I seem to have stumbled upon a theme this week: bringing industrial technology to traditional Eastern design aesthetics. Kazuhide Doi, a Japanese architect, won a Bronze award from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction for his futuristic approach to preserving traditional architecture.
Doi’s “air suit” is a thin skin of glass and membrane that encloses a building, protecting it from heat and water. The “envelope” increases energy efficiency, decreases the need for intensive structural renovations, and provides insulation by creating a greenhouse effect. “The thin, translucent facade is also reminiscent of a traditional Japanese house,” said Doi.
Filipino designer Kenneth Cobonpue has good design in his genes. His mother, Betty Cobonpue, founded a furniture design and manufacturing company in the Phillipines in the early seventies, where she gained a reputation for her innovations in the use of rattan. Kenneth left the islands to go to Pratt Institute for Industrial Design and has been back in his native region for nearly ten years, integrating his traditional design heritage with his industrial training.
With the unpleasant prediction of more devastating weather patterns over the next twenty years (and beyond), safety and resilience are becoming top priorities for builders in disaster-prone areas. A company based in Hawai’i has taken a traditional building style that traces its roots back to indigenous Polynesian, Japanese and African cultures, and applied 21st century principles to create sustainable prefab dwellings that hold up to earthquakes, hurricanes and high water. Tim Cornell began building his Pole Houses in 1988 and now offers five basic plans as well as customized plans for buyers with specific needs.
I have been enamored with environmentally conscious furniture company Scrapile ever since I came across their line of recycled wood furniture during New York Design week last spring.
Brooklyn-based designers Carlos Salgado and Bart Bettencourt have created a beautiful, cutting-edge line of furniture by collecting wood scraps from various lumber mills, and recycling those scraps (which would otherwise be headed for landfill) into their stunning minimalist pieces. At this point, the Scrapile line includes tables, benches, stool, shelving, crates and lamps, all made out of their signature striated material. Recently I had a chance to sit down with the up-and-coming design duo at their shop in Williamsburg to learn how it all began >
In an admirable display of furniture fusion, a group of Thai designers has reinterpreted the aesthetic of traditional crafts to make use of modern technology. Crafactor utilizes new industrial production techniques to create designs that are at once folky and futuristic. The Infinity Armchair is made entirely from rattan, a material that is eco-friendly and abundantly available in Southeast Asia. Crafactor also incorporates water hyacinth into many of their more finely woven pieces. Their 2005 collection is a mix of organic and ultra-bold seating, illuminating the entire spectrum from reeds to PVC.
Did any of you New Yorkers see this? I went down to Manhattan’s waterfront a couple times to try to catch Smithson’s Floating Island, and both times it eluded me (I think the schedule wasn’t as regular as I thought). Anyways, I really missed out, because apparently towards the end of the island’s stint around Manhattan, a floating Christo-esque saffron “Gate” started chasing the floating island. I can’t believe I missed it. It must have been quite a site to see one piece of conceptual art in pursuit of another.
As you know, we don’t usually focus on the design of small-item products like toiletries ? but I thought this merited an exception. Recycline is a company that makes small plastic items (razors, toothbrushes, and tableware) out of recycled post-consumer polypropylene. They have set up a partnership with Stonyfield Farm to collect old yogurt containers and recycle them back into their household products. The Preserve product line incorporates about 65% post-consumer yogurt cups and 35% polypropylene from other sources, but all the plastic used by Recycline is 100% recycled.
A holiday rental agency in West Wales recently opened a new accomodation and proved that 70s kitsch has still not lost its popular appeal. The Caban Cariad (Welsh for “Love Shack”) is a Swedish prefab cabin that was imported into Wales in 1973. It was leased and refurbished this year by Greg Stevenson, owner of the rental agency Under the Thatch, and opened to guests in July. The decor in the cabin is a mix of vintage, modern and Ikea, with a floral couch from Erika Pekkari and orange sparkly plastic stools by Henry Massonnet, pop art on the walls, a lava lamp, a shag rug and an inset pebble fireplace.
Under the design umbrella that is responsible for Moso Village, there are a bevy of other offshoot projects, including a furniture design company, Bamboo Furniture. The company sources materials from China, Costa Rica and Columbia, bringing them together at their showroom in Miami. They utilize recycled metals and glass, rattan and raffia, low VOC paints and finishes, and sustainabile textiles in their collection of tables, couches, chairs and beds.
In China’s Guangdong province, three hours north of Guangzhou, an old military base is being turned into an eco-village. Moso Village aims to become a wireless village where rural residents can remain in their ancestral villages while staying connected to the world, rather than moving into the city where their skills in organic agricultural are of little use.
