Portland-based db clay recently celebrated its 10th birthday by unveiling its latest lineup of eco-chic wallets, and they’re all awash in in the vibrant hues and textures of summer. The visually evocative portefeuilles are billed as pieces of pocketable art, and each comes complete with a story that inspired its creation. Db clay’s slim and sturdy billfolds are waterproof, printed using environmentally friendly inks and dyes, and constructed out of a specialized material called “Tope” that touts a bevy of eco-friendly features.
Here at Inhabitat, we never tire of finding new chic products that reclaim everyday industrial materials. Some of our favorite finds are industrial or utilitarian objects that, with some brilliant creativity, have been repurposed into gorgeous goods for the home. Our latest trash-to-treasure discovery are these beautiful seatbelt cushions. Hand crafted in Europe by sustainable design company TING London, these cute and colorful pillows are made from reclaimed seat belts!
This lightweight, portable cardboard table aims to assist on-the-go creative types like designers and students, who are often limited to work on low desks or floors. Made by Sruli Recht from flatpack cardboard pieces, this lightweight, sturdy design offers creatives an ergonomic plane on which to cut, fold, draft or design. Adding even more appeal to this smart and useful design, the table is biodegradable and can easily be folded up to pack into a portable carrier.
The best work on display at New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair this year came from student designers. BVD Collective, a student project from Appalachian State University, proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt by debuting a stunning collection of lighting fixtures made from recycled plastic utensils. Made from 100% post-consumer plastic utensils (yes, that means dirty forks collected from waste-bins), the ‘Waste Not’ line of lamps highlights just how elegant and inspired recycled design can be. The gorgeous Go Go Ghost table lamp (shown above), by Corey Daniels, is made from 121 recycled plastic knives collected over the course of countless BVD group lunches from a fried chicken restaurant.
It takes more than renewable materials to turn the head of seasoned sustainable design fans. This is why our gaze fell so admirably on the line of housewares from Domestic Aesthetic while making our way through the ICFF this past week. Domestic Aesthetic’s motto “live well, live right” extends beyond their product line into the surrounding community, with social responsibility high on their list of priorities. With a beautiful line of handcrafted pieces, this truly green-minded company is out to make eco-friendly easier for both buyers and manufacturers, and we have to admit that the results are beautiful.
Who couldn’t use more shiny, sparkling, pointless things? This Celebrity Lamp may lack subtlety, but it makes up for it with countless opportunities to check yourself out. I imagine it would also do a fine job of scaring away birds, or signaling for help in an emergency. The shade is made of brand-new silver mirrored sunglasses, creating a glittering paparazzi effect that’s sure to forever immortalize your living room, bath, or any other place where a disco ball just won’t do.
The kitchen is truly the heart (and soul) of any home so we are always on the look out for future-forward brands that fuse a sleek modern aesthetic together with sustainable materials and advanced technology. To date, European design has led the field, but newcomer Bazzèo by NY Lofts is the first US contender to convincingly woo American homeowners over to the green side. Debuting this year at ICFF, Bazzèo is definitely worth a second look. Even if you’re not in the market for a new kitchen, these mean green sexy cuisines will make you wish you were.
While nothing beats reusable dishware for your festive events, these biodegradable plates from VerTerra are a great alternative to yucky paper or plastic dishes. VerTerra (true to the Earth) plates are made from organically-grown palm tree leaves from India. The fallen leaves, which would traditionally have been burned on the roadside, are collected, sterilized, steamed and pressed into plates. The process uses no chemicals, glues or bonding agents, and over 80% of the water used during the steaming and pressing process is recaptured and recycled. Best of all, VerTerra’s plates are 100% natural and biodegradable!
We are nuts about Mark Harrison’s Husque homewares made from recycled macadamia nut shells. The inspired form of these fun pieces reflect the material’s origins, and take advantage of an often discarded resource. Harrison developed a special compound that combines the shells with injection molding to create colorful bowls inspired by nature and place. Using nuts, pods and other organic shapes as inspiration, each piece carries with it a natural history of Australia.
Desu Design displayed their sleek surface line at this year’s BKLYN Designs, but their real show-stopper at the show was their cutting edge Inversion bowl. Composed of a single slab of eco-friendly, renewable Richlite, the bowl’s functional form resides in that which has been carved away. The simple and sustainable tabletop monolith was a big hit for its beautiful sheen and smooth, tactile feel.
Named after one of the world’s most treasured natural wonders, Argington’s new Ayres Twin Bed tucks in your little treasures with the sleek signature style of this next generation minded furniture maker. We’ve featured many of Argington’smodern children’s pieces, but are particularly pleased by this sweet, sustainable, timber trundle bed. Presenting at BKLYN Designs this weekend, the Ayres Twin Bed upholds this sustainably-grounded company’s commitment to beautifully crafted children’s furniture made with the earth in mind.
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.
It’s an exciting time for OLED technology as it finally begins to integrate into the home and designers start to realize its potential for efficient and inexpensive lighting solutions in a variety of stunning new applications. Resembling a tiny tree blossoming with lucent leaves, Ingo Maurer’s Early Future lamp is the world’s first to pack energy efficient OLED lighting into a tabletop form factor.
