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.

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Post tags: Diane Ruengsorn, Domestic Aesthetic, Domestic Aesthetic ICFF 2008, fsc certified, green design houseware, ICFF 2008, International Furniture Fair 2008, Reclaimed Materials, Recycled Materials, sustainable housewares

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Well, as far as mirrors go, Paul Loebach’s Mirror Mirror – which we spotted at this year’s HauteGREEN show – may very well take the cake. Its intricate design is gorgeous, but even better is its clever and uber-efficient use of wood, which produces two mirror frames in a single cut (one is the removed piece of the other).


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Post tags: ecof, hautegreen, mirror mirror, Paul Loebach, Salvaged, salvaged wood, sustainable design

A few weeks ago, Inhabitat put together an event about recycling and reuse in design, called Reclaiming Design. This event at HauteGREEN in New York was a big success, thanks to the thought-provoking design and insightful discussion from Dwell Editor-in-Chief Sam Grawe and designers Carlos Salgado of Scrapile, Tejo Remy of Droog fame, and Matt Gagnon. Our conversation touched on a variety of issues surrounding the concepts and processes behind using reclaimed materials in different scales of design, and its implications for both environmental sustainability as well as more conceptual and cultural themes.

For those of you who are really into this stuff, the full-length video of the entire discussion can be found here >

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Post tags: bart bettencourt, Carlos Salgado, Design Reclaimed, green design, Haute Green Inhabitat Presents, Recalimed Design, reclaiming design, recycled design, Sam Grawe, Tejo Remy

You may have thoughts tennis balls were just for tennis – but creative Dutch designer Tejo Remy has found a another use for the bright yellow bouncy felt-and-rubber balls. The same material qualities that make tennis balls bright, bouncy and easy-to-spot make for seating that is comfortable, sturdy, and extremely eye-catching. While many museum goers observe works of art perched upon the usual wooden bench, visitors at Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen are able to sit and stare in style on these colorful and clever tennis ball benches designed by Tejo Remy and Rene VeenHuizen.


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Post tags: droog, dutch design, reclaimed design, Reclaimed Materials, remy veenhuizen, Rene Veenhuizen, Tejo Remy, Tennis ball benches

Making its debut at HauteGREEN this year, Propeller’s gorgeous new pendant lamps demonstrate the potential of combining CNC milling with sustainable materials like Plyboo. What particularly attracts us to the Furrow Parkade pendant light is the simple linear design, with cuts that reveal the inner core of the material, making it equally beautiful when showcased in natural light or when used to light-up a dark night.

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Post tags: Bamboo Lighting, Haute Green, Propeller Pendant Design, sustainable design

If you are looking for a cool alternative to your average, run-of-the-mill upholstered furniture, the latest buzz (and one of the stunners of the HauteGREEN show) is the Emir chair by Lars Urheim of the Norwegian design house Trokk16. A beautiful specimen of classic Scandinavian design, the Emir chair is constructed out of natural latex foam, sustainable wood, wool fabric and woolen felt. The biodegradable Emir is as much about form as it is about substance. According to Urheim, the chair’s components can easily be separated and reused or recycled after its initial use has run its course.

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Post tags: 100% Norway, Bergen designers, eco furniture design, green furniture design, Haute Green, Lars Urheim, norweigan design, Sustainable Norweigan Furniture Design, Sustainable Upholstered Design, Sustainable Upholstery, Trokk16 Emir Chair

A variety of environmentally-friendly pendant lights lit up the HauteGREEN exhibition last month in New York, but none of them more exquisitely displays our love for bamboo than the Moso Pendant by designer Brian Schmitt. Made almost entirely of bamboo and only three components (shade panels, bamboo frame, and cord set), the Moso Pendant can be flat packed and shipped to your preferred destination and be assembled without the use of any fasteners or glue. How cool is that?

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Post tags: Bamboo Lamp, Brian Schmitt, Brian Schmitt Moso Bamboo Pendant Lamp, Eco-friendly Lamp Design, Moso, pendant lamp, sustainable lighting

We’ve long been fans Iannone:Sanderson’s amazingly creative and cute sustainable furniture designs. Every year at ICFF we count on seeing several new organic designs in kirei and bamboo from Iannone, and this year didn’t disappoint. Although he appears to have lost partner Sanderson somewhere in the past year, Iannone showed again this year at ICFF with a whole host of gorgeous new pieces, including the eco-fabulous Elk Mod Lodge Sideboard shown above.

