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SENSING SURFACE: SENSACELL

by Jill Fehrenbacher, 05/31/05

Spotted on Futurefeeder & Coolhunting , Sensacell is a new interactive material that can be built into anything (furniture, buildings, etc) and allows users to interact with a surface via light. Sensacell comes in the form of small tiles embedded with LEDs, advanced sensors, and smart-networking technology. The sensors detects objects within 6 inches through materials such as glass or plastic, and the LEDs light up based on user proximity. The tiles can be positioned underneath a translucent surface in groups to make applications ranging from an interactive coffee table (shown below) to luminescent walls. Developed by engineers Leo Fernekes and Joakim Hannerz, Sensacell is ideal for use in smart architecture, multimedia and retail environments. Prices range from $150- $350 per square foot, depending on the model, type and color of LEDs.

You have to watch the video to really understand the beauty of this stuff.



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SHEEP WOOL BUILDING INSULATION

by Jill Fehrenbacher, 05/31/05

It is often new developments in technology that give rise to improvements in efficiency and environmental sustainability. Sometimes, however, the biggest innovations come from simply looking at old materials with new eyes. Case in point is Thermafleece – a patented sheep’s wool insulation material for buildings. People have know for thousands of years that sheep’s wool has excellent insulation qualities. We’ve been making garments out of wool for centuries, so why has no one thought to use sheep’s wool in buildings until now? Given that the standard insulation choice is toxic, cancer-causing fiberglass, I can’t imagine why one would not want to use sheep’s wool instead. Plus, how can you resist the cuteness of these sheep?



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RECYCLED SEATBELT FURNITURE

by Jill Fehrenbacher, 05/30/05

Buckle up! Not only do seatbelts save lives, but they make for super strong and comfortable furniture as well. The tightly woven nylon that makes seat belts capable of withstanding up to 5,000 pounds of force, is an ideal material for a flexible woven seat in chairs and benches. Designer Peter Danko rescues post-industrial automotive seatbelts from becoming landfill fodder, and gives them new life as seat webbing in his Arbor furniture line.



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LYX KRISTALL CHANDELIER

by Jill Fehrenbacher, 05/30/05

Here’s another something I spotted at ICFF, which I’m just finally getting to. Swedish design company Lyx makes these beautiful fiber-optic chandeliers which mimic the sparkly corona you sometimes see around lights, in bent acrylic rods. The Kristall chandelier comes in 3 sizes, and up to 12 Kristall lamps can be lit by one fiber optic light source.

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THE GREEN HOUSE

THE GREEN HOUSE

The Green House: New Directions for Sustainable Architecture, is going to the top of my Amazon wishlist. Written by Alanna Stang & Christopher Hawthorne, the stunning coffee table book features reviews of 35 eco-friendly houses around the globe, including architects such as Santiago Calatrava and Shigeru Ban. The Green House presents 6 different climactic zones ?waterfront, forest and mountain, tropical, desert, suburban, and urban; and also includes a section on mobile dwellings. Projects are …

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IKEA PREFAB HOUSING

IKEA PREFAB HOUSING

Since IKEA was the innovator of mass-customized, flat-packed furniture it comes as no surprise to learn that the Swedish furniture behemoth is going to start selling prefab houses in the UK next year. IKEA teamed up with Swedish construction firm Skanska to create the Boklok brand in 1998. Boklok translates as “Live Smart” in Swedish, and reduces the cost of housing manufacture by creating economies of …

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PHOTO-REALISTIC WALL MURALS

PHOTO-REALISTIC WALL MURALS

Have you ever wanted to paint one of your walls with a tromp l’oeil forest scene, so that when you stared across your room, instead of staring at a white wall, you would feel like you were staring into a tranquil glade? I remember this aesthetic being big in the 70’s with tromp l’oeil wallpaper of birch trees and the like. The problem with the 70’s version was that you could peel off bits of the wallpaper, thus ruining the effect. I was always a big fan of this look, (I chalk it up to nostalgia) so I have been waiting for this aesthetic to re?emerge bigger and better. Low and behold, this year at ICFF I stumbled across Natura Design Solutions, a company offering hand-painted, photo-realiistic wall murals.


