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Art/Architecture/Design
Named Elliot, the giant lives at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. Coca-Cola has commissioned several crate man throughout South Africa, but Elliot, who is nearly 60 feet tall and weighs a whopping 27 tons, carries a special message. Made out of 4200 plastic Coke crates, the recycled structure sports signs preaching the importance of recycling to passersby who stop for a closer look. This is just one of the firms important recycling projects in South Africa. PETCO is a plastic recycling program initiated by Coca-Cola, which also supports Collect-a-Can — a project that rewards people who recycle aluminum cans. During the World Cup, the firm...
The cost of building new classrooms and schools shouldn’t prohibit students in the developing world from accessing a quality education, but new construction, even using inexpensive materials like cinder block, can run up a five-digit bill in construction costs. Now, Hug It Forward, a nonprofit in Guatemala, has figured out how to build new schools on a shoestring budget by turning the plastic bottles that litter the countryside’s villages into raw construction materials. A plastic school might sound like it’s better suited for Barbies than for people, but the technology—developed by the Guatemalan nonprofitPura Vida—is actually quite clever and allows for...
From a green roof to locally harvested trees, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum opens on the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center with a dedication and much media coverage of every angle, including Steven Spielberg’s The Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero. Despite delays, this moving site centers on two dramatic waterfalls and reflecting pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers as the focus on the 16-acre site for contemplation and the commemoration of 9/11. The sustainable features in the design were intended to be viewed as a sign of hope. The 9/11 Memorial designed by architect...
Check out The Knowhow Shop – a new collaborative design and fabrication co-op located in Los Angeles. The 1,800-square foot space offers woodworking machines, a CNC router, a laser cutter and perhaps the most important tool of all: education. Founded by Kagan Taylor, Justin Rice and Joshua Howell, the shop operates on a punch card system. DIY crafters pay only for the time they use, and they get access to all of the equipment. Kagan points out that Knowhow is as much about bonding as it is about building: “It’s a great way to develop a network of people who are interested and...
Dutch Ink is a group of South African “reverse graffiti” artists with a green ethos. Group members include: JP Jordaan, Nick Ferreira, Stathi Kougianos and Martin Pace, who are all Vega graduates, a brand communication school in South Africa. The group’s surprising and thought-evoking eco art is designed to draw attention to our ever-increasing alienation from nature. Instead of painting new images on degraded municipal walls and other infrastructure, the group enhances them withclean, temporary graffiti. While tagging is technically illegal, authorities are battling to pin down how exactly these “urban vandals” are doing harm. Doesn’t sound like harm to me! Sound...
Call it recycling, upcycling, reclaiming, or salvaging. No matter how you define it, building furniture out of old wood is a major trend at the moment. In the past few days alone, I’ve seen a sofa made out of wooden pallets at a chic restaurant and a bench made from wood from a barn’s haymow. There are plenty of ways that you can adapt the trend in your home, but headboards are currently topping my list. I’ve seen so many beautiful uses of reclaimed wood in the bedroom, and even better, many of these projects are relatively easy to DIY yourself. Come...
Sarah Kauss spent a year designing, developing and testing the S’well Bottle, and her diligence in creating a more sustainable steel bottle isn’t lost on us. But athletes and travelers aren’t the only ones to benefit from the non-leaching, non-toxic bottles: women and children in rural areas are to have improved water sanitation thanks to the company’s partnership with WaterAid. Insulated to keep beverages hot or cold, the “hydration vessel” ($35) is a colorful and stylish way to combat the $7 billion that people spend on bottled water annually....
We are all aware that books come from trees, but artist Kylie Stillman readapts them by turning them back into a version of their original form through sculpture. Carving carfeully into stacks of books, Stillman creates these beautifully delicate inverted reliefs that brings us a whole world of trees and birds through thoughtful silhouettes. Stillman’s artwork moves away from the boundaries of the books by crafting them into a new life, distorting their original form and use. She engraves the book like a slab of stone, as opposed to using it as a two-dimensional canvas. The works create a reminder of how...
From Artists of Humanity comes an innovative design that turns more than 200 plastic shopping, dry-cleaning or newspaper bags into a colorful plastic bar stool, called “ReVision.” Made by inner-city youth in Boston, Massachusetts, the stools received the Social Responsibility Award by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) at the 2011 Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York City. Photos: Besides fast foot chains, AFH is the largest youth employer in Boston, where they are based. They provide employment to more than two hundred inner-city teenagers per year, many of whom are under-served, in commission projects including painting, video,...
This is the absolute greatest cup I have seen in a minute. As a tea and coffee drinker I give credit to a good mug when it’s due. Wanna add some flavor to your J.O.B., buy a reusable porcelain coffee cup. Looks just like the ones you buy from the carts on the streets! Either the Graham Hill designed New York version or James Burgess’ more minimalist ‘I Am Not A Paper Cup’ will do. Besides, a reusable cup might negate the bad eco-karma of his next Starbucks purchase....
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