Enviornmental Design

    By the 80’s environmentalists made a hug awareness and warned everyone about the effects of industrialization on global warning. We needed to care more of our landfills and started being more aware of what we buy and what we throw away. We started reusing and recycling things, and overall we started learning how we can change materials into new products. Environmental design is concerned with minimizing waste and reducing consumption of energy and materials. Sustainable design describes a design philosophy that values the natural environmental as an integral factor in creating new products or modifying old ones. Sustainable designs try to maximize overall efficiency with surrounding resources, such as transportation as well as energy efficient.Below are some Contempory designs that are made from recycled objects.

    Malissa (her full name couldn’t be found) owns The Tiny Tack House, which is a group of small houses surrounded with big areas of fields in Washington. People come here for a short period of time for a holiday. Both exterior and interior of this area include designs and construction, all inspired from nature and environmental design. Below is a picture of an outside dining table with seating that are around this area. This design is made from pieces of pallets, and two huge brick under each seating as a base. This design is very simple to make also it is actually a very decorative and a very original idea. The neutral colours of both material blend in with the surroundings and it makes you feel that you are part of nature. I think young people would really enjoy this and should get inspired to do something similar for their gardens, instead of going and spend a hundred euro on one outdoor chair. It would be a great place for a group of people to chill and enjoy their time together.

    Loopworks is a company that is no stranger to using recycled materials. They produce items from wetsuie fabric, cotton, jersey, Italian wool, hemp, nylon, vinyl and recycled polyester. These iPad cases were their first design with using leather. The cases are made from scraps of excess shoe leather eliminated because it had natural blemishes. This discarded material can amount to 4500 pounds per day from just one factory! In my opinion this design is very classy and eco-chic. It looks very retro and vintage, and one who does like simple and plain things would love to own one of these. It also looks very good tailored. Just like the above outside dining unit this is an easy way to recycle things. You can easily find both pallets, and scraps of fabric easily around. 

    Loopworks isn’t the only company in the world that uses recycling materials, in fact there are a lot more. Grove and Maple xo collaborated to make these iPhone backs out of the discarded post-industrial skateboard material. The backs are each milled and finished by hand, so no two are alike. Each week, skateboard factories create enough waste to fill a city bus and this is such an original way to recycle them. I have never seen a phone case with stripes and I think it is very colourful and unique. Apart from protecting your case they are a decoration to your phone and the best part is that no one will ever have the exact same phone case as you!

     You wouldn’t believe sometimes how much stuff you can do with the materials we throw away every day. It is very important to throw the materials in the recycling bins so that someday we can use them again in a different form.

Bibliography:

Chris and Malissa November 6, 2012 http://chrisandmalissa.com/

Erin McCarthy April 22, 2013 http://mentalfloss.com/article/50227/13-products-made-using-recycled-materials

Grove 2012 http://www.grovemade.com/product/iphone-5-skateback/#vibrant-iphone-5-skateback

All searched on the 13th January 2014