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TOUCH DESIGN STUDIO

TOUCH DESIGN STUDIO

I discovered Touch Design while trying to track down the origin of this wine glass chandelier which caught my eye at The Future Perfect. Touch design, a two person industrial design consultancy started by Pratt graduates Peter Andrew Valois and Michael Anthony Marra, makes a wide range of disparate products. Their products span the gamut of style, function and material, but are united in a common sense of clever playfulness. For example, Touch has a chair made entirely out of rubber-bands (Rubberbandit), a table which appears to be nothing but a floating table cloth (Ghost), and porcelain tableware which looks like droplets of milk.


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CLEAN, GREEN KIREI

CLEAN, GREEN KIREI

Could there be a natural material as sustainable and lovely as bamboo? In fact, there is something out there even more eco-friendly, called Kirei board. Kirei (”Ke-rai”) is a Japanese word which translates roughly as “Clean” and “Beautiful”.

Kirei is manufactured from reclaimed agricultural fiber from the Sorghum plant grown around the world for food. The stalks of this plant are usually burned or thrown into landfills after harvest. By using them in the production of Kirei Board, this material is removed from the waste stream, reducing landfill need and air pollution, while giving rural farmers a new source of revenue from a previously unused waste material.

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WALL TROPHY LIGHT

WALL TROPHY LIGHT

Suppose you really like the hunting lodge aesthetic: rustic timber logs, Navajo rugs, deer heads mounted on the wall ? only you are vegan. This is a question I’m sure many a sensitive young city slicker has pondered. The answer has arrived in the form of the trophy lamp.

Designer Isabelle Rolland hand molds these resin deer-head lamps, for a new take on the cherished cultural icon. The lighting element is composed of fluorescent tubes with dimmable ballast. These are quite pricey (at $3299), but they are hand made and resin is very expensive. I hope the designer is able to take these into mass production some day, so she can churn these out at IKEA style prices.


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FAUX SONGBIRDS

FAUX SONGBIRDS

I am perplexed by mechanical products that are designed to imitate nature. If you want to hear the tranquil sound of birds chirping in the morning, why not just open your window? I mean, even in New York City, we have cute small birds that sing in the morning: pigeons.

If you prefer the kitsch appeal of a more clean, plastic bird ? a Breezy Singer might be just the thing you need. Japanese techno-pet company Takara (remember meowlingual?) makes these cute, life-like faux birds called the Breezy Singers. Based on hand-sculpted models by Dr. Tsutomu Suzuki of the University of Tokyo, the freestanding birds are made even more realistic with modern microchip technology, which produces true-to-life sound and twitching in response to motion and changes in light conditions. The birds? authentic songs come from recordings from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, whose mission is to conserve the earth?s biodiversity through research, education and science-based focus on birds.


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NEWSWEEK + DESIGN

NEWSWEEK + DESIGN

Whats up? Is Newsweek all of a sudden a design publication?
In the past couple months, I keep finding articles about modern, sustainable design in Newsweek/MSNBC.

This week there is an article about Prefab housing, entitled HOUSES OF THE FUTURE ? NOW.

This week’s issue also has articles about the Milan Furniture Fair, Architect Thom Mayne, and Design company Blu Dot. There is also a live interview with Newsweek’s resident Architecture & Design writer, Cathleen …

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SUNSET BREEZEHOUSE

SUNSET BREEZEHOUSE

Michelle Kaufman’s latest eco-prefab house, the Breezehouse, was unveiled to the public this weekend. The newest “clean and green” prefabricated home is a collaboration between Sunset Magazine and the Bay Area architect who made headlines last year with her Glidehouse (also a collaboration with Sunset magazine). The Breezehouse was on display May 21 and 22, 2005, at Sunset headquarters in Menlo Park, California, as part of Sunset’s annual Celebration Weekend lifestyle-and-product festival. When Kaufmann’s Glidehouse debuted at last year’s event, it helped draw more than 24,000 visitors over two days.

