Glass is an amazing material. Not only is it durable, smooth and transparent, but it also has the unusual quality of being infinitely recyclable. Whereas other materials like plastic and metal gradually deteriorate over repeated recyclings, glass has the unique ability to be melted down and turned into something else over and over again, without ever experiencing any loss in quality. Add this to the fact that post-consumer glass containers now make up the second highest consumer waste product after paper, and you can see where I’m going here..
You can do your part to conserve this great resource by recycling glass containers, and by supporting industries that recycle and use recycled glass products. One good place to start is in your interior design. In the past decade, architects and material designers have begun to realize that the unique qualities of glass make it an ideal material for building - and not just in flat-paned windows and doors. Recycled glass is now making appearances in everything from kitchenware, to bathroom tiles, to the aggregate in floors and countertops.
Probably the most stunning architectural use of recycled glass can be found in Vetrazzo a ceramic aggregate material based in Richmond, California. Made from 85-90% post-consumer recycled glass, Vetrazzo is as smooth as marble and four times as strong as concrete. Is is usually used in countertops and tables but can also be used in floors and walls. The material comes in a wide variety of colors – check out Vetrazzo’s website for the current palette.
Some super Inhabitat reader(s) nominated us as the World’s Best Urban Architecture Blog — thank you! We’re in good company on the list of nominees, among some of our most favorite and long-admired blogs.
A company in the UK has developed a high rise apartment concept that is magnificently futuristic, yet so perfectly suited to the present-day lifestyle of modern young urbanites, it’s sort of amazing something like this hasn’t materialized until now.
Abito is a testament to the wonders of technology and the huge potential of small spaces. The template is a 347-sq-ft apartment with a central pod that serves all the functions that are traditionally distributed among a number of rooms.
Linda Taalman, Alan Koch, and the iT house designers ask this question, examining what potential homeowners desire in a machine for living.
Utilizing an aluminum frame structure manufactured by Bosch, the all glass house is constructed within an 8 week timeframe - from pouring the “Smart Slab” to appliance installation. Thoroughly designed to be an intelligent dwelling, radiant heat flooring and rooftop solar panels are incorporated within the rapid-build construction system. At a mere 1,000 sq-ft, the units offer separate public and private wings, as well as exterior courtyard space.
$50 goes a long way with these green gifts - good for all your loved ones, they’re stylish, sustainable, and will have your recipients thanking you for months to come…
SolarCap Light Emitting Tiles are complete, self-contained illuminating devices designed to be integrated into a variety of paving or masonry applications. Well suited for exterior use, they can add both day and nighttime color to patios, walkways, and other outdoor surfaces without additional wiring.
Available in six colors and two sizes, the tiles will fit within most regular paving modules. Photovoltaic cells collect and store solar energy (even in the rain), emitting a soft LED glow at night. These integral paving lights seem to be the next generation of the often used, but less-than-radiant solar powered garden lights. Once these tiles begin to dot suburban walkways, hopefully both solar and LED technology will gain a wider acceptance around the home beyond decorative plastic stakes.
Mark your calendars: The Skyscraper Museum will launch a new exhibit in January of next year, highlighting new sustainable skyscrapers. Entitled “Green Towers in New York: from Visionary to Vernacular,” the exhibit will examine both well known buildings such as the New York Times Tower as well as lower profile residential and mixed-use towers which have been designed to meet high standards of green-building.
The show will focus on how the local surroundings and culture of New York City have created a particular environment which is accomodating to sustainable building, as well as one which continues to strive for progress.
When it comes to style, we value individuality. There’s no novelty in mass production any more; instead, a product is desireable when it looks like it was the only one ever made. The BENDANT lamp, by MIOculture, blends the advantages of both mass-production and hand-made craft. The lamp comes to you as a mass-produced template that is ready to be bent into a unique shape, resulting in an absolutely one-of-a-kind creation.
The flat-packed chandelier is made of durable, laser-cut, powder-coated, flexible steel. By bending the various leaf-cut pieces into different orientations, the chandelier takes on dimension and character. The ingenuity behind the Bendant lamp is that the uniqueness of the product is authentic; unlike other companies who have added prepacked quirks to their designs to give them a one-of-a-kind effect, this is the real thing.
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Trees are great for many reasons. They help moderate climate, they provide shelter from sun, wind and rain, and they shelter wildlife. Most importantly, they act as air purifiers, removing nasty carbon dioxide, dust, ozone, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide from the air so that we can breathe nice clean oxygen.
We love trees so much that we wish we could keep one in our house for the air-purifying benefits (we’re working on it). However, until that day comes, Philip’s Air Tree is a good stand-in. Conceived as both a decorative item, and an air purifier / humidifier, the Air Tree takes is cue from nature and keeps the home environment fresh by performing much the same function as a biological tree: cleaning the air.
