When is cleaning the sidewalks a crime? When you’re doing it to create art. Obviously.

A number of street artists around the world have taken to expressing themselves through an innovative practice known as Reverse Graffiti. Taking a cue from the “Wash Me” messages scrawled on the back of delivery trucks, they seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and even advertising slogans using scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses.

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Hugging trees is all good, but our arboreal buddies get a lot more snuggly after a visit from one of Houston’s most notorious graffiti crews. Knitta Please, a team of 11 women and men who bomb urban landscapes with remnant knitting projects, are definitely not your grandma’s graffiti artists. Suddenly bike racks and stop sign poles aren’t just mundane urban objects- they’re blank canvases.

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Save a few trees AND dollars with Frame’s new digital version of their outstanding interior design magazine. Supposedly, Frame Digital will be just like their always inspiring, and often eco-minded print version, but with a few more features. They are offering a preview now, and if you give them three email addresses, they’ll give you the first issue free.

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Renowned British architects Foster and Partners are famous for beautifully designed green buildings, but did you know they do eco-friendly furniture as well? The brand new 20-06 chair is a contemporary take on the iconic 10-06 Navy chair with a sleek new form. The 20-06 remix trades in the original’s machine-age charm for a more contemporary take on utilitarianism. It may be a bit cold, but is also quite elegant in its strict functionalism. The 20-06 uses 15% less aluminum and is able to be stacked 10 chairs high. Moreover, Foster and Partners preserves its reputation for sustainablity with 80% of the material coming from recycled aluminum. Unlike many items made from recycled materials, however, the 20-06 is also designed to last: at least 150 years, to be precise.

$400 from Design Within Reach.

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Wooden dreidels? Sure. Clay dreidels? Even the South Park kids know about those. But recyclable stainless steel flat-pack dreidels? Can hanukkah get any better than this? I think not. If everyone in the world bought these instead of those old school bulky dreidels we could surely offset the Co2 emissions of every menorah in Kansas for the next fifty years. At the very least.

For me, nothing induces a good case of eco-guilt like Christmas tree lights. They may be gaudy, cheesy, blazing examples of over-consumption festooned across our streets, but I love them. But this year, it’s time to break free from this dysfunctional relationship and invest in a few strands of LED lights to twinkle my greenery. Compared to traditional Christmas lights, I’ll be using 1/10th the amount of electricity to light the small LED’s, and 1/160th for the larger bulbs. Beyond the expected energy savings, LED strands also burn brighter so my tree will be more jolly than my neighbors’ tawdry displays. LED’s are also significantly more durable, meaning my holiday cheer will survive the elements and twinkle for years to come.

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Maria Yee has been making big strides in contemporary green furniture design. While not the most cutting edge conceptually, the Santa Cruz designer does make eco minded, heirloom quality furniture that you can purchase for your home without totally breaking the bank. And that, dear readers, is a major accomplishment. Stylistically, her work is often an asian inspired modern mix of casegoods, beds, and now upholstery items. (Disclosure: I have one of her Shinto side tables in my living room and absolutely love it).

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Modernist in spirit, traditional in technique, and sustainable in execution - Maxine Sutton’s lovely textile work has a lot to recommend it. The UK artist uses recycled textiles, organic fabrics and plant dyed yarns to embroider wonderful throw pillows, lampshades and other decorative objects. Her commitment to eco-friendly materials seems to be matched only by her talent. On her site you will find quite a medley of themes, among them: organic modern shapes, folklore, and anatomy, all collaged into delightful compositions. Via Designturf

Talk about a closed loop! Artist Amy Youngs has created a table that allows you to compost your dinner scraps without even leaving the table. Whatever you don’t eat, the bacteria, sowbugs and worms will comsume for you. Simply lift the lid in the center of the table and dump it in, and they’ll go to work. And when the critters are done, a rich compost squeezes right out the bottom like a loamy frosting for the plants at the base. Rather than staring at the tv while you eat, you can watch the LCD screen fit into the top of the table. An infrared camera will send images of the entire process for your viewing and digestive pleasure.

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Sea levels may rise and coastlines may fall but one thing will always remain consistent: the Danish are going to get through life in style. These fabulous houseboats from Copenhagen’s Waterliving are but the latest example.
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Real-iT-y Now…

The reality of prefab versus its promise has been a hot topic as of late. Last year, we wrote about the high-tech, interactive iT House when it was just a bit more than a glimmer in Taalman Koch Architecture’s eye. To refresh your memory, the TK iT House is an ambitiously “smart” prefab house that comes with a whole host of high-tech amenities such as radiant heat flooring, photovoltaic roof, and custom-designed vinyl panels to screen your glass walls. In short: its a high-tech prefab dream. Today, not one, but two of their sleek glass houses are set to shine on actual sites. In anticipation of their talk at this year’s Dwell on Design Conference, we thought we would catch up with them and find out how their best laid plans were coming to fruition.

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The deer population has definitely gotten completely out of control in the design world lately. Product design firm Fly-pitcher has created such a fun take on the traditional cuckoo clock, though, that you’ll have to forgive us if we fall for the antlered motif just one more time (you do, however, have a choice –- the line also includes squirrel, swallow, chalet and ornate version).
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Don’t you just love it when aesthetics demand an ecological solution? Such is the case with the Ova Luminaire from UK design firm, Item. Inspired by the remains of sea life found on the beach, these lovely lighting fixtures use bone china and LED lights to create a serene, ethereal effect.
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Michael Aram is on the forefront of two of today’s top trends: eco-inspired design and outsourcing to India. For the last 18 years, he has been creating exquisite decorative objects like these bark vases and luna bowls made from recycled aluminum in India. He also happens to live there, so it’s not exactly outsourcing per se…

Nonetheless, with a flagship store opening in New York this October, we thought we would inquire if the location of his workshop helped or hindered the sustainable aspects of his business.
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The 92nd Street Y in New York hosted a fantastic panel discussion last night (7/19) entitled The New Green: The Changing Face of Environmentalism in New York. The participants (full list below) had many great insights into how a city known for innovation, but not necessarily environmentalism, is now marrying the two in a number of extremely dynamic ways.
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