Now that prefab is ultra-hip, I’ve come to expect new designs to have the modern, minimalist look that makes prefab so sexy. But outside of residential prefab, I’ve come across a lot of institutional projects that still don the cardboard boredom of their predecessors. So it was a pleasant surprise to discover SIMPLE, the new modular student housing line from Garrison Architects and Kullman Industries.
Lisbon based e-studio has recently developed an organic concrete. The Bet?o Org?nico has a permeable surface which allows plants to grow out of it. This new material exploits concrete?s capacity to trap water and retain humidity, so the substance can nourish plants even during a dry spell. The organic concrete makes it possible to create permeable living surfaces, allowing architects and urban designers to incorporate a bit of greenery directly into their designs.
In the midst of our cries over environmental destruction and lessons in at-home chemistry, it seemed about time for a brief return to designs that highlight the simple pleasures in life. Above are two designs that focus on food as the inspiration for innovation.
The Lunar Design cake plate is a tasteful combination of ingenuity and humor. With a perfect compartment for a generous wedge of cake, and a handy holder for the candle, the plate “solves the age-old problem of where to put the candle once the song is over.” Sometimes the simplest quandaries spark design genius.
If there’s one thing that environmentalists and developers agree on, it’s that greenery is a good thing. Foliage is an instant feng shui enhancer, not to mention its oxygen-boosting and mood-lifting effects. It can hide a hole in the wall, beautify a window box; the list is endless. For those that lack confidence in their ability to keep greenery going, hope is not lost. The Swedish company Green Fortune has created the Streamgarden as a fail-safe means of sustaining plants in your urban habitat.
This Thursday, September 22, is the opening day of 100% Design, London’s annual design industry convergence, featuring some of the world’s greatest contemporary designers. 100% Design brings together emerging and established designers to exhibit their latest innovations, as well as offering seminars and several special exhibitions including 100% Detail, focused especially on building products and materials. In concert with the week’s exhibition is a host of events and installations all around London, collectively entitled 100% Guaranteed.
In San Mateo next week, the Green Dollhouse Project will open its exhibition of 17 winning designs from its 2005 design competition. The exhibition will show at the Coyote Point Museum (south of San Francisco) through December 3. Designs come from all over the U.S. and as far as Japan, showcasing in mini-form the numerous possibilities for a greener home. The dollhouse to the right was designed by Japanese designer Yasuo Tokuoka, whose background as an arch dam and landscape engineer is evident in the fluid quality of the materials and the integration of natural elements into the structure and interior of the house.
The “Prefab Mod Dollhouse” (below) emerges unsurprisingly from a Bay Area firm, Andrea Traber Architecture and Sustainability. The bamboo loft (with the tree growing through the roof), comes from students at California College of the Arts.
If anyone still needed proof that world oil resources are diminishing, staggering gas prices have now confirmed it. Now, even as our wallets grow skinnier and SUV sales drop, I can’t help but wonder how deeply this new reality is penetrating the American psyche.
Proponents of alternative fuel are fervently pursuing a viable, abundant source of fuel that will maintain our mobility without harming the earth. At present, biodiesel is the most available, affordable and easy-to-use alternative to gasoline. It is made out of either used cooking grease or virgin vegetable oil (corn and soy being the most common). The process of refining oil into biodiesel is quite simple, and the resulting fuel can be used in any diesel engine with no modification to the vehicle itself.
Below is a how-to recipe for brewing your own biodiesel. I have compiled it from several sources over the last few years and have followed it myself many times with great success. Read on to learn how you can have a healthier, cheaper, more environmentally-friendly ride.
I’ve seen some pretty scary things in the news recently ? and I’m not talking about global terrorism or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Scarier even than anarchy, violence and crumbling social fabric is the idea that global warming is RAPIDLY ACCELERATING, and pretty soon, we will have passed the point at which we can do anything to stop it.
Inspired by the ecocentric attitudes of such beloved American nature-lovers as Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and Alcott, three MIT designers - Mitchell Joachim, Lara Greden and Javier Arbona - created this living treehouse in which the dwelling itself merges with its environment and nourishes its inhabitants. Fab Tree Hab dissolves our conventional concept of home and establishes a new symbiosis between the house and its surrounding ecosystem.
We wrote about Robert Smithson’s floating island about a month ago, but I just want to remind interested New Yorkers that the floating island has set sail today. The displaced chunk of Central Park will circumnavigate Manhattan everyday until September 25th, and will be viewable from various points on the Hudson and the East River from 8AM - 8PM.
I caught my first glimpse of Vegas from at least one hundred miles outside the city, when its giant halo of white light became visible driving westward through the desert at night. The glow epitomized everything disturbing about our Herculean efforts to make unnatural environments thrive where they don’t belong. I doubt any amount of greening could ever diminish that glow, but the MGM Mirage is on a mission to bring a little relief to the rampant consumption of resources that characterizes Las Vegas.
