Time for new business models based on durable design?
We’ve all done it: as soon as something we own looks slightly tatty or unfashionable, it goes in the bin or the recycling. New is desirable and out of date is disposable in a ‘throw away’ society, a world in which most business models are geared towards selling as much product as often as possible.
But what if a product developed or improved over time? Would we throw it away so readily? Imagine a teacup, for example, which develops a particular pattern in the glaze as it gets older or trainers that fade to reveal a previously invisible pattern as they age.
These are not just concepts. Both of these products were created by students at the University of Brighton to explore the concept of “emotionally durable” design – design that creates a deeper bond between people and products and extends their “use-career”.
More: Time for new business models based on durable design? | Guardian Sustainable Business
![While traveling in India, Adital Ela came across a chai vendor who sold his tea in small, clay cups that patrons could use and then simply toss on the ground when they were done. These cups didn’t create any waste, because it was earth returning to earth. This sparked a question for Ela: “How can products, like people, come from dust, and return to dust?”
[This set her on] a mission to make products out of compressed earth and agricultural waste. A self-proclaimed designer-gatherer, her title is as organic in nature as her found materials.
Ela’s first product for her line, Terra by Adital Ela, was a stool made from dirt heaps that construction sites had dumped in the forest. …
Making a Terra stool creates no pollution. It requires no energy and uses only local and organic materials. If a stool is no longer useful, the owner can simply leave it in the garden and let it deteriorate back into the earth. Or they can add water and mold it into another functional object.
(via Dust to dust: TED Fellow Adital Ela makes products from compressed dirt)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/83a5e8797bca805e02d71b82e02f2781/tumblr_mhp7n53t8n1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
While traveling in India, Adital Ela came across a chai vendor who sold his tea in small, clay cups that patrons could use and then simply toss on the ground when they were done. These cups didn’t create any waste, because it was earth returning to earth. This sparked a question for Ela: “How can products, like people, come from dust, and return to dust?”
[This set her on] a mission to make products out of compressed earth and agricultural waste. A self-proclaimed designer-gatherer, her title is as organic in nature as her found materials.
Ela’s first product for her line, Terra by Adital Ela, was a stool made from dirt heaps that construction sites had dumped in the forest. …
Making a Terra stool creates no pollution. It requires no energy and uses only local and organic materials. If a stool is no longer useful, the owner can simply leave it in the garden and let it deteriorate back into the earth. Or they can add water and mold it into another functional object.
(via Dust to dust: TED Fellow Adital Ela makes products from compressed dirt)
Save wine bottles, make your own tables.
Simply insert bottles in to openings in pieces of wood. In addition to use as table tops, the pieces of wood (in this case, they’re scrap wood sealed with a wax finish) can function as serving trays.
Brazilian designer Tati Guimarães designed this collection. We featured her metal frame that holds corks — for use as trivets, or to hang on a wall — on Unconsumption here (way back in June 2009!). Check out her site, Ciclus, for additional information.
See also: Earlier Unconsumption post on shelving made from wine bottles and pieces of wood.
For other items in Unconsumption’s wine o’clock series — an occasional series of posts highlighting examples of wine-related repurposing — browse here.
When wine o’clock rolls around, find yourself nestled in a Sleeping Barrel in the Rhine Valley.
Translated from the German website (courtesy of Google Translate):
Our farm is located about 350 meters above the flowers and wine village Sasbachwalden, right at the foot of the Hornisgrinde, Hotopp beautiful Black Forest.
Our sleep barrels on Quince space right in front of our farm with stunning views over the Rhine valley to the Vosges. Here you can enjoy the best views of all our courses.
All drums are equipped with 2 m double beds, but which can be separated on request. Parking is located directly on the farm. Our sleep barrels you can reach from there only on foot.
Trashcam!
Back in April last year, a group of binmen in Hamburg decided to make their days hauling wheelie bins about a bit more interesting — by turning said dumpsters into giant pinhole cameras.
The refuse collectors worked with photographer Matthias Hewing to develop (sorry) the Trashcam project, and have now created a beautiful series of photographs from around the north German city.
(via Top 5 Weirdest Pinhole Cameras | Don’t Panic Magazine | Arts)
good:
Ask Brands to Try a Design Solution to Cut Packaging Waste
- Aaron Mickelson posted in Design, Product Design and Sustainable DesignEvery year, Americans throw out 70 million tons of packaging. We can do better. Email or tweet at your favorite brand and ask them to consider one of these solutions to make packaging disappear.
Packaging that disappears… an idea we’ve seen cropping up a bit lately, see: here, here, here.
You could be forgiven for assuming this jewelry display rack was purpose-built.
But look a little closer: It’s obviously an antique, and if you look at the channels cut into it, you can see that they antedate the invention of the router. Someone went to a lot of trouble to chisel those out, by hand, with a consistency that practically screams “manufacturing.”
But what could this thing possibly have been used to make?
The answer can be found here: If You Can Guess What This Repurposed Wood Item was Used to Manufacture, You’ll Win a…. - Core77
American artist Bart Vargas’s ”Bottleballs,” salvaged plastic bottles glued onto cardboard globes.
Did you know?
In 2010, the United States generated almost 14 million tons of plastics as containers and packaging, almost 11 million tons as durable goods, such as appliances, and almost 7 million tons as nondurable goods, for example plates and cups.
Only 8 percent of the total plastic waste generated in 2010 was recovered for recycling.
[Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. More info in this EPA fact sheet here.]
A masterful blend of utilitarian aesthetics, spartan but strong structures, and bare minimalism pervades designer Stephen Kenn’s Inheritance furniture collection. Couches, chase lounges, chairs and ottomans: everything is made from WWII military fabric, steel welded frames with a marbled brown finish, webbing belts and backing leather straps. Simple, dignified and gorgeous.
(via WWII upcycled furniture by Stephen Kenn — Lost At E Minor: For creative people)
