Michelle Kaufmann, one of our favorite design heroes, just took a tour of social media giant Twitter’s brand new eco-friendly office space in downtown San Francisco, and we’ve got all the sweet details and pics! We’re super jealous of the Twitter team’s plush sustainable furniture and fabulous design aesthetic conjured up by the very talented Sara Morishige Williams, who happens to be the wife of Twitter CEO, Evan Williams (@ev). Working for a hot internet company certainly has its perks – some of which are a bird’s eye view of San Francisco, eco-friendly and non-toxic finishes, playful and inspiring decorations, and your very own DJ booth.

Read the rest of Michelle Kaufmann Tours Twitter’s New Eco-Friendly Office

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Post tags: eco friendly office, eco office, low-voc paint, michelle kaufman, no voc paint, non-toxic, non-toxic furniture, reclaimed barnwood, reclaimed wood, twitter, twitter's office

This smart Upcycle Ottoman by Gus* Modern is made of repurposed jute bags that were once used to carry organic fair trade certified coffee. Produced in a limited quantity, each piece is unique and shows the branding and markings of the bags used in the process. No word if they still carry that wonderful coffee scent, but you can still identify which company produced the beans and where they came from.

+ Gus* Modern

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Post tags: "green furniture", eco furniture, eco ottoman, eco-friendly furnishings, eco-friendly ottoman, Gus Modern, upcycle ottoman, upcycled, upcycled furniture, upcycled ottoman

It never ceases to surprise us that much of good, sustainable design is also deliciously fun. Take Debbie Wijskamp’s paperpulp cabinets, for instance. They are what their name implies: drawers and shelves made out of pureed paper mache. And while I want to write sophisticated sentences with phrases like ‘materials reuse’ and ‘resource conservation,’ I just can’t help thinking about how glorious it must be, in a third-grade sort of way, to mash paper into furniture. Wijskamp’s process validates these daydreams.

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Post tags: "green furniture", cabinet, Debbie Wijskamp, eco furniture, eco-friendly furniture, furniture recycled materials, paper mache, paper pulp, Sustainable Materials

An abandoned bowling alley finds a second life in this beautiful series of furniture by LA-based designer/woodworker William Stranger. Crafted from reclaimed strips of wood salvaged from a local defunct Tava Lanes Bowling alley, the collection springs to life in a variety of forms including a series of wall hangings and a low coffee table.

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Post tags: Bowling Alley, Furniture, green design, Interiors, reclaimed furniture, Recycled Materials, second life, sustainable design, William Stranger

Zombie chair! Out for your wood scraps! Oozing sawdust and pure carnage! Designer Hongtao Zhou, who we found  playing with ice, decided to get Holiday on a broken, abandoned chair he found on the streets in Madison, Wisconsin. The result: chair of the undead, risen from the swamp and demanding the chance to sit in your living room looking creepy. Zhou created the drippy effect with wood scraps and sawdust (and probably some monster blood and glue). Expect this chair on your front porch Halloween night, demanding all the sweet linseed oil you can muster. Happy creepy chair night, everyone, happy monster night.

+ Hongtao Zhou

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Post tags: "green furniture", environmental art, furniture design, halloween, Hongtau Zhou

Over at TreeHugger we are saps for furniture that can slide under your door; flatpack isn’t just made by IKEA. Designers like Eric Ku are doing it with humor, inventing a flatpack alphabet – his Flatpack Chair is pretty self-explanatory. In Japan, Keiji Ashizawa channels Marcel Breuer with a steel flatpack cantilever chair that slides under the door. Read on for more examples of cutting-edge flatpack furniture.

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Post tags: "flat pack", efficient design, flatpack furniture, furnishings, green design, Interiors, sustainable design

With so many slick electric motorcycles on the horizon, it’s getting increasingly difficult to justify the use of polluting, petroleum-powered older models. But instead of sending old Vespas to the trash pile, Spanish design studio Bel & Bel has a more creative solution: turn the stylish relics into snazzy pieces of furniture!