The Qu’bequoise CNI Furniture company has designed an overwhelmingly large collection of environmentally-friendly interiors. They utilize exotic vegetable fibers and cruelty-free upholsteries to create elegant, contemporary furnishings and lighting. The Alto chair, shown here, is made of hand-woven raffia or abaca, with a nickel-finished chrome base and animal-free ultrasuede cushion. This chair definitely looks akin to the my-first-apartment Ikea chair, but with a weight and texture that gives it an organic, unique character. You can view the 100+ pieces of the CNI collection at their (somewhat rudimentary) website, and detailed info is available upon request. It’s always nice to stumble across a company whose ecological standards and design sensibilities are equally matched.
Okay, this is a bit late. I should have written a Semi-Permanent wrap up last Sunday to make things timely, but unfortunately I ran out of time, and this week is getting more and more hectic with each passing day. (Blogging is hard work!)
[[image:ecoshower_01.jpg::right:0]]Like most people, I care about conserving water - but when it comes to actually scrimping on shower-time, I am loathe to cut back on my morning wake-up ritual. Thats why I am so excited about a new eco-friendly shower design from a student at the Royal College of Art in London. Design student Peter Brewin has developed a shower that actually recycles water - drastically reducing consumption, and saving customers a pretty penny in their utility bills.
Commissioned as a guest house for artist Richard Tuttle and poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, the Turbulence House is nudging a technological revolution in off-site house design and construction. The 900-sq-ft house is a product of computer-intensive modeling, but the resulting form is paradoxically natural, looking (in spite of its aluminum facade) like a geological artifact shaped by the desert winds of its New Mexican setting.
Here’s a quirky design guaranteed to warm up those chilly winter nights. The EcoSmart Fireplace is a flue-less, transportable, open fireplace which is ideal for apartment and city living. Designed to provide the coziness of a traditional fireplace without the negative environmental impact, the EcoSmart fireplace burns denatured ethanol (a renewable energy source).
In a move destined to make prefab lovers drool, Dwell Magazine has just announced the launch of an exclusive collection of custom-designed, modern prefabricated homes. The publication has teamed up with Empyrean International LLC (formerly Deck House), Resolution: 4 Architecture, and Lazor Office to create The Dwell Homes by Empyrean.
“One of the major obstacles prefab has faced,” said Dwell Editor-in-Chief Allison Arieff, “has been effective collaboration among designers, manufacturers, and clients. This partnership brings together experienced parties across that spectrum, all of whom are passionate about and committed to prefab’s potential. As a result, we’re able to offer the public not one but three beautifully designed, highly functional, and eminently livable homes.”
The three designs are featured in the Fifth Anniversary issue of Dwell, which hits newsstands Tuesday, September 20.
British engineering and design consultancy Arup has signed a contract with Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) to plan the world’s first sustainable “eco-city” - at Dongtan, outside of Shanghai. The new city, which will be three-quarters the size of Manhattan, will be built on the eastern end of Chongming, a large island that sits in the mouth of the Yangtze river delta a few miles northeast of the city centre, close to Shanghai?s new airport.
At the moment the site is mostly agricultural land, bordering on wetlands. The Eco-city aims to develop a comprehensive energy strategy incorporating large-scale renewable energy technologies, which will reduce damaging emissions, and bring the city as close to carbon-neutral as possible. Other environmentally sensitive aspects include the development of a process to capture and purify water in the landscape to support life in the city. Community waste management recycling will generate clean energy from organic waste, reducing landfills that damage the environment.
If you’ve never been privy to an end-of-lease battle with your landlord over how much damage falls on your shoulders, consider yourself both rare and fortunate. Almost everyone has hastily patched a couple of holes with toothpaste in hopes of seeing their deposit again. Two designers in Montreal have just created a few modern furnishings to help you become a lower-impact tenant. They lean securely against the wall with no mountings.
Frederic Galliot and Vincent Hauspy launched Pr?sentation Sugg?r?e as a means of enhancing efficiency and minimizing impact. The name means “Suggested Serving,” implying that the product comes prepared just for you in the box, but you choose how to consume it. The table and shelf consoles have customized dimensions, materials and colors to suit your space and your functional requirements.
I seem to have stumbled upon a theme this week: bringing industrial technology to traditional Eastern design aesthetics. Kazuhide Doi, a Japanese architect, won a Bronze award from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction for his futuristic approach to preserving traditional architecture. 
In an admirable display of furniture fusion, a group of Thai designers has reinterpreted the aesthetic of traditional crafts to make use of modern technology. 
A holiday rental agency in West Wales recently opened a new accomodation and proved that 70s kitsch has still not lost its popular appeal. The 
