Australian designer Craig Arnold has captured the beauty of contemporary design and sustainability with his latest bracelet collection, re:vision. Made from discarded camera parts, these bracelets are a must have accessory for photographers and eco-accessory fans alike. We are of course big proponents of recycling obsolete gadgets into new fashion statements, but Arnold’s fresh take on this eco-fashion principle is a great new idea, one from which we can all draw inspiration.
The field of sustainability appears to be sending up new shoots these days with the rise of skyscraper farming and floating solar barges as possible solutions for urban food production and efficient civic greening. Meanwhile reports on shortages in our global food supply are making front-page news along with evidence of climate change and steep fuel prices. Bands of urban citizens are digging in at the grassroots level, though, to consider the possibilities of seed sharing and seed swaps as a plan for reinvigorating and diversifying our food base. ‘Tending to one’s own backyard’ is vigorously taking on new dimensions with enviro-sculptor, Leah Gauthier’s Sow-In Project. Gauthier’s citywide micro-farming undertaking is one person’s initiative to tackle food supply issues as well as our ability to ‘grow collectively’ via creative urban agriculture.
The Water + Life Museums complex in Hemet, California, has just become the first museum to break the LEED Platinum barrier, beating out the California Academy of Sciences and scores of other hopeful projects. The stunning $40 million campus runs 72,000 square feet and was constructed by LA based Michael Lehrer Architects. The iconic cultural complex has done an incredible job of keeping a light footprint while adapting to a challenging desert climate that runs from freezing in the winter to more than 100 degrees in the summer.
The Salone Satellite, an event featuring young talent, is probably one of the most exciting sections of the Milan Furniture Fair. It features some of the most inventive prototypes and pieces, and is a must see for all visitors and furniture lovers. This year, students from the University of Belgrade presented their work made from industrial wood, and we happen to love the designs that these students brought to Milan. It’s been hard to pick our favorite, so we’ve decided not to even try. Instead, we leave the decision to you, which is your favorite piece?
Combining the highest levels of luxury and sustainable development with beautiful locations, Natural Retreats offer a chance to explore beautiful national parks, bask in luxury, and feel confident that your holiday has a low environmental impact. Built with sustainability in mind, these eco-getaways can be found within four of the UK national parks, with plans to acquire sites in, or alongside, ten more. At current, green-minded travelers can escape to Yorkshire Dales, Snowdonia, Lake District, and North York Moors - all beautiful landscapes and perfect settings for an eco-friendly nature retreat.
Spring is off to a fresh start in New York as Harlem’s first affordable green community blossoms to life. Situated on West 153rd Street, David & Joyce Dinkins Gardens offers 85 units of affordable housing in addition to a 25,000 square foot youth center and a community garden. Jonathan Rose Companies and Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement developed the $19.5 million community to help repair the “physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual fabric of the neighborhood.” Towards these goals the project has kept costs low while integrating a noble set of social and environmental ideals governed by principles of diversity, interdependence, and environmental responsibility.
New York-based Dynomighty Design has perfected a long-lasting way to keep your currency in order. Their fun, postal packaging-inspired wallets are made from a single sheet of Tyvek, making them seamless, nearly impenetrable and super durable. Constructed with 25% post consumer content and 100% recyclable materials, Dynomighty wallets are a lightweight solution to on-the-go billfold wear and tear. While the wallets will become comfortably worn-in, the durable Tyvek material won’t break!
Next time that you are in Toronto and need a quick ride, you might be able to call upon one of the city’s new EcoCabs. Starting May 1st, Go Mobile Media will introduce 28 EcoCabs throughout the city to provide eco-friendly transit to weary travelers and in-city commuters. And, in addition to being an emissions-free form of transport, Toronto’s EcoCabs are provided free of charge!
This solar-hydrogen plane might just be what Transportation Tuesday heaven looks like! The Hy-bird, by Lisa Airplanes, is a lightweight, hybrid plane made out of lightweight carbon fiber - it’s final weight will be just 1.1 tons. Lithium-polymer batteries will provide the plane’s main power source and solar photovoltaics, covering the plane’s 20-meter-long wings, will provide about 10% of its power. Those of you who find this innovation familiar may recall seeing a computer animation of the Hy-bird in the 11th Hour documentary. But this eco-friendly flying dream machine will soon be taking flight for real! The Hy-bird is set to travel around the world early next year!
