What do you do if you love treehouses like us, but don’t have a tree to build on? Netherlands-based designer Gert Eussen may have a solution with his Coco-Hut, a cozy and round hut made of scrap and FSC-certified wood. With an element of whimsy, the structure looks a little bit like a beehive with a linear version of the honeycomb texture. The Coco-Hut is also unmistakably cute with its round shape and humble staircase leading inside.
In the Niger Delta, oil turns the rivers rainbow. Surrounding communities are engulfed in the emissions from constant natural-gas flaming. Generations that used to survive on fishing are now jobless and wandering — some have joined local militant guerrilla groups in an attempt to defend their land against the pillage of the oil industry. Ed Kashi has documented all this destruction in his stunning photographs, currently on view at Exit Art’s exhibition, The End of Oil, part of a series called Social-Environmental Aesthetics (SEA).
It’s a picture of a tree. Yes. Okay. But this tree has a phone number. If you call this tree it will tell you stories of the neighborhood. It will talk about the Bronx Grand Concourse, about itself, even about the local ecology. It will tell stories about the neighborhood. It might even sound proud, after all it has been around a while. Starting June 21st and continuing through the summer, the trees along the Grand Concourse will play host to a virtual Tree Museum. Visitors can call a phone number and get the details on any particular tree by punching in its extension. The audio guides are recollections and fond stories from folks who have grown up with the trees. Each tree has its own story.
It’s all about context. Meal with friends: normal. Meal with food gathered in a one mile radius: art. Traffic jam on highway: normal (and boring). Traffic jam in the Spanish mountains: art (and very curious). In 2005, artist Maider López put the call out for willing participants to create an intentional car cluster muck in the Aralar Mountains. In response, more than 400 folks drove up to the countryside in 160 vehicles to get stuck. The result: an unexpected invasion to illustrate the automobile’s impact on the landscape.
When it comes to eco-art, it doesn’t get much better than Edina Tokodi’s awesome green graffiti made from living moss. Inhabitat has been following artist Edina Tokodi and her tongue-in-cheek moss art installations for awhile now — from streetside bambis to greenings of Philadelphia Transportation. Now we’re excited to see the latest of her work appearing in galleries and blank walls all over.
The Inhabitat crew was pretty blown away by artist Aurora Robson’s artwork at the recent Designers & Agents Green Room, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to explore her body of work in more detail. For instance: it is stunningly intricate, deliciously colorful, uses solar-powered LEDs to glow at night, and has diverted some 20,000 plastic bottles from the landfill. Bam.
Taking a step beyond the certified- green-label: what if you had a personal agreement with a business that the money you spent would go towards sustainability? “If people really vote with their dollars, shouldn’t there be an election day?” asks Brent Schulkin, an activist turned entrepreneur who co-founded the company called Virgance. The company got its start after Schulkin brought folks out to stores in a new consumer action called carrotmob, a “method of activism” that encourages businesses to spend their revenue on socially-minded endeavors.
For those that consider themselves sophisticated designfolk, topiaries may seem the stuff of Edward Scissorhands suburbia or the artistic outlets of a housewife with hedge shears. But consider this - these carefully crafted plant forms are an eco-friendly alternative to promotional billboards or waste-making flyers, and can add to the environment rather than take away from it. If you’re in the market for some seriously impressive shrubbery, there’s no better man for the job than Topiary Joe.
Billboards get all sorts of (justified) flak for polluting our mind-scapes. They are everywhere, flaunting famous people — in expensive clothes, drinking sexy beer, promising us recession-busting discounts. Unfortunately, billboards are also responsible for a more tangible type of pollution. At the end of an advertising campaign, billboard workers roll up the heavy-grade vinyl and toss it in the dumpster. When Peter Schulberg experienced this waste firsthand, he immediately took steps to remedy it by inviting artists to use the discarded vinyl as a canvas for their work, which he would then display on the exterior walls of his gallery in Los Angeles.