We can’t wait until these come to market. Hopefully by then they’ll be a little less bulky and a little more tree-like as well.
Given how cool and space-efficient Murphy beds are, it’s a wonder there aren’t more home furnishings that fold up and disappear flat against the wall. Hofman Dujardin Architects has come up with a new one, though it’s not so much space-saving as it is space-making. The Bloomframe is a window that folds out of an exterior wall to become a balcony. Created with urban density in mind, the Bloomframe is said to offer “small freedom in the city.” As Bright so aptly put it: Go, go, Gadget, Balcony!
When I wrote about the sprayable uber-concrete Grancrete last May, we had enormous response from readers - mostly from people wondering where to get the innovative material. The sprayable ceramic is stronger than concrete and can be used to erect a house in a matter of hours, making it an ideal building material to create temporary shelters in areas of natural disaster. Well, I am happy to announce that Grancrete is finally available for purchase online at Grancrete.net.
We’re always saying, in order for sustainability to be successful, it’s got to be sexy. A lot of good examples have passed across our radar, but Eco-Boudoir takes the cake. The London-based brand is not afraid to market itself as a sustainable product, since there’s no chance it’ll be mistaken for another crunchy company.
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Employing a similar design techniques as our favorite Scrapile - only with fabric - fashion label Piecelilly makes bags, purses and other unique accessories from recycled clothing scraps, fabrics and other found material. Design duo Jennifer Farrington and April Kline have developed a passion for recycling and reusing old materials. They spend their days haunting flea markets and estate sales, looking for that perfect piece of fabric that can be reborn into a unique Piecelilly product.
I am particularly impressed with the fact that these products are not just eco-friendly, but also super cute. Too often, well-meaning “recycled” design ends up looking like it came straight out of the recycle bin. Not Piecelilly. The designer’s skilled craftmanship transforms something that could be junky (face it, we are talking about old rags here) into sexy new objects.
What material is 100% renewable, stronger than oak, and as pretty as bamboo? If you guessed Plyboo, you win an Inhabitat star. Plyboo, just as it sounds, is laminated bamboo plywood. Stronger and more durable than most hardwoods, yet lightweight and eco-friendly, ply bamboo is an ideal material for flooring, walls, and furniture.
As a quick follow-up to our Green Roofs post from last week, we wanted to call attention to a great article in the Villager about the growing Green Roof movement in NYC.
Although New York City is still lagging far behind Chicago and many European and Asian cities, green roofing is finally started to pick up here. Community arts center ABC No Rio is renovating its dilapidated four-story tenement building in the Lower East Side to include an extensive green roof. The Lower East Side Girls Club is also renovating with plans to build two green roofs, one of which they will use to grow herbs for their cafe. (All this greening in my neighborhood!)
Still, as Leslie Hoffman, director of Earthpledge, points out: there are probably about 50 green roofs in New York City at the moment. Compare this to Chicago’s estimated 2 million square feet of green roofs, and you can see we have a lot of catching up to do.
If there were a competition for the least sustainable city, Las Vegas would be a tough one to beat. Putting a mecca of lights, fountains and hotels in the middle of a desert is patently unsustainable. Luckily, Vegas has recently been taking some ideas from greener pastures. From tree-planting efforts to greening the Mirage, things are looking up.
In the heart of Vegas, the Springs Preserve occupies 180 acres of historic land. Architecture firm Lucchesi Galati has been working with the valley water district to redesign “Big Springs” with community and conservation in mind.
At Inhabitat, we are often seduced by precious products and elegantly designed dwellings, intoxicated by the cutting edge approach to sustainability. While this technology and beauty is alluring, it?s important to recognize broader progress toward a more livable planet through urban redevelopment and government policies. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced five communities to win a National Award for Smart Growth Achievement for 2005.
One of the more intriguing (and completed) projects to receive an award is the redevelopment of the abandoned Elitch Gardens amusement park, five miles from downtown Denver.
For those who?ve dreamed of getting away from the pace of urban life without giving up their platform bed, BlueSky MOD has developed a modern cabin that can be prefabricated, delivered, and erected- in 10 days no less- on your wilderness of choice. The 640 sq-ft prototype has some similar appeals as the Tiny Tumbleweed Houses profiled last month; the cabin is designed to be ecologically responsible, flexible, and modular, all within a relatively small footprint.
Paul Cocksedge is a young British designer whose elegant lighting incorporates rarely considered materials and exploits their properties through illumination.