One of our favorite finds at this year’s green-themed Salone Satellite was the work of ascendent Swiss “redesigner” Fethi Atakol. His design debut would do Duchamp proud, as it showcased a wonderful assortment of “functional artworks” made from found objects. Atakol’s designs are funky and fun, joining together a disparate set of everyday items to extraordinary effect.
One of the biggest tenets of living a sustainable life is doing more with less, and as we grapple with reducing our carbon footprints we have to take a closer look at how we equip the world we live in. These beautiful recycled paper baskets from award-winning artist Leonor Mendoza are definitely a step in the lighter footstep direction. Made from recycled paper and cotton woven together, these colorful and multifaceted mats sport corner buttons allowing them to go from a colorful placemat to functional basket in seconds.
With Spring finally starting to spring, we are excited to announce that Domino Magazine has just published a feature story on our Inhabitat founder Jill Fehrenbacher. The April issue of Domino - the guide to living with style - is tinged with green as Earth Day approaches and that’s where Inhabitat founder Jill Fehrenbacher makes an appearance in the monthly My Green Life feature. Decked out in sustainable style favorites like Ekovaruhuset and Veja, she talks about living green in NYC and her vision of the perfect way to spend April 22, 2008.
Furniture designer Cliff Spencer couldn’t resist when he heard about a Napa winery discarding wine-stained oak. An avid user of reclaimed materials, Spencer now regularly reclaims oak staves from California wineries and transforms them into these stunning one-of-a-kind pieces for residential and commercial use. (p.s., you don’t have to be a wine aficionado to enjoy them).
Flipping through new magazines today can feel like shaking the colorful branches of a glossy tree, with leaves falling out from between its limbs. Only they’re falling into your lap, and sometimes 6 at a time. Magazine subscription cards, fouling up the pre-buy flip through at the newsstand and littering up your living room. Thought subscribing would keep them at bay? Nope, but an address file might. Ugly Kitty is taking those fallen leaves and turning them into functional, pretty indexing to keep your reading clean and your contacts in order.
The sleek industrial contemporary kitchen is challenged in Mike Meiré’s The Farm Project - a brand imaging campaign for the German fixture manufacturer Dornbracht. This barn-like, “real-life” stage is charged with aromas, animals, plants and objects housed with an archetypal rural building with an outer cover made of patchwork materials. A beautiful exploration of design and living, The Farm Project shuns the “hidden” kitchen, enclosed in steel and stone, to connect people to that which sustains them.
What would you do if someone told you that you could help the environment by purchasing a bottle of vodka? That’s exactly the message America’s oldest continuously operating distillery, McCormick Distilling, is trying to spread with the launch of their brand new product 360 Vodka, as it enters the highly competitive market of ultra luxury vodkas. With this new launch, the company’s recently formed Earth Friendly Distilling Co. division also hopes to establish new sustainable product development and packaging standards in the distilling industry.
India is well-known for delicious food, and the kitchen is considered to be a sacred place in any Indian home. And now India has something else to be proud of: the world’s largest solar kitchen. The system has been installed as a collaboration between the Academy for a Better World and Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, with technology from Solare-Brücke, Germany. With 84 receivers and cooking at 650 degrees, the system can produce up to 38,500 meals a day when the sun is at its peak!
Danish architect Knud Kapper has drawn from the tradition of handmade, mid century furniture to create the new eco-friendly Living Kitchen Architecture series which was recently unveiled in New York. The pieces are attentively hand built from solid woods that were harvested from sustainably managed forests under stringent regulations. Engaging, durable and finished with natural wood treatments, Kapper’s kitchen furnishings have a built-in longevity that embody the core meaning of the rooms they establish.
Sometimes ‘it’s not easy being green’, and a little help is needed to make our living space or office cubicle greener and cleaner without much maintenance. Enter the ‘techno-organic’ Grobal planter, a super-stylish self-watering planter that is a foolproof way to grow plants and flowers without day-to-day watering or green-thumb know-how. Invented by Treg Bradley and designed with the high-gloss biomorphism of superstar Karim Rashid, Grobal is ideal for cultivating house plants, flowers, herbs, orchids, and succulents. Let the internal ‘grow chamber’ do the work, and you can sit back and nurture yourself and your plants in self-sufficient, eco-style.
If you associate the affordable and ubiquitous ‘Bic pen’ with disposable, throw away office culture - think again, as Zo-loft design has added a whole new dimension to desktop utility. Their “Din-ink” series of Bic pen style tops allows you to instantly convert your writing tools into ready made cutlery. With one easy step that trusty chewed-up pen of yours can become a sleek spoon, fork, or knife for that classic dining ‘al desko’ experience.
H is for Humanity, Habitats, Health, Habitats, and HIPPO! Project H, an organization that promotes, inspires, and delivers humanitarian product design, is funding 50 Hippo Rollers for a series of 17 villages in Kgautswane in Northeastern South Africa. Hippo Rollers, if you haven’t seen them before, they are amazing barrel devices that allow the millions whose livelihoods depend on the daily fetching of water to more safely and efficiently access and transport water. The roller holds 3-4 days worth of water for a family of 7, about 5 times the amount of water that can be moved using traditional methods, which frees up time for more productive economic and educational activities. It’s an amazing product and an amazing story of good design enabling communities.
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