It’s still the subject of (extensive) debate whether the electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) produced by appliances, cell phones and high-voltage wires contribute to human illness and cancer. For an academic overview, check out the Human Radiation Effects Group, by Professor Denis Henshaw of the University of Bristol. For a visual illustration, look no further than FIELD by artist Richard Box. It’s a grid of fluorescent light bulbs planted into the ground beneath a series of power lines. When the bulbs glow, it’s not because of a series of buried wires, or a battery– they light up using the ghost power radiating from the wires overhead.
So you think it’s okay to continue with your 15-minute shower because you’ve got your super-efficient, on-demand water heater and extra-conservative shower head? Perhaps you’ve even gone as far as funneling your shower water into a personal greywater system. Well, your shower curtain has heard it all, and thanks to artist Elisabeth Buecher, it’s not taking any more of your excuses. Your soapy butt is getting kicked out after 4 minutes, when the shower curtain Elisabeth designed inflate with spikes.
Brooklyn-based street artist, SWOON is in the midst of launching her third fleet of “junk rafts” — crafted from construction site cast-offs and recycled scraps, these eclectic floats are a cross between a stage-ship and art-raft. These ships are envisioned, by SWOON, as a manifestation of “bits of land broken off and headed to sea.” Her third adventure/site-specific sustainability circus is entitled Swimming Cities of Serenissima and will be comprised of three rafts that will float through the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia to Venice throughout May 2009. Along the way, the crew of the vessels will collect curiosities and trinkets and incorporate them into their floating cabinet of wonders. The final result will be put on display for the public to examine when the fleet reaches its final destination, Venice.
Is it possible that this is the song of the plastic bag? Plastic’s infamous reputation with the eco-crowd has fueled a creative renaissance that stirs significant introspection into how we have used plastic and how we can use it. Jellyfish. Sculpture. Woven mats. Haute Couture. In early March, art group Luzinterruptus immortalized the plastic bag with an impromtu garden of light. The installation, called “A Cloud of Bags Visit the Prado” occupied the area near The Prado Museum in Madrid for a period of about 4 hours. It included 80 such recycled baggies, which inflated with the aid of the wind.
Design firm Aquaovo have created a whole new reason for water cooler talk with the OVOPUR, an environmentally-friendly water filter. Shaped like a sleek egg, the OVOPUR uses an Aquacristal filter, made of activated carbon, quartz, copper and zinc. The filter last four months and can clean about 530 gallons of water. The oval dispenser holds 3 gallons at a time and is made of white lead-free glazed porcelain and recyclable and non-toxic parts like silicone and polypropylene. The unit can also be used without the filter as a simple drink dispenser — and is sure to be a conversation starter on any occasion.
Artist Henrique Oliveiraa was a student in São Paulo, Brazil when the plywood fence outside his window began to peel and fade into different layers and colors. The wood, called tapumes in Portuguese is ubiquitous in the Brazilian city, serving as enclosures and barriers for various sites. When the fence was dismantled, Oliveira harvested the remains and used them as materials for his senior show. The result propelled him into his current work: undulating, swirling, bulging peels of wood layered onto hallways and walls in daunting forms. His most recent show will be called, fittingly, Tapumes.
The model train is officially hip and eco-friendly. No, really! Leaving the realm of your Dad’s garage behind, one geek-ily cute metropolis has found a home at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. The display, called “Golden Gate Express,” features miniature replicas of several major San Francisco landmarks. And the entire set is stunningly fabricated by Figureplant out of recycled materials.
The weather has always been considered a primal and uncontrollable force. The exhibition, Out of the Blue, which opened this week at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, examines if human creativity is similarly tumultuous and unpredictable. Capturing atmospheric and geological phenomena — both real and unreal — the exhibition explores how these events, which have been unquestionably affected by humans, can also be a metaphor for the birth of new ideas. The exhibition takes a deeper look at the need for proper cultivation of social, political, and environmental influences in order for society to propagate fulfilling creative endeavors.
What would inspire an artist to attempt to build a toaster from scratch? Perhaps a quote from Douglas Adams?
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.” - Douglas Adams from his book Mostly Harmless.
