What if you could design your own lighting fixture in the time that it takes to unscrew a light bulb? That’s the premise behind Daniel Becker’s Spark system, a series of energy-efficient LED bulbs that can be linked together to form beautiful light sculptures.

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Post tags: daniel becker, energy efficient lighting, green design, Interiors, LED lights, Products, sparks, sustainable design

Seoul, South Korea is filled with blinding light-up displays and headache-inducing neon screens. But residents of the city who want to see these displays put to good use need only take a trip to the World Cup Stadium’s Peace Park, which is where this beautiful Living Light sculpture blooms. The permanent outdoor pavilion and glass canopy projects up-to-the minnute information about local air quality, and locals can send it a text message to receive a report from anywhere.

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Post tags: Air quality, Art, environmental art, green art, light installation, living light, seoul, south korea, sustainable design

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

A lot of us can recall spending hours upon hours of stacking colorful Legos into shapes and sizes that tickled our imagination as children. While some of us outgrew that phase, thankfully some of us didn’t forget the charm of the little Lego man’s smile or the amazingness contained within every little block. As Parisian designers Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosetti have proved with their chromatic Munchausen Lego Kitchen: you’re never to old to play with Legos!

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Post tags: diy design, green design, Interiors, Kitchen, lego kitchen, Munchausen Lego Kitchen Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosetti, Recycled Materials, Renovation, sustainable design

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

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.

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

Awe-inspiring design may not grow on trees, but it sure can dress up walls! Last year, architecture and product design group Nendo Studio completed the renovation of this gorgeous Moss House private residence in the Ebisu area of Tokyo, Japan. Taking inspiration from the plant life that scales the walls lining the nearby Shibuya River, the Nendo designers used dried moss to cover the interior walls with vine-like patterns. This custom wall treatment has a vivid color, a rich textural quality, and gives the starck white corridors a sense that the are alive.

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Post tags: artistic installation, ebisu japan, Interiors, moss house, natural pattern, Nendo, Shibuya River, wallpaper

Whether you’re religious or not, this old Dominican church will certainly bring you the enlightenment you’ve been seeking. After months of renovation this magnificent structure originally constructed in 1294 has opened its doors to the public as a “brand new” bookstore in the heart of Maastricht. A superb example of adaptive re-use, the Selexyz Dominicanen infuses rich and historic architecture with plentiful shelves ripe with information.

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Post tags: adaptive reuse, cathedral, Green Building, green design, Renovation, Selexyz Domincan Church Maastricht, sustainable design

Despite lasting longer and being more efficient than both incandescent and CFL bulbs, LEDs haven’t caught on because of their sky-high prices. But now Panasonic wants to bring LEDs to the mainstream — at least in Japan — with a 60-watt household bulb that the company claims can last up to 19 years, or 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

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Post tags: cfl, Everled, green design, incandescent, LED, light bulb, panasonic, sustainable design

Wow those around you by transforming any old household object into a lamp with this “LED Pin” by Korean designer Sungho Lee. To create this subtle, yet awe-inspiring illuminating accent Lee stylized and whitewashed the form of a traditional clothespin. The refreshing take on a familiar design successfully turns the object’s dollar-store stigma into a museum store find, but it’s the techy twist that makes it even more notable.

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Post tags: clothes pin, DIY, illuminate, Korean Design, led light, Lighting, repurpose

Today is the first day back to school for kids all over the country, and now you can get in the back-to-school mood with a rewritable ‘chalkboard’ lamp. With John Beck’s ingenious lighting solution, all you have to do to get some “mood lighting” is to scribble whatever you feel like on these fun lighting fixtures. Made of 95% recycled steel, they’re sturdy and great medium for kids to practice their prose.

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Post tags: chalkboard lamp, john beck chalkboard lamp, recycled lamp, rewritable lamp

Skateboards these days are amazing examples of graphic design, and some are practically objets d’art – what a shame that they should to go to a landfill after the boards have lost their pop! Thankfully, Pennsylvania-based Deckstools is here to keep art from the trash heap and to add style to your pad with their striking line of furniture made from reclaimed skateboards.

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Post tags: Art, craft, deckstool, Furniture, jason podlaski, philadelphia, reclaimed wood, repurposed, skateboard, skateboarding, skating, stool

Shortly after Al Gore debuted An Inconvenient Truth the general public started giving a damn about climate change — at least superficially. And in a massive wave of effort to show off our new enviro-consciousness, every apartment, townhouse and megamansion from Norway to New Zealand swapped their incandescent light bulbs for more energy efficient CFLs, or compact fluorescent lamps. Watt for watt, there’s no question whether or not CFLs save energy as compared to their predecessors. But with the concerns of toxic mercury and the recent developments in LED technology, CFLs may not be the smartest choice for long-term sustainability. Read on for our in-depth report!

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Post tags: cfl, compact fluorescent lamps, energy efficient lighting, green design, Interiors, is it green, sustainable design

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) recently announced a breakthrough in OLED technology that shatters all prior efficiency standards, reducing the ultra-thin lights’ energy consumption by 75%! That’s no small number – the development stands to raise the bar for energy efficient lighting by leaps and bounds. Literally (and figuratively) a cool technology, we are already enamored by the skinny profile of organic light emitting diodes, and we can’t wait to see their further integration into our everyday appliances.

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Post tags: energy efficient lighting, Flexible OLEDs, green design, Interiors, lamp, Light, OLED, organic light emitting diode, sustainable design