Inhabitat

VOTE NOW In the Spring Green Design Competition!

Drumroll please…
After a week of spring crafting and much anticipation, we’re thrilled to reveal the top entries in our Spring Greening DIY Design Contest! We received over 100 inspired entries, and we were super impressed with all of your clever, skillfully executed examples of recycled and reclaimed design. It was a true challenge to narrow all the entrants down to 15 finalists, so now we’re turning to you, dear readers, to help us choose which designer will receive a grand prize gift certificate of $200 to the Inhabitat Shop and which three runner-ups that will receive an eggling of their choice! You can vote as many times as you want (limited to once a day) and of course we encourage you to tell all of your friends and get them to vote for you! So read on for the top 15 designs, and cast your vote today!

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ECO DECORATING: Mod Green Pod Wallpaper

Traditional wall coverings often use PVC, a harmful and toxic material that has been known to leech into the air, so buying toxin-free textiles is an important health consideration that can’t be ignored. Mod Green Pod was founded by Lisa and Nancy Mims as a means to offer safer —and more fashionable— alternatives to conventional textile prints. Their products not just graphically gorgeous, but green in their materiality, completely free of vinyl, and use water-based inks on 100% certified organic cotton-based fabric.

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Recycled Water-Bottle Lampshade by Sarah Turner

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Loll Designs: Seating for the Modern Lollygagger

Inhabitat first spotted Loll Designs at Haute Green in 2007, where their sleek 3-slat Adirondack chairs were hard to ignore. Since then this Duluth, MN-based design outfit has hit its stride, launching several new collections with leading national retailers. From their iconic adirondacks to their brand new low-profile outdoor living rooms and practical stackables, Loll Designs’ sustainably crafted furnishings make lounging around that much more irresistible.

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El Japonez: Glass Restaurant Lined with a Living Green Wall

Located in Mexico City, Restaurant Japonez offers hungry souls searching for Asian-inspired dishes a serene landscape seated between a stunning living wall, wood, and an incredible glass enclosure. Designed by Serrano Cherrem Architects, the double-height space allows for tons of natural lighting during the day and lets in the city at night, creating a juxtaposition that brings the city indoors into the organic nature of the restaurant’s interior.

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Mushrooms Ate My Furniture: Biodegradable Bench in Bloom

Designer Shinwei Rhoda Yen is turning furniture inside out with her ‘mushrooms ate my furniture’ chair. A contemporary addition to any garden, the seat of natural wood provides an excellent respite to enjoy your surroundings or take a break from your green thumb, while its underside provides the perfect habitat to grow mushrooms. Left exposed to the elements, mushrooms will grow and live within the chair for years, feeding off of the nutrients of the wood. As with all things in nature, the mushroom furniture will eventually degrade, giving way to the life of its inhabitants.

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Clean Your Indoor Air With Plants!

Plants can add a lively dose of levity to any indoor space, but did you know that they can also help you and your family breathe easier? Today Inhabitots explored the healthful benefits of living with plants, and how they can help combat sick building syndrome by eating up carbon and dangerous off-gassed chemicals like formaldehyde and benzene. From the top five air-purifying plants to stylish indoor planter …

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Blight: Illuminating Solar Blinds Turn Night to Day

One of fifty top entries in this year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition, Vincent Gerkens’ Blight offers a brilliant twist on staid venetian blinds. Rather than serving simply to block the sun’s rays, the design re-envisions blinds as sun-soaking solar panels that store energy during the day and illuminate your interiors at night.

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AIRPOD: HEPASilent HEPA Air Purifier at Inhabitots

Anyone interested in creating a more efficient home knows that sealing and insulating your house should be one of your primary concerns, but the second step is every bit as important – ensuring healthy indoor air quality. Enter the Airpod, which packs a high quality HEPA air filter into a slick package. Perfect for an office, nursery, or bedroom, this affordable air purifier will have you and your loved ones …

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Living Moss Carpet Adds a Touch of Green to Your Bathroom

There’s nothing like the feeling of fresh cut grass under the toes, especially when stepping out of the shower. This Moss Carpet by Nguyen La Chanh brings the outside indoors in an unconventionally natural way by placing it underfoot. The lush green lawn thrives in humid environments, which makes your bathroom a perfect place to grow.

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GLOBAL WARMING RUG by NEL & Nanimarquina

If there is an iconic image that represents the natural devastation of global warming, it is the lone polar bear stuck on a melting ice flow. Now eco rug company Nanimarquina has teamed up with NEL artists to create a beautiful ‘Global Warming Rug’ – complete with stranded polar bear floating in the middle of the …

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CES 2009: MiniWIZ’s Solarbulb Turns Bottles Into Lamps

This year’s CES is showcasing some great green products, and we were particularly impressed by this new solar powered outdoor lamp by miniWIZ, who brought us the Hymini Portable Wind Charger. The Solarbulb is a brilliant solution that provides light while making use of old plastic bottles. Simply attach it to any ordinary bottle and the 0.18 W solar cells will provide up to 6 hours of continuous night lighting.

