Wood Sliced Walkway
This wonderful wood sliced walkway was photographed by Katy Elliott during a trip to the Portland Flower show earlier this year. Assuming you had some rot resistant wood, this would be a great use of old or found material.
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HONBACHI, Planter Kits by Tara MCGinley
Called Honbachi and created by Tara MCGinley from Japan, this planter kits contain the plant, soil, and a hollowed-out book. Looks like it would be fun and easy to DIY too!
Link Via [Boing Boing]
Air Forest, Pneumatic Pavilion by Mass Studies
Mass Studies designed the Air Forest as a temporary public pavilion installed in City Park, Denver, Colorado, USA, for Dialogue:City, an arts and cultural event during the Democratic National Convention 2008.
Lotus Electrive Concept by Diseno-art.com
Diseno-art.com designers have designed a sports car aimed towards the Lotus brand – The Lotus Electrive. The sports car is not designed as an everyday office vehicle, but has been tailored to meet the demands of all those who need a much powerful ride on their sunny weekend outings.
Michel Bussien’s Growing Chair
Swiss designer Michel Bussien’s Growing Chair evokes pertinent ideas for the 21st century: nature trapped within the confines of man, manicured at his whim, or a specimen preserved behind glass – like fossils in a museum.
“Floating Garden” by Benjamin Graindorge
The fish tank is a microcosm that reflects human concerns: within the finite space of its architecture the main issue that conditions the well-being of its inhabitants is waste management.
“Floating Garden” by Benjamin Graindorge and Duende Studio brings an innovative solution to the daily maintenance constraints of freshwater aquariums with a filtering system that is 100% natural: a cushion of sand + plants that adapts to each and every model. Its recycling principle based on hydroponics does away with the chore of regular water changes and proposes a new domestic- scale typology, between the decorative glass vase and the water purifying plant.
DIY Amphibious Bicycle Made from Recycled Water Gallons
Li Jin has designed this ingenious human-powered bicycle, with which she rides on the water in Wuhan of Hubei Province in China.
Creative Units, Aberystwyth, by Heatherwick Studio
The eight new Creative Units, designed and built by Heatherwick Studio have already established themselves as new landmarks for Aberystwyth and go to further enhance the Art Centre’s reputation as one of the leading venues for contemporary arts and culture in the UK.
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The Plastiki, Sailing Boat Made of 12,500 2-Liter Plastic Bottles
Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild is getting ready for a summertime sailing trip. The Plastiki Expedition is the brainchild of David de Rothschild, and the goal is audacious: to sail 12,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a boat made entirely out of plastic bottles and recycled waste products.
De Rothschild has built a team he calls the Smart Collective to combat inefficient design. He brought together a group of intelligent folks who had never built a boat before to design the Plastiki….
When finished, the Plastiki will be made of 12,500 2-liter plastic bottles collected by Waste Management, will weigh 9 tons, and will have a crew of six. The Plastiki will have a composting toilet, onboard renewable energy and a garden. “People are so shocked that we’re going to grow food on the boat,” de Rothschild mused.
Follow the Plastiki Expedition here
Harvest Green Project by Romses Architects
Winner of “The 2030 Challenge” organized by the City of Vancouver “to address climate change plans and to guide greener and denser development, reducing carbon emissions for the future,” the “Harvest Green Project’ by Romses Architects will grow vegetables, herbs, fruit, fish, egg laying chickens, and a boutique goat and sheep dairy facility through the vertical farming. Featuring a green design, the structure will harvest renewable energy with photovoltaic glazing and small and large-scale wind turbines to support the solar and wind-farm infrastructure.
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Green Pockets Tiles by Maruja Fuentes
Maruja Fuentes has designed green pockets using recycled materials. Spotted at the 2009 Milan Furniture Fair, the super-cool ceramic tiles attach to any wall to create the illusion that whatever’s inside—herbs, plants, a flower or two—is growing directly out of a room’s surface.
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Greening Up by Ji-Hye Koo
There’s this whole movement about bringing back nature into the concrete jungles we’ve built in the past 100 years but this is probably the most direct yet indirect way of doing it.
Those painted line dividers we see everywhere serve a huge purpose but in an attempt to humanize and naturalize them, designer Ji-Hye Koo covers them with Nature On A Tape – essentially a pre-potted strip of grass that’ll grow with no effort.
Via [Yanko Design]
“The Seed” by Johnny Kelly
This video by Johnny Kelly follows the life cycle of a seed, but that simple description doesn’t do justice to this animation.
The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.
Via [Neatorama]
“Trash to Treasure” Design Contest Won by 12-Year-Old Max Wallack
Max Wallack a 12-year-old young boy heard of WGBH’s Design Squad “Trash to Treasure” design contest, he was ready to give his best shot.
He submitted this amazing “Home Dome”—a homeless shelter made from plastic, wire, and packing peanuts—to a recent “Trash to Treasure” design contest. Based on a Mongolian yurt, it’s warm and includes a bed.
The project both helps divert materials from landfills and gives the homeless a place to sleep.
Link
Vertical Indoor Garden at Bardessono Hotel, California
The vertical indoor garden was designed for a space without irrigation or drainage at the platinum LEED certified Bardessono hotel in Yountville, California. It is a striking substitute for wasteful displays of cut flowers produced through a collaboration by Flora Grubb; a landscape designer, Kevin Smith and the architect Seth Boor.
“Our first instinct was to really pack the plants in,” Ms. Grubb said. “But then as we pulled them apart, they became so much more special, like abstracted sea creatures.”
Link Via [Land+Living] & [NYT]
Corner Forest by Yuken Teruya
Yuken Teruya creates enchanting dioramas within products made from paper such as a take-out bag or the cardboard tube inside a toilet paper role. Carving detailed, miniature trees in each, Teruya makes fragile, magical sculptures about nature, craft, and consumerism.
Yuken Teruya is adept at transforming objects using very modest, intimately-scaled gestures. In Notice Forest, the artist subtly draws our attention to the effects of consumerism and globalism — alluding to the depletion of fragile natural resources, the disappearance of cultural traditions and identities, and the distribution of wealth in the new world order. Working with discarded paper bags from takeout joints such as McDonald’s and Krispy Kreme, commercial gift bags and post office packages, Teruya creates delicately rendered shadowboxes in which the sculptural form cut out from the container is shaped by the container itself. Using photography as the starting point, Teruya photographs trees he encounters in his daily life and then painstakingly recreates the form of the individual trees as paper cutouts that are suspended inside the bags. Light filters down through the holes to illuminate the tiny tree within each bag’s miniature interior landscape in what the Teruya describes as his attempt to return a spent consumer product back to the forest.
Vine Cell Phone Charger
If you hate your cables, then get one of these. It’s a great way of hiding them in plain sight.Microworks takes the literal approach to greening up your chargers and wires. Instead of trying to ditch wires altogether, or come up with a way to hide them, Microworks decided to embrace the cord and make it pretty.
Sustainable Hobbit House
This cozy hobbit hole of a home was built in Wales from stone, mud and remnant wood from nearby forests, resulting in a cost of just $10 per square foot. Natural light streams in from a skylight at the top of the earthen, grass-covered dome. The use of materials from the construction site and the way the home was designed give it that truly unique, eco-friendly character that can only be found in earthen homes.
