Bread Toast Potrait

Recycled glass loudspeakers

Designed by Alex Killeavy, these loudspeakers are built for sustainability both for entertainment and for the environment as well. Using recycled glass the designer has created user friendly woofers and tweeter components which are replaceable. The design is sophisticated and created with sound material choices to last a lifetime. Its aesthetic design is pleasing for home decor as well.

Decafé Lamp

Taking advantage of the renewable and biodegradable attributes of coffee, Spanish designer Raúl Laurí created an innovative, experimental and very cute lamp. Dubbed the Decafé Lamp, it is made from a new composite material made from recycled coffee grounds. Shaped like a cup, this comforting, aromatic luminaire has a switchless design – to turn it on simply pick it up and place it on its base.

The Decafé Lamp recently took first place in this year’s Salone Satellite Awards during Milan Design Week 2012. The award was given in recognition for the design’s development, research and experimentation with sustainable materials. Laurí’s innovative recycled coffee material has great potential – we’d love to see it turned into an entire range of caffeine-based products!

Save our nature while taking shower

RUSHES AND REEDS COULD RECYCLE YOUR SHOWER WATER NATURALLY

   I have this idea of using the plants in the bathroom to represent my sustainable material. People wasted a lot of water while they were taking shower, water just flow back into the filthy drain.  So why not we just plant the plants inside the bathroom in order to save our water. I'm so glad that this kind of bathroom really does exist.  Designers, Jun Yasumoto, Vincent Vandenbrouk, Olivier Pigasse and Alban Le Henry came out this idea few years ago and they brought this idea into our bathroom. If you the kind of guy always forget to water your plants, now here you go! 

 Sustainable design is something new to our species; homo sapiens, but plants like reeds and rushes learned the basics of it millions (or even billions) of years ago.

Now designers  Jun Yasumoto, Vincent Vandenbrouk, Olivier Pigasse, and Alban Le Henry invite natures  experts into your shower to recycle your water sustainably.

After you have washed in this shower the water passes down into filters and is treated by the reeds and rushes growing around your feet. This cleans the shower water naturally. As Jun Yasumoto puts it:

“These plants have been proven to be able to remove the chemicals from your shampoo. Using a natural filtering principle called phyto-purification, the bathroom becomes a mini-eco-system by recycling and regenerating the waste water. With this project, we tried to combine the pleasure of taking a shower with the satisfaction of recycling water. We wanted the recycling process to actually interact with the use of shower.”

As you see in the diagram after the jump, you would stand on a platform and the reeds would only grow around the sides comprising the “walls” of the shower. You don’t have to share your standing room with the plants!

The waste water would pass into a chamber below the shower floor and go through a maze of filters. The system includes sand, reeds, rushes, a mesh filter, water hyacinths and lemnas, and finally a carbon filter.

They actually conceived of their idea seven years ago. It was only after posting the concept on the internet recently that they realized that the level of interest warranted another look at their concept. They have been inundated with  queries about where their shower can be bought.

“No prototype has been made as the project is just a concept for the moment, but it is interesting to see the positive feedback we are getting since we put these images online,”Yasumoto said “It has made us think we should keep on developing this idea and start thinking of ways to integrate it and bring it closer to reality.”

Perhaps it is time for a patent and commercialization of the idea. Kudos go to these graduates from the French national design school Ecole Nationale Supirieure de Creation Industrielle.

Transition Metal Switchable Mirror

The switchable-mirrors technology was developed by Tom Richardson and Jonathan Slack of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. By using transition metals rather than the rare earth metals used in the first metal-hydride switchable mirrors, Richardson and Slack were able to lower the cost and simplify the manufacturing process. Energy performance is improved as well, because the new windows can reflect or transmit both visible and infrared light. Besides windows for offices and homes, possible applications include automobile sunroofs, signs and displays, aircraft windows, and spacecraft.

Vacuum Floor Mat Cleans Your Shoes

Too lazy to wipe off your boots when coming inside? There’s a gadget for that. To be fair, most of us are fine with a few extra steps – at least when the alternative costs over five thousand dollars – but for those who just have to have it all, this may be the mat for you.

Viz Gizmodo: “The mat was developed by Paionia Furyokuki and its surface is perforated with valves that are only opened as they’re stepped on. So as someone walks across the mat, it activates what are essentially a series of little vacuums that suck the dirt and debris off the sole of the shoe, and then into an external unit where it can be later disposed of”

Now, to be fair, these are probably a great idea for high-traffic industrial spaces that are hard to keep clean, or for someone with a passion, say, for fixing and cleaning cars in their garage. And who knows: maybe with time the technology will become cheaper, and these will replace everyday mud mats in the modern home.

Vintage Leather Belts

(Belt) strapped for cash? Forget affordable for a minute and just imagine the curious combination of feeling aged leather beneath your feet and the look of vintage belts lining the floors of your home. Leather flooring is fairly unusual, but these upcycled belt designs are unique – each one hand-crafted and with individually-selected old belts.

BranchHome gives you Vintage Belt Floor Mat which are handsome, handmade floor mat is made of artfully assembled vintage leather belts that have been rescued on their way from waist to waste. Its rich tones, textures, and tread-friendly patina evoke the look of a wonderfully worn wood floor, albeit with a decidedly warmer under-foot feel. And the price? Over 600 US dollars for the round mat shown below:

Other ideas - Benches and chairs:

Further reading: Old Belts? Create Some Interesting Pieces of Furniture!

[Real] Book Counter

This counter may seem rather ordinary if we don't take a closer look at it. We are at the TU Delft Library in Netherlands, designed by the Dutch firm Mecanoo. Beside the impressive book shelves they used to build authentic "book walls", or the transparent devices to arrange the magazines, or even the grass they used to build the walk-able rooftop  they also used them to physically build the counter; quite an example of low tech design...