With a name like ‘No More Gas’, you can bet that this cute little personal electric vehicle is as good to the environment as it is to the user. Its size, weight and fuel make it much better for the planet, while its look and driving experience make it great fun for the driver. Looking like it’s dropped straight out of an episode of The Jetsons, this tiny car can achieve speeds of over 75mph for a cost of $0.02 per mile. All this eco-goodness earned Myers Motors’ NmG vehicle kudos at this year’s Well-Tech Awards exhibit in Milan.
We love the idea of this green lamp that blends natural textures with recycled materials to bring a bit of nature indoors. Conceived by three Venetian architects for a charity competition, the Grass-On Lamp by ITlab is made entirely of recycled materials, including the synthetic grass, and completely recyclable. The cube structure of the lamp gives it added versatility, letting it rest on the floor, on a table, or suspended from the air.
The past month has seen shock waves resonating throughout the world of sustainable architecture with two monumental reports on green building backed by some serious changes in public policy. First, the CEC released “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”, which lauded sustainable buildings as the quickest, cheapest, and most substantive way to cut down on North American greenhouse gas emissions. Next, CoStar released a comparison report stating that LEED buildings consistently outperform their peers in terms of occupancy rates, sale prices, and rental rates, with demand far outnumbering their supply. And, last week on Earth Day, Los Angeles approved a green building ordinance that signifies a significant shift towards a policy and market-driven era of economically and environmentally viable building.
We love our design competitions here at Inhabitat, and today we are partnering with The New School Sustainable Design Review (SDR) in NYC, to help judge a student design competition for the much loved NY skincare company Kiehls. This year’s New School SDR design competition is being organized in partnership with Kiehl’s- the old-world apothecary founded in New York’s East Village neighborhood. In this post (below) you will see all of the competing sustainable designs of the 2008 student finalists, and want to hear YOUR feedback on which projects you find to be the most compelling and worthy of the competition’s grand prize award of $2,500!
Every year we look forward to the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment’s (AIA/COTE)top picks for the best green building projects of the year. This year’s selections are a showcase of sustainable design approaches that balance functional aesthetics with environmental consciousness. Each winning design has been evaluated under a comprehensive list of measures from community connectivity, to energy efficiency, to longevity of purpose. Those that have risen to the top of the AIA/COTE list for 2008 are examples of successful programs that, through extensive collaboration, have achieved low-impact structures that fuse architectural excellence with environmental stewardship.
We never thought the Frankenstein approach would work for eco-design, but Dutch designer Jetske de Groot shows that it works beautifully. A refreshing change to all the super-slick design at the Milan Furniture Fair, de Groot’s chairs and tables are as sustainable as they are appealing. The project, entitled ‘Multiple Family’, is driven by a brilliant, simple approach: take two or more broken chairs or tables, and fuse the non-broken bits together to produce a new, functional and completely unique design.
The annual Project Earth Day Student Fashion Competition was held this past Thursday as part of the Project Earth Day fashion event, and featured an impressive mix of young designers from schools such as Parsons, Pratt Institute, Colorado State and Savannah College of Art & Design. Given that many of these students are interning with both eco-label designers as well as conventional fashion houses, we are optimistic that the future of sustainable style looks impressively strong as the next generation of students coming out of design programs seems geared up to truly make a difference in an industry and a commercial sector that is increasingly becoming aware of the importance of going green for good!
Eco-fashion loving New Yorkers came out in droves last Thursday night for the annual Project Earth Day green runway show/fashion design competition. The turnout was even more impressive than last year’s event, and the Teknion showroom was a teeming with Earth Week eco-chatter, the latest in fresh green style, and yummy organic treats and beverages. Slated as an eco take on Project Runway, this year’s designs and creations were impressively innovative as well as gorgeously tailored from the latest sustainable textiles and organic materials. It was totally thrilling to see the student designs light up the runway with the glow of their future-forward ideas as well as some real sustainable saviness already radiating from the next generation of young eco designers. (Gorgeous ‘green LED lighting’ by lighting designer Sarah Jakubasz of Lightswitch also provided that special Earth Day glow!). Read on for some of the night’s highlights as well as PHOTOS from both the designer runway show and the student design competition>>>
We’ve covered many of our favorite designs from Milan Design Week 2008 this past week, but there was lots of intriguing eco design that we still haven’t touched on yet: Steven Burks’ eco-minded ‘Cappellini Love’ tables, lots of LED oriented lighting, waste-diverting floor coverings made from scrap materials, and innovations for portable functional spaces are just a few of the highlights we don’t want to leave out from our Milan Coverage. From Tuttobene, Satellite and around town, here is a selection of great green designs we spotted while out and about in Milan last week.