So industrial production inspired by Douglas Adams — can’t go wrong. At least, not in theory. Logistically, it turns out, you can go very, very wrong, as Thomas Thwaites proves in his work for the art exhibition BOOM at the Royal College of Art in London. It’s called the Toaster Project, and it follows the artist as he attempts to construct a toaster, from sourcing the materials to piecing them all together. Not too hard, right? Or perhaps it is, as Thwaites found out.
Artist Patianne Stevenson has finally nailed the recipe for the ultimate all-natural, planet and people-friendly cake. It’s gorgeous, vegan, and virtually free of calories, because, um, it is made of recycled cardboard. She calls her collection The Cardboard Kitchen, and it is filled with chocolate icing, tarts, cupcakes, layer cakes, frosting and little lace doilies.
Almost all furniture once possessed a life elsewhere before it became an object in your home. It might have been a tree, or a metal, or a fluff of cotton, or any other of the multitude of resources harnessed from nature and then tossed in the cycle of urban living. Artist Hongtao Zhou, in his installation of ice furniture, seeks to re-frame this cycle by creating a simple, temporary, and very cold place to sit on the shores of Lake Mendota, Wisconsin.
Neozoon, is the singular form of a species of animal introduced to an area by humans. It is also the name of a artist who is re-populating urban areas with animals made from old fur coats. We’ve seen this striking kind of graffiti before from Inhabitat favorite Edina Tokodi, but the use of recycled fur adds another layer of irony. There is a suggestion that in this time of ecological change, the ghosts of fur-coats past have returned to reclaim their original habitats.
Gathering branches surrounding a tree, artists Agnieszka Gradzik and Wiktor Szostalo use the organic material to create wicker-people that embrace the tree. That’s right, these figures are literally, tree huggers. Rather than something out of a sixties, however, the sculptures tend to resemble people from a timeless international population. At the recent 2008 UN Conference on Climate Change in Poland, visitors could stand in line with several wicker-people in an exhibit entitled “Lonely Tree, Lonely People” — all waiting for its chance to show some limb-y love to the symbolically lone tree. Though its creators are based in St. Louis, Missouri, the Tree Hugger Project has a population that spans the globe.
So how do we gauge the effects of climate change? Not just empirically but aesthetically, viscerally, visually? This is a question the city of San Jose has put to different groups of artists in commissioning a design for a Climate Clock. The clock will be a site-specific public art piece that will serve as an educational tool about global climate change– while also recording its local effects. The proposals were narrowed from 50 down to three. The finalist groups will have residencies at both the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University and the Montalvo Arts Center in order to develop the designs further. The city of San Jose will then select a winner in mid-2009. In the meantime, we can examine the intricate and fascinating proposals for works of art that will monitor our people space for the next 100 years.
Design students Jeffrey Gerlach and Andrew Stanley have instituted an informal furniture catch-and-release program. With just a few steps, they have discovered a way to construct a clever and stylish Adirondack chair using Department of Public Works roadblocks that are simple, easy-to-assemble, and instantly returnable to the urban wild.
This week we shared sustainable Christmas tree options for this holiday season. And even though Christmas is over, Chainsaw MassACRE, an art installation by SWA Group– a landscape architecture firm– still makes some enlightening commentary on the reality of the tree farming that makes it possible to provide Christmas trees for the masses. At first glance, the piece appears deceptively festive with rows of suspended paper trees. However, it is certainly a somber reminder of the environment in which most Christmas trees are grown: a more complete view of the installation reveals a chainsaw floating ominously above the crop of suspended paper trees, and a bungalow surrounded by chainsaw cut-outs strewn about on the ground below.
Whether you’re looking to stuff a stocking full of something other than candy and useless do-dads, or just looking to pass on a bit of green fun, we’ve selected an assortment of our favorite pint-sized green finds for you this year. From miniature marvels of modern technology to things that grow and tasteful doses of home decor, read on for a list of eco-gifts that prove great things do come in small packages.
