Sanjay Puri Architect’s new Chrome Hotel features a fresh façade punctuated with holes that allow natural light to stream in while keeping air-conditioning costs to a minimum. The opaque windows were purposefully set throughout the swiss cheese façade to allow ambient natural light to enter, and they also create an incredibly cool effect at night when backlit by LED lights.
COBE Architects blasted away its competitors with a sexy and bike-friendly new design in the recent competition to redesign Copenhagen’s Norreport train station. Almost retro in its lines, the architects’ vision of the new station is composed of a series of rounded, floating roofs set upon striking glass pavilions. Since bicycles are a preferred means of transportation in Copenhagen, ample bike parking was a main feature of the new structure, and other green features will include energy-efficient lighting and natural ventilation.
The Firewinder is an innovative outdoor light solution, powered entirely by the wind! Inspired and developed by young British inventor Tom Lawton, the Firewinder spins as the wind blows, turning into an eco-friendly night light. Lawton developed the light with a wish to highlight the invisible beauty and endless resource of alternative energies, and what a great job he did! Find out more about the Firewinder light here, and get your hands on one from the Guardian EcoStore for a mere £99.95.
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.
We saw quite a few environmentally-conscious trends at the Milan Furniture Fair’s bi-annual showcase of lighting products, Euroluce. With energy use in mind, LEDs showed up from almost every company. As an extremely efficient and small bulb, the LED allows its surrounding fixtures to morph into innovative forms that highlight the beauty of light. Also in hot demand at Euroluce this year are shades made from natural or recycled fibers, whether strung, woven, or draped — or some combination of the above. The shades help to create soft, glowing light — thanks to their translucent material — but they are also nice to look at when the light is off. Euroluce is showing a variety of lighting options that differ in aesthetics and innovation, and we are happy to report that many of the designs are evidence that environmental responsibility is an important agenda item.
As part of the Euroluce exhibition at the Milan Furniture Fair, Royal Philips Electronics showcased a wide range of cutting edge LED lighting products. Our favorite designs on display were part of their newly debuted Ledino collection, an extensive range of stylish indoor and outdoor fixtures that provide 80% energy savings over standard incandescent bubs. The lights have a very low wattage and minimal CO2 emissions, but it is much more than their energy efficiency that makes these lights notable.
This stunning LED chandelier lit up this year’s BKLYN Designs with a stellar low-energy lighting solution for light emitting diodes. Recent Pratt graduate Kenzan Tsutakawa-Chinn wowed attendees at the BKLYN Designs show with his constellation chandelier, which takes the form of a gorgeous starburst, breaking LEDs free from their circuit-mounted domain.
Inhabitat was on the scene all three days of BKLYN Designs this weekend and we have a lot of great finds to report back to you. The BKLYN Designs furniture exhibition, which is held in DUMBO every year in May, is not a large event by any means (unlike the upcoming International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javitz center this weekend). However, what the small, carefully curated show lacks in scale, it more than makes up for in the quality of the work on display. Every year there are a handful of designers that knock our socks off, and the best part is that they are always local designers, using locally-sourced materials, sustainable production methods, and high-quality hand-craftsmanships.
Yesterday’s rainy weather did nothing to deter our spirits as the Inhabitat team of Jill, Abigail, Mike and Ali headed to BKLYN Designs to check out this three day local design extravaganza.
Award-winning Norwegian design house TRØKK16 will be exhibiting their latest designs at this year’s Milan International Furniture Fair , but before we unveil their latest works, we’d like to highlight a few of their outstanding past projects. The Loop LED Lamp puts traditional desk lamps to shame. This stylish desk light uses LEDs and needs only 5 watts to light up your work space and, perhaps, inspire your own eco-creations.
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.
Evoking a gallery of stars, Robin Carpenter’s eye-catching LED chandelier, Spiralight, demonstrates how good those little light emitting diodes can look when they are used in a clever way. This is what LED lighting should be all about. The creative LED Chandelier recently made waves at the IMM Cologne design fair 2007 . Delicately suspended with 216 LEDS meticulously interwoven into a single twisting strand, the stunning Spiralightis typical of the Berlin-based designer’s signature aesthetic – in evoking a sense of the organic by way of obstructing symmetry in linear production via algorithms.
Best described by the designers as “a single zigzag line of light,” Janos Korban and Stefanie Flaubert’s Weblight is as visually arresting as it is energy efficient. Constructed of stainless steel tubing and polycarbonate, the “zigzag” is lit by a series of LED’s, whose use for artistic purposes we find clever and refreshing. It’s also great to see the intersection of technology, design, art, and function – Korban/Flaubert’s Weblight is both functional object and installation, high-tech and simple all at once.
Belgium-based design shop Materialise has developed their signature style by combining digital manufacturing processes with organic forms inspired by nature. This juxtaposition yields beautiful designs such as Creepers LED lighting, concocted by UK designer Lionel Theodore Dean. Drawing inspiration from the growth patterns of ‘creeper’ vines, Creepers incorporates low-energy LED lights within plastic flower-shaped appendages that hang delicately from the ceiling to create a sort of organic chandelier. When refracted through the translucency of the polyamide petals, the LEDs produce lovely patterns and variances of light.
Don’t you just love it when aesthetics demand an ecological solution? Such is the case with the Ova Luminaire from UK design firm, Item. Inspired by the remains of sea life found on the beach, these lovely lighting fixtures use bone china and LED lights to create a serene, ethereal effect.
For those who’ve dreamed of getting away from the pace of urban life without giving up their platform bed, BlueSky MOD has developed a modern cabin that can be prefabricated, delivered, and erected- in 10 days no less- on your wilderness of choice. The 640 sq-ft prototype has some similar appeals as the Tiny Tumbleweed Houses profiled last month; the cabin is designed to be ecologically responsible, flexible, and modular, all within a relatively small footprint.
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
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