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GE Unveils the World’s First OLED Christmas Tree

Recently the OLED research team over at General Electric unveiled the world’s first OLED Christmas Tree! Forging ahead of the usual end-of-the-year slowdown, GE’s Global Research Center headquarters in Niskayuna, NY rang in the holidays with a 6-inch-by-15-ft. OLED system all rolled-up into the form of a tree. The radiant source of holiday cheer provides a glimpse of how OLEDs can transform the future of the lighting industry.

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Eco CNC Xmas Tree at Inhabitots

Every year it’s a bit heartbreaking to see all those clear-cut christmas trees lining city streets, and evergreen plastic alternatives are hardly eco-friendly. Imagine our excitement when we ran across this gorgeous flat-pack christmas tree by Buro North. This update on the standard tree is constructed entirely of plywood that has been CNC-milled into a beautiful modern form that is ready to be decked out with ornaments …

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Illuminating Solar Blinds Turn the Lights On

What do you get when you take an average vertical blind (the kind found in practically any rental apartment across the United States), outfit it with special mini photovoltaics and LED pixels, then add a healthy dose of creative inspiration? The surprisingly chic and witty Solar Vertical Lamp designed by Yoon-Hui Kim and Eun-Kyung Kim. By creatively applying existing technology, Kim and Kim transform the lowly blind into a sustainable, sexy, and dramatic lighting system. Finally, a blind that has truly seen the light.

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Hand-powered Penguin Eco-Light

Perfect for emergency preparedness and cute to boot, this adorable penguin eco flashlight would make an excellent addition to any home. The bright light eschews a landfill-bound battery for a pump powered kinetic charger that provides an hour of light for each minute spent pumping. Capable of …

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Recycled Magazine Mobiles by Frasier & Wing

When it comes to mobiles, everyone knows that they can make great nursery decorations and playthings for babies, but sophisticated, abstract mobiles can also function equally well as artsy decor for grownups. Such is the case with Frazier & Wing’s beautiful recycled magazine mobiles. Made from hundreds of paper cut-outs from old magazines, and strung in linear cascading forms, …

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Luminescent Fiber Optic Wallpaper by Camilla Diedrich

What if we could light our homes with glowing wallpaper rather than having to rely on electric lights? Swedish designer Camilla Diedrich has asked this exact question, and in response, created a stunning line of luminescent wallpaper that is lit by fiber optics. Her Nature Ray Charles Wallpaper features a delicate assortment of floral motifs that shine through in lucid lines, adding a touch of energy-efficient ambiance to any room.

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WEmake’s Beautiful Reclaimed Beryl & Friends Lamps

WEmake’s beautiful Beryl and Friends lamps are composed from cast-off bases and lampshades that have fallen out of favor. The designers carefully refinish each component and then recombine them to eclectic effect, re-wiring and re-stocking them with low energy bulbs. Beryl and Friends were included in (re)design’s ‘Lighten up‘ exhibition at 100% Design at this year’s London Design Festival.

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The Bright Idea Light Bulb Shade

Many of our readers have already switched out their incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient CFLs, and for this we applaud you! However for those out there who have not made the switch, it may be due to concerns over the bright glare that these bulbs emit. Enter the Bright Idea Shade, a beautiful open-source bulb shade composed of interlocking polygonal pieces. It was created at the Eyebeam OpenLab, an art and technology center in New York that encourages creative thinking and open-source designs.

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Energy Seed Lamp Powered by Recycled Batteries

Although consumer electronics are tending towards rechargeable batteries these days, those ubiquitous alkaline disposables continue to present an environmental problem. Now Sungwoo Park and Sunhee Kim have designed the Energy Seed, an illuminating way to encourage battery recycling. The street lamp is powered by the residual energy left in spent batteries, establishing an immediate visual connection with the act of recycling. Simply deposit your dead batteries in the cylindrical storage compartment and their energy is pooled to power a luminescent LED halo.

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HULGER PLUMEN BULBS: Innovative Compact Fluorescents

Hulger’s beautiful Plumen bulbs explore the possibilities of the energy-efficient CFL, reworking its staid form into fluid light sculptures that dare to be covered up or hidden from view. Named for the plume-like forms that spiral and descend from the light’s pendant fitting, these brilliant bulbs celebrate and encourage the use of CFLs. We caught sight of them at (re)design’s Lighten Up exhibit at this year’s 100% Design.

