Category — Green Design

In his first solo exhibition since 1993, established artist and fashion designer Kosuke Tsumura exhibited a series of fabrics hand-knitted from industrial waste of the information technology industry; namely LAN cables and plugs. Tsumura is known for his environmental works, which often incorporate the recycling and reusing of materials. In 2005 his “Final Home 44-pocket parka” (1994) was featured in MoMa’s exhibition, “Safe: Design Takes on Risk.”

The works from MODE less CODE, which were shown at Nanzuka Underground in February of 2010, have been repackaged into multimedia collages and are currently available at Azito ($570). My favorite piece, “Codelace record 2,” is pictured.

And as an added bonus, Tsumura’s Tokyo apartment was recently featured in the Selby. Although, in my opinion, overall the shots were a bit lackluster.

If you will engage in a walk down memory lane, in early April I posted pictures of an experimental new material called Paperwood. The ecologically-sensitive plywood was developed, in part, by Drill Design, and was to become commercially available in 2010. Well, the design unit has recently uploaded pictures of what furniture made from the material might look like.

The stools are on track to go on sale in the Fall of 2010.

click images to enlarge |  tree page marker by megumi takagi

Happy Earth Day! …what? You say that was yesterday? But every day is earth day, right? Ok, I’m just trying to make up an excuse for not posting this yesterday, which was my original intent. I wanted to share some work from the recent Konica Minolta Art and Eco Awards. I briefly covered this last year, but decided to pay more attention to it this year. And I apologize for the lack of consistency in images but they were scarce and I had to dig them up from multiple sources.

The first place prize went to Remo-Kuma, a polar bear that controls the use of electricity in a household. Created by Shozo Kuze and Mariko Sakamoto, the polar bear responds to head petting, back rubs and butt pats. Check out the cute video below!

Although they lost out, I was fascinated by some of the other entries such as this Knot chair by Miyashita Tomoya. It can be configured to accommodate almost any kind of position.

Image courtesy of legiter

One of the most gorgeous entries, in my opinion – hence the numerous images – were these Tree Page-markers by Megumi Takahashi, an editorial designer. They function almost identically with those grass pagemarkers except these, as curiosity mounts in a certain book, a forest grows, rather than a yard of grass.

Images courtesy of tsui design

The markers depict several varieties of trees and each blade of paper is made from its respective tree. Lovely.

One other piece that caught my eye was Icicle by Fujita Manabu and Takuma Yamamoto, of design unit PLUS. It was made from thow-away straws that are plentiful in any fast-food joint.

Image courtesy of mycom journal

Continuing on with my series of green posts this week, I give you: more illustrations. The faux-French Japanese select shop Adam et Rope, managed by high-end clothing line operator JUN Group, recently remodeled their Shirogane location. Shirogane is a ritzy, residential neighborhood in Tokyo with an abundance of greenery as the land once belonged to the royal family. It is also home to several select shops and restaurants that cater to wealthy women who like to drop $400 on a t-shirt.

Last Friday the company unveiled an extravagant facelift for their 20-year old Shirogane store. The remolding, dubbed “biotop” – an area where sustained environmental conditions allows all living things to coexist – is equipped with everything from a tree house to an organic café.

The lineup of names is also impressive. The tree house was built by clothing buyer turned professional tree house builder Takashi Kobayashi. The café is the work of famed restaurateur Uichi Yamamoto who, along with Ichiro Katami, helped engineer Japan’s café boom. The creative director is Takashi Kumagai, whose name, as a photographer, has been plastered all over Japan’s top selling magazines. They have even retained a “green coordinator,” Hiroshi Kobayashi, who has done flower arrangements for all sorts of advertisements, magazines and even CD covers.

in-progress shots of the tree house being installed

Admittedly, other than Uichi Yamamoto – who I covered – each of these individuals are so active in their respective space that they deserve their own post. Maybe…. I can find time…

How cool is this table made from interlocking wood panels leftover from the manufacturing process? TSUNAGU is the latest in a series of furniture from the MATE-RE-INNO line, short for Material Re-Innovation. It was launched by Label Creators, a company that believes in traditional Japanese craftsmanship and materials. They acknowledge that waste is generated throughout the design process and many of their lines attempt to recycle those remnants of design. I would love to see this table put to use with magazines, photos and other random objects laid on the shelving that is created as a result of all the panels.