It would be logical to think that buying organic soy milk is to buy non-GMO soy milk. The guidelines for keeping weird science, in this instance genetically modified organisms, out of your body would seem intuitively straightforward. Yet with current product packaging there is no label for “Now with extra GMOs!” Given that the grains even look the same, how might one critically go about addressing the genetically modified food onslaught? Critical Art Ensemble says to ‘de-modify’. With eco-art as a tactical weapon, the collaborative five-artist ensemble addresses issues of rampant biotechnology using everything from live performances, to installation art, to controversial counter science.
One of our favorite stops during Milan Design Week, last week, was at the Well-Tech Exhibition, where we found the Well-Tech organization’s mission in full green design form. Founded to encourage design that focuses on sustainability, inclusiveness and improving quality of life, Well-Tech’s 2008 exhibit featured some of our favorite humanitarian and social design products, such as the Bogo solar light, as well as some innovative new eco-design ideas, like the ‘No More Gas (NmG)’ personal electric vehicle. Read on for our highlights from Well-Tech!
The recent furniture fair in Milan has certainly made us appreciate how some of the simplest furniture pieces, like chairs, can be reinterpreted in any number of ways. Tokujin Yoshioka’s Bouquet chair, part of the Moroso collection at Salone Internazionale del Mobile last week, is an extraordinary example. With a thin, chrome metal tube supporting a simple egg shaped shell, Yoshioka has applied a bouquet of fabric squares to create an incredibly snug, and beautiful, chair. While our sustainable side is a little on the fence, we can’t help but be intrigued by this amazing design, which was easily one of the most talked about innovations in Milan this year.
Tending away from the industrious (and eponymous) prefabricated square, the Plus House embraces its Nordic roots and rural setting as a thoroughly modern take on the Swedish barn house. The two-story prefab is situated in Tyresö and was designed by the award winning Claesson, Koivisto, and Rune architects for Arkitekthus. We love how their distinctive design melds a classic wood-paneled profile with ethereal day-lit interiors, synthesizing traditional structure with the best in ultra-efficient modern construction.
Get ready eco-fashion loving New Yorkers! Project Earth Day - the fabulous green runway show / fashion design competition that we love so much is coming to the Teknion showroom TONIGHT, from 7-8pm. Anyone who likes sustainable fashion and/or Project Runway (since this is like an eco take on Project Runway), should definitely try to make it down to the showroom tonight to see it.
For those of you who are interested but can’t make the event, don’t fear! Check back with Inhabitat over the weekend to see our followup coverage. We will be documenting all the designers, and winners of the competition here on Inhabitat in our regular Sustainable Style Sunday column, so be sure to check in on Sunday to see how the whole thing went down.
Loup Charmant(the charming wolf) is a purely seductive and eco-dreamy intimates collection. Kee Edwards, the designer for Loup Charmant, will be showing selections from her latest PURE Collection at the Project Earth Day Eco-Fashion Show here in NYC tonight! We are anticipating a stunningly beautiful ‘force of nature’ to sweep down the runway as the lights dim and the stars come out. Romantically crafted and historically inspired, PURE collection will no doubt demonstrate the poetry of sustainable style – with its respect for the integrity of organic materials with a real connection to the unleashed, free-spirited imagination.
For eco fashion fans, what’s not to adore about Alyson Fox’s A Small Collection? We have covered Alyson before on Inhabitat, but we were totally excited to see her name in the designer line-up for tonight’sProject Earth Day Eco-Fashion Show at the Teknion Showroom in NYC. A Small Collection is proof indeed that small ideas can make a big impact when it comes to original, eco-friendly designs being shared with like-minded folks. Crafted from vintage wares and sustainable add-ons like buttons made from fallen branches, Alyson Fox’s creations really make you feel like you have arrived at the surprise birthday party that you always dreamed of, or at least pined for, with a few simple elements thoughtfully assembled together for all to enjoy.
Photo by 
