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, green 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

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, green design, green furniture, green Interiors, industrial design, 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, green furniture, green lifestyle, Green Lighting, home design, kinetic energy, OLED, rochus jacob, rocking chair

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, Green Lighting, illuminate, Korean Design, led light, 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

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, green 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, green Interiors, lamp, Light, OLED, organic light emitting diode, sustainable design

Energy-efficient LED light bulbs may be more expensive than CFL’s, but Sharp’s new DL-L60AV LED could be worth the high cost. The tricked-out bulb comes with a remote control that features a dimming function as well as the ability to select seven different shades of white… so your guests can never complain that they don’t like the ambiance.

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", cfl, DL-L60AV LED, Japan, LED, Light, light bulb, sharp

Philadelphia-based design team MIO has upped the ante for end-user creativity yet again with the introduction of their first LED light fixture. Called Trask because it can switch from being “track” or “task” lighting, the function of this ingenious flatpack lighting system is completely up to you! The modular units can form everything from desk lamps to linkable suspension lights, giving this eco-centric product the option to snake its way across your entire room.

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Post tags: "flat pack", "philadelphia design", "powder coated", "suspension light", "task light", customizable, icff 2009, LED lighting, trask

Would you believe that this eye-catching lamp was made for under one dollar? ‘Sleeve’ by Sara Ebert is a lampshade made from a Salvation Army sweater and a discarded apple juice bottle. Showcased as part of Pratt’s ‘Design for a Dollar’ exhibit at ICFF 2009, ‘Sleeve’ was crafted with an eye toward minimizing energy, labor, materials, and transportation costs and waste. It’s beautiful, smart, and straightforward–exactly the way good design should be.

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Post tags: design for a dollar, desog for 1 dollar, eco design, eco lamp, economic design, found object design, green lamp, Pratt Institute, recycled design, sleeve lamp, sleeve light, sustainable design, Sweater 'Sleeve' Lamp by Sara Ebert, sweater lamp

Far and away our favorite exhibit at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair was Design For A Dollar. With one dollar to work with, students from the Pratt Institute of Design in NYC were challenged to design something worthwhile. Through the design process not only did the students from the Department of Industrial Design learn the meaning of a dollar, but many incorporated cast-off items upcycled into new and intriguing designs. 80 undergraduate and graduate students entered the contest and 15 of the best designs were chosen to exhibit at ICFF this year. Here we highlight our favorites for their eco-friendly design, creative reuse and their affordability.

DRIP PLATE by Catherine Merrick

The Drip Plate by Catherine Merrick is an ingenious reuse of an antique ceramic plate. Originally featuring a winter scene in blue, Merrick renewed the thrift store find by dripping wax onto the plate and then sandblasting the rest away to create a new design. The diner will ponder while cleaning his plate, what the design used to be. The cost depends on the price of the plate and patience of the shopper.

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Post tags: design for a dollar, eco design, green design, icff 2009, International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Pratt Institute, Pratt Students Design For One Dollar, reclaimed design, recycled design, sustainable design, thrift design, thrifty design

Designed by Daisuke Hiraiwa, these elegant echidna-esque Stamen chandeliers elevate an everyday material into brilliant expressions of found design. Each one is created by gluing hundreds of toothpicks together to form a flexible disc that gives their bristling points a fluid form. The pointillist pendant lamps recently debuted at ICFF 2009, where they wowed onlookers with their complex folding curves and innovative use of materials.

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Post tags: daisuke hiraiwa, found design, green design, pendant lamp, Reclaimed Materials, repurposed materials, sustainable design, toothpick chandelier

Made from stacked rings of corrugated cardboard, Graypants‘ pendant Scrap Lights (which we’ve long admired) are a prime example of the transformative power of good design. The ceiling lamps‘ elegant construction utilizes leftover scraps of cardboard to create a semi-translucent shade that gives off a muted, soft glow. The overall effect is elegant, understated and as far from trash as you could possibly get.

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