a new line of
countertops. The material is composed of 75% recycled-content including mirrors
salvaged from
houses, building and factories;
glass from windows and bottles; granulated
glass from consumer recycling practices; porcelain from china, tiles, sinks, toilets and decorative elements; and industrial furnace residuals from factories in the form of crystallized ashes.
...
You probably came across some of
Ekobo's elegant and colourful kitchen accessories made from bamboo. If you like their work, which incorporates ethical production and eco-friendly materials, check out the MELLO stools. Glossy, minimalist and funky looking, the bamboo poufs are stackable, come in two sizes and the many bright colours that are typical for
Ekobo products.
...
Torolf Sauermann
Lisa at
BoingBoing Gadgets shows some amazing work by artists using 3D printing, noting that "building ultra-precise objects out of nothing is undeniably awesome." She asks, "Can you imagine if Torolf Sauermann tried to make this snail shell-esque math art using a pottery kiln?"
...
Often when we show designer stuff, we get the question "
why is it so expensive?" We have tried to address the problem of local limited run manufacture
and other factors, but the answer is never satisfactory. Over at Ponoko, we were shocked to find a designer,
Roy Sablosky, who actually displays his handiwork, but writes:
I have not posted this bowl for sale because it's too expensive. It costs about $100 to make just one, mostly because of how long it takes the laser to cut 20 rings and 80 holes. It's also very fragile.
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 11. 5.09
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