Check the video for a route inside the building:

Cookie Cup

As I was sipping tea this morning, I found this on the internet: Cookie cups - using cookie as a material for tableware. Sip the coffee then eat the cup! Saves a lot of washing up! Love the idea.

This cookie cup was the creation of a Venezuelan designer named Enrique Luis Sardi which was made for Lavazza, the famous Italian coffee company. It’s so ingenius – he made it using a cookie for the outside and a special patented sugar icing on the inside. Dual purpose – it creates an insulator for the cookie and add sweetness to the coffee! 

What's more, they sell a version that is lined with chocolate, ain't that hot? This is the kinda coffee that should be served in a proper material library. :) Here's a photograph of the designer himself, even he's hot:

Liquid Wood

 It looks like wood, feels like wood, is even made of wood – but it shifts shape and solidifies like plastic, bringing together the most powerful material assets of two of the most used materials on the planet.

Lingin (an often-discarded element of regular wood) is combined with natural resins, flax and fibers that can be injected into molds and form extremely complex, precision-shaped objects normally made of conventional, non-biodegradable petroleum-based plastics. The result has been dubbed Arboform by its German inventors, and may well revolutionize the worlds of material science and mass production.

Just like wood, it breaks down quickly and organically into eco-safe by-products like water and carbon dioxide. It is also made from a leftover part of trees that is unused during the paper-making process – over 100 million pounds of its main ingredient are created as a simple side-effect of the existing pulp industry.

What can be made of Arboform? Almost anything you can imagine from simple toys to complex gadgets, disposable cups to long-lasting automobile parts, custom-cast furniture to heavy-duty helmets – think of anything made of plastic or wood, and you will start to get the picture. In short: we are talking about the precision, flexibility and durability of plastic … with the 100% recyclable, renewable, tactile and aesthetic advantages of wood, in a single new material. Eat your heart out, see-through concrete and transparent aluminum!

Curtains that quench noise

Noise is annoying. It interrupts communication, reduces productivity and tires people out – in  some cases, noise can cause long term psychiatric disorder. It is however unavoidable in Hong Kong, a city of hustle and bustle.

Researchers at Empa, in cooperation with textile designer Annette Douglas and silk weavers Weisbrod-Zürrer AG, have developed lightweight, translucent curtain materials, which are excellent at absorbing sound. 

The first acoustically optimised lightweight textile came into being on a computer. The Empa acousticians wanted to use the characteristics of this virtual textile in order to prepare a kind of «recipe» for material experts, which would enable them to specifically manufacture a fabric that could absorb sound. In addition, they first developed a mathematical model to illustrate both the microscopic structure of the fabric as well as its macroscopic composition. On the basis of numerous acoustic measurements made on various samples, specifically woven by Weisbrod-Zürrer, they were able to gradually optimise the acoustic properties of the fabric. Annette Douglas then succeeded in translating the new findings into weaving techniques. She chose yarns that gave the materials the necessary characteristics in terms of flammability and translucence and determined the weave structure, i.e. how the threads should be woven in and out of each other. Weisbrod-Zürrer then adjusted the sophisticated manufacturing process so that the industrially-made curtains actually displayed the required acoustic characteristics.

The above graph is the sound absorption measurements in Empa’s reverberation room. With a gap of 15 cm between curtain and wall, the new developed curtain – depending on the frequency – absorbs up to five times more sound than typical lightweight curtains.

Because the new curtains are translucent, they can be used in a variety of places such as offices, living rooms, restaurants, hotel lobbies, seminar rooms and even multi-purpose auditoriums.  They are often the deciding factor in satisfying the acoustic requirements and regulations that apply to these rooms. These curtains may be a solution to the noise in Hong Kong - what do you think? 


Further reading: 
Product sheets for the curtains 

Geckskin

We all know gecko's fingers stick to our walls. Since about 2000, scientists have cracked the secret of how geckos are able to perform extraordinary climbing antics. The researchers confirmed that tiny intermolecular forces - so called van der Waals forces - were produced by literally billions of tiny hair-like structures, or spatulae, on each gecko toe.

These forces, which arise when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract one another, allow the animal to scurry up walls and even hang upside down on polished glass.
Now, the researchers have managed to create an artificial version of the spatulae. A team from the University of Massachusetts to invent Geckskin, an extremely powerful reusable adhesive that leaves behind no sticky residue. The device is 16 inches square and can support up to 700 pounds on a smooth surface such as glass or a wall.

In the following video, the team would explain how it works and its amazing adhesive abilities. 

Well, thank you little gecko for inspiring the new technology! 

NewspaperWood

Trees to wood to paper - paper to wood to useful objects! 

What can be more clever than recycling by reversing the line of production? Well, maybe not turning the paper into a tree, but at least to something useful! Yes, we all know it is bad to cut down trees, we know we can read the newspaper online nowadays, but personally I still prefer reading a good old newspaper in paper format. Designer Meike Meijer and DesignLabel ViJ5 take newspapers back to their origins by turning them into a wood-like building material called NewspaperWood. Furniture, decorative objects and even jewelry look spectacular when made with the artificial wood. Here is a short interview with the team on their inspiration. 

Turning clothes into furniture

Tobias Juretzek combines old clothes with resins to give a second life to those things we have in our drawers and that we won't use anymore. We can buy his furniture through Casamania.

Also from one of the most popular pants worldwide, the jeans, we obtain this Scrap Lab denim chair. The Scrap Lab is part of the Innovation and Technology Department of Kasetsart University in Thailand