With blue skies and sunshine to greet us, this past weekend in Milan took us to the Zona Tortona, an area in Milan outside the fair. We started the Zona Tortona journey with a brilliant, blue, photosensitive sun canopy, and found lots of sustainable design surprises from hand-printed wallpaper (on paper made from responsibly harvested sources) to a new take on eco-burial. From emerging young professionals to innovative design students, our highlights will give a taste of the scene ‘Fuori Salone’ - the off site exhibitions.

CHECK OUT OUR PHOTOS OF MILAN 2008 HERE >

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With alternative lighting solutions becoming a typical consideration in sustainable interior design, Jonas Samson’s illuminated wallpaper is set to take the Salone Internazionale del Mobile and its design junkies by storm. A clever mix of the graphic, textile-inspired papers of the recent-past and organic technologies of the future, his light-emitting wallpaper happily straddles the fence between kiddie night-light and inventive design feature. It’s eco-credentials: turning a two-dimensional surface into a light source versus the traditional bulb/lamp construct.

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My Sust House is a Glaswegian approach to sustainable education, exposing kids and teenagers to issues of sustainability in design and planning through an accessible outlet: the Internet. This interactive game is narrated by two fetching Scottish cartoon characters and comes complete with an introduction on sustainability and two games dedicated to exploring “what sustainability means and how it relates to our homes.” As Sean Connery knows, even the most mundane things can be made appealing through the addition of a Scottish accent, and this charming interactive education website lives up to that rule. Even the most diehard non-greenies will be charmed by this cute interactive website.

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One of our favorite eco-design visionaries Cohda Design recently brought its amazing recycling design process to the public by staging an interactive event that showed off its recycling machines and allowed the public to participate in the process of turning plastic bottles into beautiful designer chairs.

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Martino Gamper has a penchant for furniture: to be specific, chairs. In his project 100 Chairs in 100 Days, he takes apart a mix of discarded and systematically collected pieces found on London’s street corners (or sympathetic friends’ lounges and living rooms) over a period of two years, disassembles and then reworks them, creating unique, functional chairs that blend the “stylistic and structural elements of the found ones.”

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If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your nursery and expand your knowledge of the animal kingdom, this Alphabet of the Endangered Species in the British Isles is indeed a “timely take on A-Z”. With punchy, clean graphics and playful, perfectly composed quadrants, this poster is sure to be a hit in any baby room.

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Salvage pioneer Stuart Haygarth has created an eye-catching eyeglass masterpiece, turning discarded glasses into a gorgeously green glowing chandelier. Spectacle is an optical chandelier assembled from 1020 pairs of discarded prescription glasses, with a smaller size constructed from 620 pairs. The refracted light from the lenses makes fluid shadows that play across walls creating an aqueous lighting effect that shimmers as much as it delights.

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Stuart Haygarth’s talent lies in re-imagining waste into striking lighting design. As a London based designer, his work falls into an increasingly present design movement that is part salvage, part make-do-and-mend, and 100% stunning. This approach to more sustainable product ranges seems to be a recipe for success, as both the Deptford Design Market Challenge and Trash Luxe at London’s recent Design Festival centered around recycled materials. Stuart’s fixtures have long been an Inhabitat favorite, including his Disposable wine glass chandelier and his beach-waste Tide chandelier.

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Trash Luxe, an exhibition for the London Design Festival at Liberty’s, celebrates the creativity of reworking/remastering unwanted goods into desirable products. With the concept of luxury being increasingly rethought and redefined, using objects with a sub-narrative: vintage materials, material/packaging waste and other disposable items, gives layered meaning and added value to otherwise overlooked commodities. Here are some of our highlights, including a new chandelier from Stuart Haygarth and some very cool Zulu bowls made from telephone wires!

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To kick off our London Design Festival Coverage our London Inhabitant Ariana Mouyiaris took a trip out to DePLOY; a sustainably and DIY-focused fashion line. Open to the public until September 25th, DePLOY WorkSHOP allows visitors and shoppers alike to come in and watch the designers at work: altering, customizing and developing garments, while perusing wares and potential purchases. We love their DIY approach to sustainable style- they have a core collection that is infinitely customizable with secondary elements and continually cool as the seasons change!

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