The 1,750-square-foot home is a modular, environmentally sustainable two-bedroom, two-bath dwelling. The signature feature is the Breezeroom at the center of the house. This glass-enclosed space sits under a butterfly-shaped roof which allows air to pass and circulate through the entire house. There are also indoor gardens, and movable glass walls which open the Breezehouse for easy indoor-outdoor living.

I find it intriguing that Sunset Magazine, a fairly conservative suburban homemaker rag, is pushing “green” modernist prefab housing. What is the world coming to? (Mass suburban prefab? One can only hope…

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RECYCLED WINE BOTTLES, Part 2

RECYCLED WINE BOTTLES, Part 2

When it rains, it pours. It seems that whenever I notice something I really like (such as Tord Boontje & Emma Woffenden’s recycled glass designs), all of a sudden I start seeing similar things everywhere I look. When I picked up a copy of Dwell magazine last week, I saw another recycled-wine-bottle design project by designer Jerry Kott.

Jerry Kott collects old wine bottles and slices them into different …

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RECLAIMED WOOD IPOD CASE

RECLAIMED WOOD IPOD CASE

Berkeley based designer Peter Kinne makes wooden iPod cases (and laptop cases as well) from reclaimed materials. The wood in this Music Box comes from old hot tubs(?) and tables, and the stainless steel comes from salvaged bikes.

Anyways, this is pretty cute. I like the idea of such a rustic, old-school wooden case surrounding one’s most precious high-tech gadget. It looks pretty sturdy as well.

In the designers own words:

This case is …

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NYC DESIGN WEEK WRAP UP

NYC DESIGN WEEK WRAP UP

Design week is over and here’s my belated wrap-up:

ICFF and Soho parties were fun, but my favorite part of NYC Design week was the whole Joint Venture thingy in Williamsburg with The Future Perfect, Living Spaces, CITIZEN:Citizen and A Little Green. Even though I really can’t concentrate on design very well when surrounded by people and alcohol, I saw quite a few unique things at these shows that I didn’t see anywhere else. Unfortunately, my photographs of the events were less than fabulous, because I was trying to carry around a slushy that I got at the door of The Future Perfect.


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BRENT COMBER’S FALLEN BRANCH FURNITURE

BRENT COMBER’S FALLEN BRANCH FURNITURE

Brent Comber innovative furniture collection caught my eye at ICFF. This unusual table is made entirely from alder branches collected at Brittania Beach, outside Vancouver. The designer dries the branches, fastens them together in rows with nails and glue, and then carves the resulting piles into stunning cubic shapes. The combination of organic materials and geometric lines gives this furniture its dynamic aesthetic. Alder is a renewable resource which grows all over the coasts of Comber’s native British Columbia.


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WINE GLASS CHANDELIER

WINE GLASS CHANDELIER

Swedish company Form Nasielsky was showing this multi-tasking wine glass chandelier at ICFF this year.
The fabulously efficient Glasklasen doubles as storage space / drying rack for your wine glasses, as well as a conversation starter / chandelier that refracts light in interesting ways, depending on the type of glasses you hang in it.


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IMBROGLIO GRAPHIC CALENDAR

IMBROGLIO GRAPHIC CALENDAR

My favorite section of ICFF this year was the British section. As always, this area of the floor featured a lot of independent boutique designers offering unique and witty items such as this beautiful graphic ‘Imbroglio Calendar’. Rather than design a calendar which could only be used for a year, designer Jean-Pierre Vitrac wanted to develop one that can be re-used year after year.? This ?Imbroglio? calendar cleverly disguises the numbers 1-31 in the …

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MOLO PAPER WALL

MOLO PAPER WALL

The hit product at ICFF this year appeared to be Molo’s softwall. This giant flexible wall made out of crenellated paper was on display everywhere. It was prominent not only in Molo’s booth, but surrounding quite a few other companies’ stands as well. The softwall’s appeal is evident ? it is totally flexible in shape and size, and can be transported and set-up anywhere to alter the space of a room at whim. It is translucent, fire retardant, modular (multiple walls can be snapped together), and the delicate honeycomb pattern evokes origami and Japanese paper-craft. Who can argue with the softwall? The two architects behind Molo, Stephanie Forsythe & Todd MacAllen, have a whole line of soft products: softlight, softroom, and even softhousing.