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Post tags: Elk Tall Mod Lodge Sideboard, FSC certified plywood, GREENGUARD certified teke veneer, Iannone:Design, Iannone:Sanderson, Kirei doors, Revealed at ICFF 2007

Tom Dixon, design pioneer and all around renaissance man, was one of the big hits of the recent HauteGREEN festivities, where he spoke about issues, concerns and contradictions in sustainable design, including materials, production, recycling and economics. Thanks to the video producers of Scribemedia, we have a great video of his conversation with design journalist Julie Taraska, in which he discusses his own work, sustainability, and his brilliant new Second Cycle initiative for Artek.

This video is just a quick snapshot of his thought-provoking talk. For those of you who are interested, watch the entire, unabridged version here at Scribemedia >

+ Tom Dixon @ HauteGREEN

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Post tags: artek, design pioneer, hautegreen, scribemedia, Second Cycle, sustainable design, Tom Dixon

At our recent Reclaiming Design event, we were thrilled to see such amazing work and general interest in the integration of reused and recycled materials in the design process. But super-kudos go out to Mr. Tom Dixon, who spoke at our Inhabitat-sponsored HauteGREEN event about his recently-debuted 2nd Cycle line of furniture that is literally bringing vintage modernist furniture back into a new market.

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Post tags: 2nd cycle furniture, Alvar Aalto, Alvar Aalto antiques, artek, Artek 2nd cycle, Finnish design, reclaimed design, reclaimed furniture, recycled furniture, reissued furniture, Tom Dixon, TOM DIXON’S 2ND CYCLE FURNITURE LINE for Artek

One of the highlights of our recent Reclaiming Design events in New York was Dutch designer Tejo Remy’s presentation. As expected, the Dutch designer spoke about his well known chest of drawers, rag chair, and milk bottle lamp – but he also talked about a few lesser-known projects that wowed us with their playfulness and ingenuity. In particular, his re-interpreted playground fence (shown above) was a real crowd pleaser, and provided an interesting take on “reclaimed” or “recycled” design in which the reuse brought a new interpretation to a vernacular form (the materials may not have been reused, but the language and application was certainly reused and re-invented).

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Post tags: Droog Designer 4, Dutch designer, green design for kids, playground fence, reclaiming design, remy veenhuizen, repurposed fences, rethink fence, Tejo Remy

Yves Behar’s graceful and gestural Leaf lamp may well be the best known LED desk lamp of our era. Debuting last year at ICFF 2006, the iconic “eco lamp” won rave reviews and garnered a lot of attention and spots on magazine covers for its lyrical form and use of new technology.

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Post tags: Leaf Lamp, LED Desk Lamp, sustainable design, Yves Béhar, Yves Behar Leaf Lamp

We love designer Rick Lee’s creative use of digital fabrication and CNC milling to create a set of playfully evocative “Four Seasons” furniture, which was on display at New York’s ICFF. Celebrating the cyclical nature of life, each table in the Four Seasons series is a different shape and height, and has a unique style of CNC cut-out from its plyboo base to reflect the season.

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Post tags: Four Seasons Sustainable Coffee Table, Plyboo Sustainable Furniture, Rick Lee CNC Tables, Rick Lee Winter Plyboo Coffee table, Rick Lee’s CNC Plyboo Coffee Table

While wandering the halls of ICFF this year we came across this beautiful new LED Lamp design by Koncept and were instantly smitten with its graceful lines and clarity of purpose. Koncept’s gorgeously simple Z-Bar is a true testament to the “less is more” philosophy of design. Why have fidgetty little nobs, decorations, and unecessary distraction when the main purpose of a desk lamp is to illuminate your desk with as little energy and heat as possible? Koncept’s unobtrusively sexy form packs a secret punch – behind the flexible stick shape of the Z-bar Lamp is a high power set of 66 LEDs which provide up to 240 lumens while only consuming 8.8 watts of electricity.

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Post tags: Eco-friendly energy efficient LED Desk lamp, Koncept Design, Koncept Z-Bar LED Desk Lamp, LED Desk Lamp, Z-Bar High Power desk lamp

When it comes to innovative lighting, there’s cool, and then there’s just plain brilliant (pun intended). Makoto Tojiki’s “Archimedes Dream” seems to fall into the latter category. The glowing ribbon chandelier is illuminated thanks to organic light emitting diodes, or OLED’s. In case you’re not familiar, OLEDs are a subcategory of LEDs that glow thanks to an electroluminescent layer of organic compounds (think glow-in-the-dark paint, but organic, and fancier). The high technology coupled with the simple, gestural form, made for quite the eye-catching booth at last weekend’s ICFF.

+ Makoto Tojiki

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Post tags: ICFF 2007', LED Chandelier, LED lighting, Makoto Tojiki, OLEDs, Organic LED’s, Organic light emitting diodes