ICFF 2005
by Che-Wei Wang, Brooklyn on 05.15.05
The ICFF returns to NYC for the 17th time with the best in furniture design. Over 500 exhibitors from 29 countries are showing of their latest product and furniture lines, some with an eco-conscious. Check out Treehugger's top picks.
Grow is an ingenious concept by Samuel Cabot Cochran from Pratt Insitute. The modular panel system consists of solar panels and piezo-electric crystals, capturing energy produced by wind and light. The panel's are rented or leased to maintain control over its life cycle.
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Here There Design's 100% sustainable lamps, first covered in March by Treehugger. The lamps are constructed with abaca fiber, stainles steel and polished concrete are built to last.
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Modernlink which Treehugger first covered in October has a new line of furnishings all of which are made with bamboo and stainless steel.
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Xeno Objects, also previously covered by Treehugger, was showing off their line of bamboo chairs and tables. Each piece is hand crafted using concentric bamboo rings and an eco-friendly (containing 60% fewer VOCs) UV-protected seal.
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Adapt Design, also previously covered by Treehugger, takes an innovative approach with bamboo by exploiting its strength and manipulating it into a curvaceous form with its Spring Chair.
[by Che-Wei Wang]
Fabulous idea to incorporate piezo chrysals in a building skin. Piezo-electric effect generates voltage in the 0.1 to 0.6 range, so that sufficient coverage produces a nice add-on current flow to the SPV panels, as the vibrational and wind-stress energy flux thats drives them operate 24/7, unlike the sun does for the SPV panels. The drawback is that piezo crystals are more "stuff". A great many existing buildings have their metal surfaces treated with polyvinylidene flouride (PVDF) or "kynar", a polymeric coating, often specified by architects for its ability to remain color true for many years. Almost every metal paneled building skin has some; and so do the increasingly common coated metal rooves. What makes this remarkable is that PVDF has intrinsic piezo-electric properties, so much so that it is commonly used as the basis of amplifier pickups in stringed instruments. The guitar or violin vibrations are transformed into an amplifiable current by a thin piece of PVDF hidden in the pickup.
When one images the immense amount of wind stresses place on a building and the sympathetic resonsances induced in buildings by ordinary city noise, the potential for coating panels to by used to gather more voltage without adding more "stuff" seems quite impressive.