While in Paris I was fortunate to come across two green walls in the city: the first is a massive three-story vertical jungle atop a loading dock for a department store in the Marais by Patrick Blanc (above), the second was a billboard for a green cleaning product near the Sorbonne (below). While I generally […]
Category Archives: environment
green walls 2
Also posted in architecture, energy, livingbreathing, marketing, possessed products, retail
Comments closed
black tin
Glory is at it again with this amazing report on how tin metal is largely mined and exported against the law. Since the 18th Century tin has been mined and exported from the Indonesian island of Bangka, named after the word “wangka” meaning “tin.” Mining expanded until the 1990s when it was banned by the […]
Also posted in conviviality, fabrication, materials, possessed products, supply chain, traceability
Comments closed
designers = form-givers
The IDSA provides a suite of readings on ecodesign, including this 2003 survey on the ecological performance of electronic products (pdf), in which a survey of product designers sought to reveal the mechanisms for indluencing sustainable design in consumer electronics. This bar chart struck my eye because it represents exactly what needs to change in […]
Also posted in energy, fabrication, marketing, materials, possessed products, product design, supply chain
Comments closed
farm map
We all know that eating local is not only more efficient, but also more delicious – unfortunately it can be hard to find the variety of foods we eat without resorting to a large supermarket. LocalHarvest is a web resource for finding local farms and farmers markets, including a map of all the farms and […]
Also posted in blogogracy, conviviality, energy, food
Comments closed
sustainable prayers
Deva Seetharam reminded me of an old project and we started talking about how prayer wheels could be appropriated for new purposes. Traditional prayer wheels are cylinders containing written mantras that are spun to recite the wishes within. They can be spun by hand, but some traditional prayer wheels are designed to be spun by […]
Also posted in energy, futurecraft, product design
Comments closed
design for durability
The OLPC has driven important innovations in open software, hardware, universal design and environmental sustainability in order to be cheap and durable enough for widespread use in developing countries. At this week’s unveiling of new designs for second-generation laptops, I spotted this interesting exhibit on the design touches that make the OLPC stand out in […]
Also posted in children, conviviality, customization, fabrication, free & open, futurecraft, open objects, product design, supply chain, universal design, upcycling
Comments closed
public objects
‘Products of Service‘ are an alternative to cradle-to-grave life cycles where consumers only temporarily rent goods from manufacturers so that their valuable components can be directly re-used. In lieu of such enlightened manufacturing practices, a social network has been introduced where anyone can rent out their own possessions to reduce waste: Zilok is a Zipcar […]
Also posted in conviviality, energy, futurecraft, marketing, open objects, product design, retail, supply chain, traceability
Comments closed
phone-maker
The brilliant Schulze & Webb have done it again with the Metal Phone, a completely recyclable cell phone enclosure developed for Nokia. The project is a complete cradle-to-cradle life cycle process: a cell phone encased in a lead alloy (ok, solder) can be disassembled and melted down to be re-cast into a new cell phone […]
Also posted in customization, energy, fabrication, futurecraft, materials, open objects, product design, supply chain, upcycling
Comments closed