Delhi is a city choked in climate change. Mostly unregulated by urban planning, the city has colored the Yamuna river with an untold amount of sewage, darkened its skies with the particulate matter of thousands of commuters, and expanded its borders with illegal developments. Every monsoon season scrubs the skies clean, and recent developments, such as the conversion of public buses to CNG, have improved conditions, but 40% of its residents still live in virtual slums. Facing this landscape head-on is the festival 48 degrees Celsius, an exhibition of art at the intersection of urban planning, ecological rescue and aesthetic glory, which opened yesterday. Taking place from December 12 to December 21, the event will feature a series of tours, talks, performances, conversations, and works of contemporary art.
Ice melts. Simple, yes, and yet it seems to be one of those seminal issues of our time. Ice is melting, in a big, thundering, shuddering, streaming-down way, and it’s making polar bears swim longer, dissolving Arctic villages, and making the hunt difficult. Similar to the army of melting penguins from 50graus.org, Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo’s art installation of frozen men brings the Arctic ice melt to the equator, metaphorically speaking. Showcasing a multitude of thought-provoking figures carefully sculpted out of ice, these men seem to sit in contemplation as the midday heat slowly erodes their bodies.
It appears that global warming has finally created its own version of the Wounded Veteran. Sitting in a puddle of himself in Buenos Aires’ Plaza Francia, a young man from Red Cross Argentina issued pleas to passers-by: not for spare change, but for action against climate change.
There’s something about the shock of red in a forest that makes it ethereal and otherworldly. That’s part of Finnish artist Lea Turto’s point. In 2005, she covered a series of tree stumps in Helsinki’s central park with red felt in order to highlight and celebrate their natural forms. The piece is called The Sacred Realm of the Forest Elf, in deference to an old Finnish word and spirit: Hiisi.
In the rush to create ultra-modern bamboo chairs, entertainment centers, desks, wallets, and other generally eco “stuff,” the pure beauty of natural forms is sometimes lost in modern design for industrialization. So it is blissfully refreshing to mentally reconnect with exhibit Tickling Thicket at Oakland Gallery, Johansson Projects, where artists Katy Stone and Yvette Molina use innovative painting techniques to create spellbinding, ethereal natural forms.
Bamboo is being used in everything these days: cutting boards, bikes, folding houses, and furniture. Its versatility, however, is truly evident in the exhibition New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters at New York’s Japan Society. Images of the exhibition show bamboo doing things you don’t really think of it doing: curving into rope-like knots, weaving into mesh, twisting into triangular angles. While immediately captivating your attention, it also makes you wonder of the un-explored potential of this sustainable material.
As in her work on the Vietnam War Memorial so many years ago, the contemporary pieces of artist Maya Lin hit the emotional nail right on the head. In her exhibition Systematic Landscapes, which is showing now at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the famous artist remixes topographies and terrains into real, walkable places ready to be explored and dissected by willing spectators. From Bodies of Water, representing landlocked saltwater seas with stacked plywood, to her large wire rendition of the San Francisco Bay Area hanging near the new California Academy of Sciences, her landscape representations combine our scientific tendency to chart landscapes without compromising the wisdom and wonder of studying natural phenomena.
New York’s Madison Square Garden has taken on a Swiss-Family-Robinson feel lately. This is due to an art exhibition featuring work by Tadashi Kawamata called Madison Square Tree Huts, which emerged completed on October 2. A gathering of small wooden houses up in the trees, folks passing through the park might find themselves grinning upward with wonderment at these small structures meant to shake up our notion of public space and how it interacts with ideas of urbanity, rural romanticism and play.
The 9th ward in New Orleans has become a crazy quilt of architectural styles since the post-Katrina rebuild. In the overgrown fields of the neighborhood, traditionally built homes sit next to elevated solar powerhouses constructed by the Make It Right Foundation– making it clear that the solutions presented to address the needs of the still-recovering New Orleans community are very different from one another, logistically and culturally. Artist Marjetica Potrč’s solution is to revive a small, classic structure called the shotgun house which is native to the South. In collaboration with sustainable design firm Futureproof, she has created a simple and culturally powerful home and symbol.
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