Inhabitat

PROPELLOR’S PLYBOO PENDANT LAMP

Making its debut at HauteGREEN this year, Propeller’s gorgeous new pendant lamps demonstrate the potential of combining CNC milling with sustainable materials like Plyboo. What particularly attracts us to the Furrow Parkade pendant light is the simple linear design, with cuts that reveal the inner core of the material, making it equally beautiful when showcased in natural light or when used to light-up a dark night.

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ECO-FRIENDLY EMIR CHAIR by Trokk 16

If you are looking for a cool alternative to your average, run-of-the-mill upholstered furniture, the latest buzz (and one of the stunners of the HauteGREEN show) is the Emir chair by Lars Urheim of the Norwegian design house Trokk16. A beautiful specimen of classic Scandinavian design, the Emir chair is constructed out of natural latex foam, sustainable wood, wool fabric and woolen felt. The biodegradable Emir is as much about form as it is about substance. According to Urheim, the chair’s components can easily be separated and reused or recycled after its initial use has run its course.

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THORNCROWN CHAPEL – A Paragon of Environmental Design

While walking through the woods near Eureka Springs, Arkansas, one might be forgiven to mistake Thorncrown Chapel for a grove of trees in the middle of the forest. The transparent glazed facade, combined with the timber trusses, create the appearance of a grand forest rather than a carefully constructed chapel. It is only when one is inside the chapel that one starts appreciating the small details that set it apart as a paragon of architectural achievement: the steel joints on the trusses, the lanterns, the reflection of the glass, and finally the steel roof.

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SWING WITH THE PLANTS: Green Swing by Marcel Wanders

For the (green) kid in all of us, check out Droog designer Marcel Wanders’ latest creation- ‘Swing With The Plants’ combines flora and the nostalgia of childhood days spent on a swingset. The seat of Swing with the Plants serves as a planter, AND comes packed with soil and the seeds of a climbing plant that will grow upwards along the ropes.

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GREEN YOUR WALLS with Schiavello Vertical Gardens

For all of us urban dwellers who crave indoor greenery but find ourselves a bit short on space, here’s a great solution that requires almost no square footage: Joost Bakker’s Schiavello Vertical Gardens. The steel-frame interior plant system was designed on a grid that allows numerous plants to be stacked vertically in columns or walls- providing the perfect backdrop for any office or apartment that needs and extra bit of greening but can’t afford the space required for them (when you can’t build out, build up!).

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GOOGLE GOES GREEN(ER)

It’s a good time to be green, and Google is leading the way. Last year, the search giant Google announced that their installation of the solar panels on their campus, which are expected to provide around 1,600 kw/h. And keeping with their green commitment, they recently launched the Google solar panel project webpage which will help anyone track how much power their solar panels are generating. And now, their newest green initiatives include everything from plug-in hybrids and car-powered homes to carbon neutrality.

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THE SONGJIANG SUSTAINABLE HOTEL IN CHINA

Near Shanghai, the Songjiang district has become a popular weekend destination for many tourists with its natural beauty and sprawling landscapes. And now the Songjiang Hotel might just become the newest and greenest attraction. While it may look a bit sci-fi, this hotel was designed for the real (green) world, with many sustainable features in mind.

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MOSO BAMBOO PENDANT LAMP by Brian Schmitt

A variety of environmentally-friendly pendant lights lit up the HauteGREEN exhibition last month in New York, but none of them more exquisitely displays our love for bamboo than the Moso Pendant by designer Brian Schmitt. Made almost entirely of bamboo and only three components (shade panels, bamboo frame, and cord set), the Moso Pendant can be flat packed and shipped to your preferred destination and be assembled without the use of any fasteners or glue. How cool is that?

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AMPLE SAMPLE Upcycling Design Contest

For those of you who work in a professional design office, you know how quickly we become inundated with samples of all sorts. From rubber to glass and everything in-between, we can’t help but find ourselves on the receiving end of sample shipments, momentarily entranced by the possibilities of their novelty.

A recent contest sponsored by carpet manufacturers Bentley Prince Street and Tricycle resulted in some of the best examples of upcycling we’ve seen in a while: from wine carriers to benches, these designers took to the task of finding real, new uses for their excess carpet samples. The winner of the contest was the Rugburm lounge chair, pictured above, designed by a group at RSA. The design incorporates 42 samples and takes advantage of their flexible and weight bearing properties.

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DASPARKHOTEL MADE FROM RECYCLED PIPES

While the idea of sleeping in a pipe might not immediately connote luxury in your mind, this hotel design turns concrete pipes into quite the comfortable space for your next overnight stay. Almost like glorified camping, the DasParkHotel is a series of individual hotel room pipes, set on a beautiful flora-filled backdrop just steps from the Danube River.