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EXPANDING TABLE

EXPANDING TABLE

One of the best things I saw at ICFF was this expanding table design by Austrian furniture company Xpand System. What I love about this is that the design is so simple and uncluttered, and the functionality is ten times better than any other expanding table I’ve ever seen. You just pull one end of the table to expand it, and the latticed wood in the middle stretches apart like an accordian. There is no need to remove tableware in the way that you would have to with an old-school expandable table. Plus, the patented “Xpand System” in the middle of the table is actually quite beautiful as a design element.


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PHOTOGRAPHIC WOOD TRANSFERS

PHOTOGRAPHIC WOOD TRANSFERS

At ICFF, design company OHIO was showing something innovative: photographic transfers onto wood. The table shown above has a very subtle photographic transfer on the top. At first glance it just looks like a pattern in the wood, but upon closer observation it becomes apparent that it is an image of two people sitting and talking. I have never seen anything like this before, and was quite impressed with the result. Somehow I never imagined photographic transfers would look so nice on wood. You can actually see the wood grain through the stain. I think the success may have something to do with the designer’s choice of image and colors.


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LED Glass Table

LED Glass Table

Ingo Maurer’s LED Table was on display at the ICFF and at the Ingo Maurer opening party last night. I can’t stop staring at this table. I think its partly due to the “oooh sparkly” effect of a Xmas tree, and also because I can’t figure out where the LEDs are getting their electricity from. It?s quite a startling effect. Although they are wedged between two sheets of glass, the LEDs appear to be floating in thin air. Ingo Maurer’s website says: 278 white LEDs per table top, emitting light on both sides. 230/125 volts, 48 volts DC. INVISIBLE LIVE PARTS. There are tiny transparent wires embedded between the 2 sheets of glass, connecting the LEDs. The lights can be dimmed and even turned off if you suddenly want your LED table to look like a regular glass table again.


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TORD BOONTJE, Designer with Conscience

TORD BOONTJE, Designer with Conscience

Even if Tord Boontje is not yet a household name, he’s well on his way to becoming one with his ubiquitous cut out doily-esque lampshades and curtains. I have to say that I love this stuff ? but it really is everywhere! Come on, you know you’ve seen one of these “Garland” lights before. But what I bet you didn’t know (or at least I didn’t until today) is that Boontje is not just a fabulous designer – but a fabulous designer with a conscience. I learned at ICFF today that the designer has been partnering with various non?profit organizations in the production of his designs.

Transglass is a collaboration between Boontje and Emma Woffenden, to create new glasswares, such as carafs, jugs and cups out of recycled wine & beer glasses. Altough the process looks simple (slicing off different bits to create the signature designs) – the end result is stunning, ingenious & environmentally friendly to boot! And, as if creating these beautiful glasswares through recycling wasn’t enough ? the pair has started working with a Guatemalan women’s co?opt to produce the designs. Wow! A beautiful product + recycling + socially conscious production techniques. This man can do no wrong!

And there’s more…


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PHILLIPE STARCK HIGH TECH CLOCKS

PHILLIPE STARCK HIGH TECH CLOCKS

These uber high-tech clocks seem like the type of thing you should be able to find at the Sharper Image. In addition to keeping time and waking you up in the morning, these have every feature you could ever possibly want in a clock and then some: projection onto your ceiling, digital am/fm radio, current weather currents, a barometer, thermometer + hygrometer, and last, but not least: moon phases. And they were designed by Phillipe Starck. …

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HIGH TECH MOD CABINET

HIGH TECH MOD CABINET

These may look like run-of-the-mill cute modernist cabinets, but they are oh-so-much more. Glide’s MOD cabinet is actually more like a stylish safe, with a bluetooth?enabled fingerprint reading lock on the top (close up show below). Now you can lock your valuables and secret documents away from prying eyes and sticky fingers. You can register up to 20 different fingerprints for the lock to accept, using either computer or PDA. Clever …

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MODULAR TWIST-TOGETHER LIGHTS

MODULAR TWIST-TOGETHER LIGHTS

To go with your MOD Cabinet, Glide also makes a series of cute modular lights. The Twist-Together lights will appeal to the kid in you with their Lego-esque, building?block design. They can be assembled piece by piece into any formation you desire. It is so easy to pop the square blocks on and off that you can reassemble your twisty lamp every 5 minutes if you wanted to. For more complicated building fun, you can add shelving to the light blocks, and turn them into Twist-Together Light+Storage Units. Fun for the whole family!


