Emeco (Electric Machine and Equipment Company) has been manufacturing chairs in Pennsylvania since 1944. The sustainability-minded company makes sturdy seating out of 80% recycled aluminum, with an estimated lifespan of 150 years and a lifetime guarantee. Now, in a collaboration with Coca-Cola, Emeco goes even greener with its most iconic design, diverting plastic pop bottles from Coke’s......read more
Yanko Design hips us to these fantastic lamps from designer Alex Kovatchev. Looking a lot like industrial-style modern lighting, Wash Lamps are actually made from a washing machine drum (the part you put your clothes in). The holes in the barrel that send water through the machine work to send light around the room. Pretty nifty!...read more
Clare Graham is a man on a mission. The Los Angeles artist has made it his life's purpose to awaken people to the potential of consumer refuse, proving that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. From his Highland Park studio, Graham creates large-scale art and design works from discarded soda-pop cans, Scrabble tiles, yardsticks, dog tags and jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The......read more
This floating pavilion on Vancouver's False Creek is being used as a temporary restaurant featuring 4-star local cuisine. Which is neat on its own, but it's doubly cool when you find out it's floating on nearly 1,700 recycled 2L pop bottles. And gets even sweeter when you discover that the Pop Bottle Dining Barge is a fundraising project for the School of Fish Foundation, which......read more
OK, tranSglass may not be new, but it's still looking fresh. Originally designed in 1997 by Tord Boontje and Emma Woffenden, the elegant line of glassware was picked up in 2005 by Artecnica for its Design w/Conscience collection. The vases, candle holders, carafes, and tumblers are crafted in Guatemala City from recycled bottles, where skilled craftspeople cut and polish items by hand. One......read more
After doing their job absorbing leaked oil, dirty oil booms typically go to the their graves in the landfill, where they languish for eternity. But, as GreenTech Media reports, that doesn't have to be the case. In a triumphant PR move, General Motors has found a way to intervene in the cycle, by making use of oil booms from the Gulf for passive car parts like air dams and water deflectors.......read more
In Providence, R.I., a new office building has lifted the challenging task of shipping container construction to new heights. The first permanent, multistory structure in the U.S. made entirely from shipping containers cost owner Peter Case $1.8 million to build, about half of what he would have paid for a conventional structure. Divided into two sets of offices, the three-story complex has an......read more
Made from sustainable wood and salvaged steel, this movable log cabin—created by Dutch green design maestro Piet Hein Eek—is as clever as it gets. Designed as a musician's rehearsal space—and built on wheels to avoid taxes and building regulations—the structure's facade is composed of small cross-sections of tree trunk. When the building is unoccupied and the......read more
Earth is increasingly being touted as the building material of the future, leading to a hot new architectural trend: grass houses. Designed by GRID Architects, the Amalia House in Styria, Austria joins the trend...sort of. The family holiday home is completely covered with artificial turf, highlighting the interchange between indoors and out. We may be taking the idea of "green" design......read more
With its newly unveiled Light Touch product, UK company Light Blue Optics envisions a total revolution in the way people interact with personal media. By freeing multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, it has the potential to do just that. Using holographic laser technology, Light Touch is said to transform any flat surface into a touchscreen, making the applications almost......read more