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ANDREA CREWS: Reinterpreting Second-Hand

Sustainable Style Sunday is on a recycling roll, so we figured we’d continue the theme with Andrea Crews, a Paris-based creative collective whose work defies definition as solely design, art, or fashion. Their projects are based on the use and reinterpretation of the second-hand garment as a social, economic and ethical choice. One part Swap-o-rama, one part Imitation of Christ, mixed with a let’s-play-dress-up enthusiasm, they express their vision in workshops, performances, fashion shows, and eventually the commercial sale of their creations.

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MELBOURNE BANS PLASTIC BAGS

Last July, Australia’s Victoria state legislation, home to Melbourne, announced legislation to put a levy of 10 cents on every giveaway plastic bag given at supermarkets. The move was seen as a necessary step to curb the ammount of plastic bags going into landfill, and follows the actions of several small towns in Victoria and in other parts of the country.

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SAN FRANCISCO BANS PLASTIC BAGS

Photo courtesy of NY Times

Next time you go grocery shopping in San Francisco, you won’t be hearing “paper or plastic” at the check out. As of this past March, San Francisco is officially the first city in the United States to ban plastic shopping bags in certain establishments. The city by the Bay’s Board of Supervisors approved the groundbreaking legislation that would officially ban plastic checkout bags supermarkets by September and pharmacies by early 2008. City officials are optimistic that other U.S. cities including Los Angeles and New York will follow suit.

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HONG KONG MOVES TO BAN PLASTIC BAGS

Lawmakers are closer to passing an environmental levy to cut plastic bag use in Hong Kong. “No Plastic Bag Day” campaigns may become permanent. According to a report released recently by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, Hong Kong throws out over 8 billion plastic shopping bags every year (that’s more than 3 bags per person a day).

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TOP 5 TINIEST PREFAB HOMES

As prefab housing takes hold as a viable, sustainable, contemporary building technique, one of the lessons we are learning is that bigger does not necessarily equal better. In fact, when is comes to simplifying your life and trying to tread lightly on the planet, we would argue that smaller is most certainly better. Some of our favorite prefabs here at Inhabitat have been those with the least amount of square footage. In an era of shoddily-built cookie-cutter McMansions, it’s nice to see a growing trend toward living small and efficiently, in a well built compact home. Read on for our Top 5 Tiniest Prefab Homes…

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SPINACH POWERED HOUSE

We all know how good spinach is for your body, but did you know that it is also good for your house? That’s the proposition behind the house designed by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum. Together, they have designed a residence which obtains its electricity from spinach, making it worthy of being declared the winner of Cradle to Cradle contest.

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INTERACTIVE “LIVING GLASS” Regulates Air Quality

What if architecture was designed to work for you to keep you healthy? Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin, architects at The Living have come up with a new material called “Living Glass” that will look out for your health by monitoring CO2 levels in the air. The new smart material is a thin, transparent, non-mechanical surface which automatically opens and closes “gills” in response to human presence to control the air quality in the room.

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MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES: Our impact exposed

Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photographs manage to be both beautiful and simultaneously horrifying, and film director Jennifer Baichwal has managed to capture both the aesthetic and concept behind Burtynsky’s ground-breaking photography in her recently-debuted documentary film Manufactured Landscapes. The film was shown at the Seattle Film Festival, showcasing Edward Burtynsky’s photography through Baichwal’s aesthetic eye and and Peter Mettler’s artful cinematography. Burtynsky’s work highlights the effects of human interventions on the land, in such a stunning yet critical way that he was awarded the TED Prize for his art in 2005.

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SYSTEM X MODULAR LIGHTING by Ross Lovegrove

Ross Lovegrove’s System X, which he designed for Yamagiwa, is a modular lighting system composed of flexible fluorescent X’s that can be linked with other X modules to create a modern and sculptural lighting system for any interior space. Imagine the possibilities, you can link as many or as few X modules you want both horizontally and vertically to cover entire walls, ceilings, even connect the X’s together to form circles of different sizes.

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DOG POOP POWER FOR SAN FRANCISCO

Anyone who’s ever spent time in San Francisco (and perhaps stepped in a stinky patch in Duboce park) knows that this is a city that loves its dogs. So much so that dog poop is a real issue in terms of urban cleanliness — pet feces currently makes up nearly 4 percent of San Francisco’s residential waste! So its about time then, that someone came up with the brilliant idea to put San Francisco’s dog poop to work and find a better use for it than simply filling up garbage cans (and getting stuck on people’s shoes). The forward-thinking environmentally-friendly city will be the first in the nation to use dog feces as a renewable energy source through the production and combustion of methane gas.