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ICFF – International Contemporary Furniture Festival

ICFF – International Contemporary Furniture Festival

In case you didn’t know, it’s design week here in NYC. The biggest event in town, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) kicks off today (Sat, May 14th). I’ll be there to cover it and bring all the best bits back to Inhabit, so stay tuned in.

I’ll also be hitting DOWNTOWN and a host of other design-related events. For you design-loving New Yorkers who’d like to come down, there is an extensive list of the goings-on at …

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CRADLE TO CRADLE: Remaking the Way We Make Things

CRADLE TO CRADLE: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Imagine buildings that generate more energy than they consume and factories whose waste water is clean enough to drink.

Renowned ecological architect Willian McDonough has actually built these things and made them work. This week’s Newsweek has an interview with McDonough, who is bext known for his Cradle-to-cradle philosophy – a vision …

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SMART.SPACE

SMART.SPACE

Have you ever dreamed about living in a super futuristic apartment with movable walls, foldable furniture and multifunction appliances? (I’m not the only one, am I?) If you have ? integrated design group AvroKO (of PUBLIC fame) has the answer to all your Jetsons fantasies. They are launching Smart.Space this weekend, an ambitious project which involves buying small Manhattan apartments and completely overhauling them ? transforming them …

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NEEDY TOYS

NEEDY TOYS

Okay, so this is a little off-topic for this blog, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to one of my favorite things from ITP 2005: the Needies. Designed by Emily Ryan, and created by Amos Bloomberg, Daniel Perlin, and Brett Schultz at NYU’s ITP, these clingy, codependant toys have “complex relationships” with their owners. In otherwords, they act exactly like the other immature, high-maintenance people in your life!

They come in a …

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FIREFLIES – Networked Nighlight

FIREFLIES – Networked Nighlight

Another member of the ITP networked nighlight club is John Schimmel, with his project Fireflies. Fireflies is similar to Networked Flower and Slumber Light in that consists of networked lights that people can use to non-verbally communicate with each other over a distance. The big difference is that the Fireflies lights are connected through a wireless network and respond to touch. The nightlights only …

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NETWORKED SLUMBER LIGHT

NETWORKED SLUMBER LIGHT

The thing that interested me most at ITP this year was the plethora of networked light communication devices. All the ones I saw seemed to have something to do with nonverbally keeping in touch with long-distance family and friends. Since we all spend so much time online and on phones talking to our loved ones, I thought this trend towards nonverbal ?nearness? was a nice theme to see emerging.

The …

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INTERACTIVE FAUX FLOWERS

INTERACTIVE FAUX FLOWERS

If you are anything like me, you probably just recently got your mom some flowers for Mothers Day. Moms loves receiving flowers (who doesn’t) but if you stop and think about it, fresh cut flowers are really quite a wasteful gift. They cost a lot, they can take up to a year to grow, and once they are cut they wither within a week. And plastic flowers are just tacky. Usually. At the ITP show tonight I stumbled across this interactive plastic flower – and I was quite taken with it. So much so that I wanted to take it home with me. Unfortunately the flower had a bunch of wires coming out of the bottom, which were plugged into the wall, so I didn”t get very far.


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ITP SPRING SHOW

ITP SPRING SHOW

The Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring show on tonight and tomorrow night (May 10th & May 11th) 5pm – 9pm, at NYU (721 Broadway, 4th Floor). So come out and see a crazy mix of really cool, really weird, and sometimes useless Interactive Telecommunications projects. I’ll be covering the show, so keep your web browser tuned to Inhabitat.com.

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LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!