Tag: Sustainable

Rice Straw Stool by Gina Hsu and Nagaaki Shaw

Rice Straw Designs by Gina Hsu, Nagaaki Shaw and Jenju Villagers

The Jenju Village Community in Taiwan, also known as ‘Jane’s Pearl’, is the ancestral site of the Pingpu Kamalan Tribe. The Dongshan river runs directly through the community, making it ideal for residents to preserve the area’s rice paddy-based industry, which accounts for up to 136 hectares of the area in and around the village. Following each rice harvest, a huge amount of rice straw is left behind. historically for farmers, this was an essential building and material supply. However, with our changing times, this excess supply is no longer needed for building and is not being utilized.

Taiwan is currently facing many agricultural changes, as certain types of materials and products are being removed from their areas. Jenju Village communities are promoting the symbiotic concept of peaceful coexistence with nature, encouraging us to return what we have expelled, so that nature can begin to produce and provide us with essentials once again. For the preservation of the village’s rural culture and ideas concerning the environment, Taiwanese designers Gina Hsu(Hsu Ching Ting 徐景亭) and Nagaaki Shaw(Hsiao Yung Ming 蕭永明) have developed ‘Rice Straw Design’ – a series of objects – in which the straw received from the fields is used by the community to promote the material itself, becoming a point of departure for use in arts and crafts. As part of the development and usage of this rice straw, a museum, as well as a DIY shop has been established so that visitors can experience the art and craft of working with the natural material.

Rice Straw Stool by Gina Hsu and Nagaaki Shaw

Rice or grain products have advantages and disadvantages concerning its usages as a design material. One of the advantages of rice straw, rice bran or rice itself is that it is rich in texture. however, the major disadvantage of these materials is that they do not possess enough long-term durability. Gina Hsu and Nagaaki Shaw have combined epoxy resin with the straw and rice to improve their resilience and durability so that the materials may serve a broader purpose and be transformed into items used in the home on a daily basis.

The projects will be on show at the Lanyang Museum, Taiwan until september 26th, 2010.

Via Designboom

Sustainable driftwood Chair


You can find this sustainable driftwood Chair at Drivved.no (found it via Wallpaper*s FB)

Emeco Goes Green : The 111 Coca Cola Pet Bottles Navy Chair

This photo from a post at Design Paris



The bottom of the seat reads:

When you recycle a plastic bottle, you’re doing something good. When you recycle 111 of them, you’re doing something great!

Firsts Emeco went nude, then they went light, then wood and now they are going red…err green:

Do Drink 111 Coca Cola Pet Bottles empty and bring them to Emeco who will use them for 60% of their reincarnated 111 Navy Chair. On Show in Milan Next week

Emeco:

After four years of work, we have created a new Navy Chair made of 111 recycled plastic PET bottles (about 65% post consumer content). We designed The 111 Navy Chair ® to have the attributes of the original aluminum version – super strong, durable and comfortable, but now its also warm, colorful and about half the price of the aluminum one (195₤). We expect to use about 3,000,000 plastic beverage bottles each year in production, which will start in June 2010.

Via David Report, a post that happened to disappear, but still remained readable in a Feed Reader.

Back to the Drawing Board Chaise by Jason and Lars Dressler

Back to the Drawing Board Chaise by Jonas and Lard Dressler 01

Tiny e-mail, huge inspiration! Thank you David Dick for pointing me to the twin Brothers Dressler site! I totally agree: their work swipes you off your feet!

Your e-mail made me decide to start with a separate page here with links to Blogs and sites of chair designers as more and more designers have their own blog which is a good thing! Stay tuned!

Back to the Drawing Board Chaise by Jonas and Lard Dressler Detail 3

Back to the chair that David looooves:

I first saw this beautiful chair at Come Up To My Room Toronto 2008, and fell in love with it so completely it was hard for me to tear myself away. The hinges are reclaimed from a disused drafting table, hence the name. There are other chairs on this site, but this one is the standout in my mind.

Back to the Drawing Board Chaise by Jonas and Lard Dressler Detail 1

As an aside: I have here in my office an old drawing board from my father that I now use as a table.

Octopus Chair by Atelier Blink

Octopus Chair made by a couple of reclaimed jeans
Via AtelierBlink.com > Product Design