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POO POWER: Could Cow Poo Power Your Home?

When it comes to finding cleaner greener sources of electrical power, we’re going to have to start thinking out of the box a bit if we want to reduce carbon emissions and increase efficiency. Coal, solar, wind and hydro may be the most common sources to power your home, but now you can now add cow poop to the list as well. And no we’re not kidding…

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LIGHTS OUT LONDON! – June 21st

Sydney started it, with massive success, and now London is getting into the act. The Lights Out London campaign is inviting londoners to turn off their lights for one hour, between 9p.m. and 10p.m. on the 21st of June (the Summer Solstice). They are hoping to become the largest climate change event ever recorded whose only request is to switch off.

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ARCHITECT BLOG POLL: Vote for Inhabitat!

Architect Magazine Online is running a survey right now, asking its readers, “Which blogs/websites, do you read on a regular basis?” We were pleasantly surprised to see Inhabitat on the top five list, and would love to see our little blog get some love in this survey. If you have a moment, we encourage you to take the 2 second survey and vote for your favorite architecture blog (i.e. Inhabitat…… right? ;)

Vote for your favorite Architecture blog here >

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IANNONE ECO-FRIENDLY MOD LODGE FURNITURE

We’ve long been fans Iannone:Sanderson’s amazingly creative and cute sustainable furniture designs. Every year at ICFF we count on seeing several new organic designs in kirei and bamboo from Iannone, and this year didn’t disappoint. Although he appears to have lost partner Sanderson somewhere in the past year, Iannone showed again this year at ICFF with a whole host of gorgeous new pieces, including the eco-fabulous Elk Mod Lodge Sideboard shown above.

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THE LIGHTHOUSE: The UK’s first zero-emission home

With the new housing regulations coming into effect in England, which will mandate that all homes in the country be emission free by 2016, the race was on for designers and builders to come up with the first prototype of what such a house will look like. Currently being exhibited in the Big Build Innovation Park area of the BRE’s OFFSITE2007 exhibition, The Lighthouse designed by Sheppard Robson, in conjunction with Arup and Kingspan Off-Site is the first house to meet these strict requirements.

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EATWARE COMPOSTABLE FOOD CONTAINERS

The next time you venture out for a picnic in the park, consider a greener food ware product- Eatware products come in a variety of shapes and sizes, can safely hold oils and water, be stored in the fridge, are microwave-safe, AND are 100% compostable. Eatware is made of 100% natural fibers from bamboo, sugar cane pulp, starch and water- and no chemical additives! While there are several biodegradable food container companies on the market, some potato starch based; some corn starch based, Eatware is among the most durable and safe- decomposable in the compost and dispersed in water in just two weeks.

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SUSTAINABLE STYLE: This Old Thing? Menswear

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GREEN KEY REAL ESTATE: Sustainable living in San Francisco

Chris Bartle saw a demand for green living in San Francisco, yet he admits the supply of eco-friendly buildings is minimal. So how does his company, Green Key Real Estate, pass Economics 101? Similar to GreenWorks Realty in Seattle, Bartle’s team concentrates on helping buyers and sellers green their existing homes. While new green housing is arriving slowly, Bartle knew he could work with the current stock to help meet the demand for healthier and more efficient homes.

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EUROSCRAPER by José Muñoz Villers

Rem Koolhaas has been quoted saying that skyscrapers create “vertical organization and new territories.” And now, one young Mexican architect, José Muñoz Villers, has designed a building that embodies these sentiments. Muñoz Villers incorporates the latest technologies, materials, engineering, and a holistic view of urban space into his design. The building, named the Euroscraper, is such a forward-thinking design that it has garnered 3rd place in the eVolo Architecture Skyscraper competition.

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GIANT SOLAR POWER FLOWER: London Urban Oasis

Visitors to the recent Chelsea Flower Show in London were no doubt pleasantly surprised to stumble across the London Urban Oasis, a solar-powered urban art installation showcasing an array of clean energy and other green innovations in a large-scale artistic form. The 10-meter tall glass and steel structure, designed by Laurie Chetwood, can only be described as a marvel of sculpture, technology and engineering, displaying a veritable cornucopia of green and environmental technologies, from solar and wind power to rain catchment systems.

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PREFAB FRIDAY: Modular Transitional Growth

Philippe Barriere Design Collective’s Modular Transitional Growth Housing (MTGH) system proves once again that prefab is not only earth-friendly, but a highly-adaptable, scalable, and efficient form of building. The project, conceptualized for a post-Katrina New Orleans housing competition, and runner-up in last year’s Metropolis Next Generation competition, delivers a system to provide everything from minimum emergency shelter units to large-scale town house residences.

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