In “Bulb,” Cocksedge takes three natural elements- electricity, water, and a flower, to create a remarkably simple lamp with dazzling- yet organic properties. Inserted into a vase of water, the flower stem is used to switch on a small halogen light at the base of the “lamp.” The water within the vase then projects the light- as would a lens- and the flower is silhouetted from the glow. Because the conductive property of the sap is what creates the path for currnet, once the flower dies, the light will go out.
Paul Cocksedge has used other unusual materials such as styrofoam cups and pencil drawings to create designs of both technical and visual beauty.
I had the great pleasure this past weekend of being invited to a little town outside of Seattle, where I witnessed the work-in-progress prototype of Cargotecture’s Studio 320. Had I arrived by chance in the industrial neighborhood to which my directions guided me, I might not have noticed the faded yellow and orange cargo containers that sat at the back of a large, mostly vacant parking lot. They were barely discernable from the backdrop of discarded industrial material. But closer inspection revealed that something surprising was afoot. These two metal boxes are the seed of an ingenious plan by two Seattle architects to turn old shipping containers into sustainable modular dwellings.
As an interior designer, my friend Victor receives gifts and tokens from the local finish and furniture reps on a daily basis. Usually these items are not terribly distinctive; however, last week I saw a tiny bottle of honey sitting on Victor’s desk. I couldn’t help but notice a tag around the neck that read: Herman Miller. “Surely they don’t make this themselves,” I said aloud. But why was an office furniture company giving honey away?
Upon further investigation, I found that Herman Miller does indeed make honey. The story goes something like this:
Though guilt is a common and effective remedy for changing wasteful behavior, it’s certainly nobody’s favorite. In order for sustainable ideas to catch on, they need to be pleasurable and desireable. Not many products consist of equal parts ecological responsibility and innovative design, but Re:Form has struck the balance. Their Energy Curtain is a window shade woven with solar-collecting and light-emitting materials that store sunlight during the day and emit it at night. By choosing how much sunlight to collect and how much to use, the curtain “acts to stimulate reflection on the trade-offs of a local, sustainable system and [help the user] evolve a relationship with their own energy behaviors over time.”
American cities have a surprising amount of wasted open space. Even in densely packed urban areas like New York City, the prime real estate atop roofs is given much less consideration than one would expect from a populace that values each square foot of space so highly. This oversight is a real shame, because there is so much that can be done to improve the local environment and quality of life, simply by fixing up a roof.
For those of you who have a hard time choosing between the minimalist aesthetic of unadorned concrete, and the warm, decorative aesthetic of wallpaper - your heart need be torn no longer. Concrete Blond’sWalled Paper allows brutalists to indulge their inner rocoquette, by transforming concrete into a lavish landscape of patterns and textures.
Ceramic designer Eric Barrett founded Concrete Blond in 2002 in reaction to the prevailing conservatism in the use of concrete in interior and exterior spaces. The designer creates permanent wall castings with traditional wallpaper prints embossed onto an entire surface of concrete. The concrete castings come with a variety of sizes, finishes and patterns to choose from. Barrett focuses on interior and exterior wall cladding, flooring and custom concrete castings.
If I could be anywhere next week, I’d be at Future Design Days in Stockholm, Sweden. On November 14 and 15, designers and design-lovers will converge for a celebration and exploration of the current and future state of the industry that defines how we make things. Highlighted subcategories include industrial design, new media, architecture and interior design, and fashion.
A production of Futurelab, the forward-thinking Swedish communication agency, the event is inclusive in its definition of design. “Design can be good or bad, beneficial or evil. But design always has a clear purpose. Otherwise, it would not be design. If you have an intention and the ability to express it, that’s design. So it follows that everyone involved in the design process has a responsibility - economic, ecological, aesthetic, ethical.” If only responsibility were always so tempting.
What makes the Prebuilt different from other prefabs? For one thing, it’s truly affordable. The four design variations range from $43,000 to $109,000USD, the more costly of which gets you a two-story, three-bedroom home. Not bad. For another thing, the house can be folded up and transported on a single standard truck, and constructed in a matter of days, including interior installations and fixtures.
The Prebuilt has a galvanized steel frame with a choice of several claddings and window treatments. The entire structure can be elevated to accomodate site conditions, and can be folded up and relocated quickly and easily.
While “modern” & “rural” are rarely used descriptively in the same sentence, Sasha Sykes has found a way to merge these two design ideals. The contemporary furniture and art pieces of farm21 exemplify this aesthetic simplicity. The signature piece- a plexiglas cube stuffed with straw- originated as a birthday gift, but has since been reinterpreted in several variations.
Most of the organic materials that Sasha incorporates are sourced from the family farm in Ireland, and range from guinea feathers to moss. The cubes allow for an appreciation of natural textures and variables, within a perfectly regular package.
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