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Michelle Brand’s Stunning Plastic Bottle Chandelier

One of the most stunning pieces at this year’s 100% Design was this gorgeous recycled plastic bottle chandelier by Michelle Brand. Composed entirely from cut-off bottle bases, it lit up the floor at (re)design’s Lighten Up exhibition, which showcased a selection of innovative lighting designer-makers who are ’switched-on’ when it comes to tackling domestic lighting design solutions.

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Molo Debuts Expandable Honeycomb Urchin Lamp

We are excited to announce that one of our favorite contemporary furniture design teams, Molo, just launched a brand new fold-up paper lantern called ‘Urchin’. Molo’s Urchin Softlights are a series of gorgeous expandable lamps composed of flexible-yet-durable honeycomb craft paper. Urchin embodies Molo’s versatile design philosophy and is as adaptable as their paper walls or stacking blocks, allowing the user to lift or push the softlight into any desired position. Watch designer Stefanie Forsythe styling her Urchin softlights in a flash intro here.

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The Solar Spark Lamp Visualizes Energy Use

What if measuring your entire home’s energy consumption was as simple as flicking on a light switch? That’s the idea behind Beverly Ng’s Spark Lamp, a solar-powered device that offers an ingenious approach to household energy monitoring. The sprout-like LED lamp changes color depending on the amount of power that your home has used during the month, providing an easy-to-understand visual cue to conserve more energy.

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TwistTogether LED Block Lamps from Glide

We first spotted Glide Design’s gorgeous TwistTogether Block Lights back at BKLYN Design in 2005, and we’ve been fans of the innovative design ever since. Like a design product love-child between Legos and Ingo Maurer, TwistTogether lights will please interior design snobs as much as they will delight curious children. The colorful LED-illuminated cubes come in sets of four, and each block can be attached to any other block with a simple key mechanism, allowing a wide variety of configurations. Since the lamps are composed of LEDs, they are safe, cool-to-the-touch, consume less power than a nightlight, and will last forever — significantly ramping up their green quotient. We recently reviewed the kid appeal of TwistTogether lamps over on our baby blog Inhabitots.

Read more about TwistTogether lights at Inhabitots.com >

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Sharp’s Earthquake Detecting Solar Streetlights

Although not as aesthetically pleasing as those bio-mimicking Leaf lamps, these solar streetlights not only provide ample nighttime lighting, but also offer assistance in the event of a major earthquake. Sharp’s streetlamps charge during the day and light up the night with their powerful and energy-efficient high-intensity LED spotlights. In the event of an earthquake measuring 5.0 or greater, these streetlights will turn on full brightness all night long to light streets and sidewalks, aiding in emergency relief efforts.

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NSW Winner: Bligh Voller Nield’s Sustainable Stockland HQ

Some of the most interesting examples of green innovation are those that transform the environmentally unkind into a beacon of eco-friendly sophistication. Such was the challenge dealt to Bligh Voller Nield in designing the headquarters for Sydney-based Stockland. Their solution recycles an existing structure into a cutting edge workplace so successfully that it received the Milo Dunphy Award for Sustainable Architecture in this year’s NSW awards.

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Growth Series Ceramics by Stanley Ruiz

This past week showcased the A+: The Young Designer’s Platform at Accent on Design/The New York International Gift Fair, and ‘new organics’ designer Stanley Ruiz was featured as one of the bright young stars on the design scene. You might recall that we featured Ruiz’s twig accessories right after New York Design Week in May, so we were excited to learn that he was selected to exhibit some of his latest creations at this week’s hugely popular venue. The Brooklyn designer artfully fuses craft, natural artifacts, and industrial design know-how to create sculptural objects that are grafted with new life and budding green promise.

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SOLAR POWERED MOON JAR by Tobias Wong

Ever wish you could bottle moonlight to light up your room at night? Well, now you can with the Moon Jar. We’ve written about the Sun Jar on Inhabitat before – the cute and clever solar powered jar lamp which has been around for a couple of years garnering fans and design accolades. If you liked the concept but found the Sun Jar too yellow and sunny for your tastes, now there is a cool blue-hued version of the same design called the ‘Moon Jar’.

We think these would make ideal nightlights for a kid’s room, and have a review over on Inhabitots explaining our thoughts:

MOON JAR ON INHABITOTS >

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Announcing the winners of the ‘One Good Chair’ Competition

Back in April we announced the One Good Chair Design Competition, where a $4500 challenge was set to design a chair that ‘Does Good, Feels Good, Looks Good’. Designs for this competition were judged on their environmental impact, ergonomics and aesthetics, and our own Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher was one of the judges for the competition. Well, now the results of the One Good Chair Competition are in! The best chairs in the competition ship and stack easily and are made of renewable and biodegradable materials that minimize waste – one honorable mention even encourages people to ride the bus. Over 300 designers competed in this competition, and in the end the judges couldn’t pick a favorite between the top two. Check out the winners below the jump!

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