Earlier this week the 100-day mark was breached, counting down to the start of the 2010 Shanghai EXPO. Japan unveiled their pavilion awkwardly titled “Eco-Breathing Architecture.” I twittered about my dislike of the structure and received a bunch of feedback confirming that I was not alone in my thoughts. So I thought I would post the pictures here to see what others thought. In short, I think it looks like a blob of protoplasm, greedily consuming everything in its path. Not a very sustainable vision. More pictures over at Nikkei Kenplatz.(login required)

Images © JETRO

It was designed by Yutaka Hikosaka, of Space Incubator, an architectural and environmental design firm. He was responsible for the Nagakute Japan Pavilion (Aichi EXPO 2005) and the Dairinkai Water Fantasium (Osaka EXPO 1990).

This weekend New York was hit with a bout of cold weather. All the stations were hyping it as the coldest temperatures of the winter so far. We figured, if not now, when do we succumb to the corrupt border-town sheriff, also known as central heating? So we reluctantly flipped on the switch and, as we heard the motor begin to hum, immediately sensed the iron hand descend, securing us from the outside frost for the price of every last penny of moisture.

We have yet to find a humidifier that we like because every crappy one becomes a cesspool of bacteria within days. And all the other ones are either too bulky, too ugly or too expensive. Until today. Meet Mast, an exquisite creation of pure Hinoki (Japanese Cypress), recently designed by Shin Okada and crafted by Masuya Koubou. Known for its high-quality timber, rot-resistant qualities and lemony scent, the thinly sliced Hinoki mast absorbs water from the hull and diffuses it, and its intrinsic aroma, into the room. And it goes without saying, but no electricity needed.  I am willing to bet money that it will look more elegant than the damp washcloth draped over my ceiling fan.

You can purchase it here.

Japanese architects Atelier Tekuto have updated their website with images of The Japanese Pavilion, a project to disassemble a vacant traditional home in rural Japan and transport it to Gondar, Ethiopia where it is reassembled into a working home. The joint project between several parties, which included the City of Gondal and the Society for Research on Traditional Japanese Homes was announced in August 1, 2008 and came to a close exactly 1 year later.

Before the relocation

After the relocation

According to the Society for Research on Traditional Japanese Homes – a non-profit organization who advocates the reusing of abandoned traditional Japanese homes – there are 30,000 “high-quality” homes in Shimane Prefecture alone that have been vacant for over 5 years. They also continue to argue that, on average, these homes, if destroyed, would create 30 tons of rubble. If you were to incinerate them it would release 15 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.  And according to Atelier Tekuto’s estimates, the entire process – from disassembling, shipping and reassembling – could save the environment in excess of 8.4 tons of C02.

Due to some of the infrastructure constraints in Gondar, Atelier Tekuto installed a water purification system that would convert rainwater to drinking water, as well as solar roof panels that would provide the necessary energy to power the pumps and lighting.
The space is currently being utilized for vocational training.

Exciting news! The kind folks over at Branch just emailed me to inform me that that it’s official. They have signed an agreement to be the exclusive U.S. distributor of WASARA line of biodegradable tableware. They are taking pre-orders now and expect to start shipping in mid-December.

This is especially exciting for me because I helped facilitate the introduction and initial communications between Wasara and Branch!

Related:

• the very first Wasara post
• designer of the Wasara plates here and here

Last night Suntory’s subsidiary Midorie announced the winner of their first-ever Midorie Design Contest. Midorie launched its services in 2008 and offers rooftop and wall surface greening that utilizes Puffcal, “an originally developed sponge-like soil substitute” that is lighter and more versatile than soil. The guidelines of the contest were to use Puffcal in an innovative fashion to create green-design.

The winners were the members of the design studio kenma, who proposed OSUSOWAKE (which means sharing, in Japanese) a planting system that could be grown and then divided  in order to distribute to friends and family. Recipients can then combine them with any existing Puffcal plants that they may have, creating a unique plant that becomes symbolic of the ties and connections you have with others. The proposal completely rethinks the notion of plants and goes beyond the possibilities that conventional potting soil offered which, in the end, won them the award.

Here is the official press release (Japanese PDF) where you can see some of the runner ups, which include planters that can be stored in bookshelves and planters that act as umbrella stands, feeding off the dripping rainwater.

Related:

• Suntory Midorie