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Post tags: bel and bel, Furniture, upcycling, vespa

Clothes hangers are clogging our landfills at a rate of nearly 8 billion per year. We’ve recently brought you designers who have been developing brilliant ways to tackle the problem through eco-friendly materials and innovative new designs. Now industrial designers Alex Witko and Courtney Hunt at Organelle Design have hit upon another great idea — Hangeliers, wonderful chandeliers made from off-the-shelf plastic and wood hangers.

Read the rest of Hangeliers: Clothes Hanger Chandeliers by Organelle Design

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Post tags: eco design, Furniture, green design, industrial design, Interiors, Recycled Materials, sustainable design

The kitchen of the future was going to be so high-tech. Frigidaire’s Dream Kitchen of Tomorrow had it all; an IBM punch card recipe file, automatic dispensing and online TV ordering. And that’s not all – read on as we take a look at several extraordinary retro-futuristic kitchens to see how they’ve withstood the test of time.

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Post tags: Green Building, green design, interior design, kitchen of the future, Products, sustainable design

The serene back-and-forth movement of a rocking chair is nothing if not relaxing. It can also be useful and productive, according to Rochus Jacob. The designer’s Murakami Chair, a winner in designboom’s Green Life competition, uses the kinetic energy produced by rocking to power an attached OLED lamp.

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Post tags: Design Competition, eco-friendly furniture, Furniture, green lifestyle, home design, kinetic energy, Lighting, OLED, rochus jacob, rocking chair

One of our favorite shows from the 2009 London Design Festival was Corn Craft, a beautiful showcase of sustainable materials hosted by Gallery FUMI and Studio Toogood. Held in Gallery’s FUMI’s personal live/ work space on Hoxton Square, the exhibition hit all the right notes with tactile, emotional art-design pieces by Max Lamb & Gemma Holt, Nacho Carbonell (above) and Raw-Edges Design Studio.

Read the rest of Art and Design Converge at the 2009 London Design Festival

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Post tags: Furniture, green design, industrial design, London Design Festival 2009, Products, Recycled Materials, sustainable design

By now you have probably heard that composting helps make a garden green because it is an effective way to deliver nutrients to plants and reduce food waste. Previously we featured the Jarst planter, which makes composting food waste in your home easy with a side compartment that can distribute the compost directly to the plant soil. Here, we see this idea transform into something to fit the city scale. With Envi, industrial designer Julien Bergignant, proposes a concept for a city trash can outfitted to collect and then process public food waste, all while adding some green texture to the city landscape.

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Post tags: compost, composting, guerilla gardening, outdoor furniture, street furniture, urban gardening, urban greening

Parents are all too aware of the revolving door of quickly outgrown furniture that goes hand in hand with raising a child. Incessantly purchasing furniture is taxing on both the environment and the wallet. Designer Oji Masanori’s ‘Baby in Table’ is a clever alternative that is both stylish and sensible, as it changes in function as your child grows up. Two pieces of Japanese Beech furniture comprise this evolving design which houses an infant during mealtime (via the cut out square on the tabletop), then becomes a child’s desk, while the chair doubles as a step stool for the entire family. Head to Inhabitots to see all the various ways Baby in Table may be utilized.

READ MORE AT INHABITOTS >

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Odds & Ends, Bits & Pieces is a beautiful four-piece furniture set made entirely out of re-purposed materials. Designed by Inhabitat favorite Jo Meesters, the spring-colored furniture was crafted using a variation of upholstering and weaving techniques and is an amazing transformation of 34 discarded wooden beams and 16 leftover blankets.

Read the rest of Odds & Ends Recycled Furniture Changes the Value of Trash

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Post tags: Dutch Design Week, Furniture, green design, recy, recycled, repurposed materials, Studio Joe Meesters, sustainable design, TESTLAB, Transforming Furniture

One of our highlights from Copenhagen Design Week 2009 was a well-curated exhibit of new Danish design titled It’s a Small World. The show asks itself how Danish design is reacting to the challenges wrought by globalization, climate change, and technology, and the result is a rather extraordinary and intriguing attempt to encapsulate the energy of contemporary Danish design.

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Post tags: copenhagen design week, Danish design, Furniture, green design, its a small world, Products, sustainable design