Unconsumption

Over the past two decades governments around the world have...

murketing — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:00:15 -0400

Over the past two decades governments around the world have been experimenting with a new strategy for managing waste. By making producers responsible for their products when they become wastes, policy makers seek to significantly increase the recycling-and recyclability-of computers, packaging, automobiles, and household hazardous wastes such as batteries, used oil motor, and leftover paint-and save money in the process.

This strategy, known as extended producer responsibility (EPR), is the subject of a new special feature in Yale University’s Journal of Industrial Ecology. The special feature examines the use of EPR across diverse scales-from countries to provinces and states-and investigates work underway in the U.S., the European Union, Canada, China, Brazil and the State of Washington. The application of EPR to e-waste is a particular focus of the research in the special feature.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, owned by Yale University, published by Wiley-Blackwell and headquartered at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Articles in the special feature are freely downloadable for a limited time at: http://jie.yale.edu/EPR

(via Shifting the Burden of Recycling: Yale Journal Explores the State of Extended Producer Responsibility | Discard Studies)

A number of converted shipping containers are going to be...

dstitch — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

A number of converted shipping containers are going to be offered as temporary accommodation for homeless people in Brighton, UK. Planning permission has been secured by the Brighton Housing Trust for five years to help ease the city’s housing need.

BBC News reports that the thirty six studio homes, which will be linked by walkways, are going to be installed in a former scrap metal yard.

More: Shipping Containers Repurposed To House The Homeless | Design on GOOD

Our archive of container-related projects is here.

The JF-Kit House by the Spanish design firm Elii is an...

murketing — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:08 -0400

The JF-Kit House by the Spanish design firm Elii is an experiment in “domestic fitness,” rendering “the image of a possible future where citizens produce part of their domestic energy requirements with their own physical activities.” Each room features a fancifully named exercise station that would, theoretically, help create energy to power the home would run on, including an “arm workout bureau,” a “spinning kitchen,” and a “triceps greenhouse.” A video shows the home’s imagined inhabitant lifting weights, cycling, and doing calisthenics as part of his house’s everyday upkeep and daily chores like cooking.

More here.

The stone cutting industry in Mahallat, Iran is a big business - in fact, it accounts for almost...

dstitch — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:02 -0400

The stone cutting industry in Mahallat, Iran is a big business - in fact, it accounts for almost half the city’s economy. Unfortunately, the cutting process produces a lot of wasted stone that can’t be used. Tehran-based Architecture by Collective Terrain wanted to do make use of this “unusable” stone, so they built an apartment building out of the remains. Apartment No. 1 in downtown Mahallat is a contemporary stone building with eight 3-bedroom apartments set atop a street-level retail space.

Last week in my Design Observer guise I wrote about a project...

murketing — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:30:22 -0400

Last week in my Design Observer guise I wrote about a project that I think will interest Unconsumption readers: Jill Stoll’s “Random Acts of Mail Art” (artisinalpostcards.tumblr.com):

Based in New Orleans, she described herself as “a disenchanted artist,” who loves the process of making more than the process of, say, hustling for gallery contacts. (She has, however, shown work in a variety of media at a variety of venues.) The postcard collages are partly a way of finding creative uses for materials that had accumulated in her studio — photos, magazines, various paper types, and “abandoned art projects” of past students. “Artists are hoarders,” she explains.

…

Surely this is a useful creative challenge for Stoll. But her quiet project is also a lovely example of what I’ve previously referred to as “dancing about ruins:” transforming undervalued, easily overlooked materials at hand — and here I would include not just her leftover magazines and the like, but the lately-unloved postal system, too — into something striking, special, memorable.

If you want to receive one of Stoll’s repurposed-material cards, or have someone else receive one, go here.

The rest of my D.O. piece is here: Jill Stoll combines artistic ritual, creative reuse, and the postal service as connector.: Observatory: Design Observer

Many of us have all but ditched physical media like CDs and records. But that doesn’t mean your...

dstitch — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:00:13 -0400

Many of us have all but ditched physical media like CDs and records.
But that doesn’t mean your physical media can’t be repurposed, as this creative San Francisco resident, captured by writer and editor (and Wired Angry Nerd) Chris Baker on Instagram, shows.
In addition to potentially revealing the owner’s musical tastes, it looks like the CDs also double as reflectors for added visibility.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/physical-media-photo/?cid=co7759134

Guitar designer and builder Jimmy DiResta has turned an AK-47...

murketing — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:00:04 -0400

Guitar designer and builder Jimmy DiResta has turned an AK-47 assault rifle into a completely functional guitar for rapper Wyclef Jean.

(via AK-47 Assault Rifle Turned Into a Functional Golden Guitar)

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in the second part of our tour...

dstitch — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:18 -0400

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in the second part of our tour around Cape Town, Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo shows us the former industrial suburb of Woodstock, which the city’s design community has recently made its home, and explains the importance of upcycling in South African design.

“If you have 36 hours in Cape Town and time is at a premium, you have to head down to Woodstock,” says Naidoo. It is an area of Cape Town three kilometres from the city centre that has undergone an “extreme makeover” in recent years and is now home to an array of arts, craft, fashion and design studios and shops, as well as cafés and restaurants.

(via “South Africa has always had an upcycling culture” | Design Indaba)

Robert Kalinkin, a Lithuanian fashion designer, recently opened...

brianwjones — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:00:12 -0400

Robert Kalinkin, a Lithuanian fashion designer, recently opened a pop-up shop that uses 24km (15 miles) of old cinema film. The film is woven together to create a tapestry of texture over the walls, ceilings and other elements on display—occasionally offering a backlit glimpse of the films’ contents.

Robert Kalinkin Pop-Up

We’ve covered lots of repurposing and reuse projects...

dstitch — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:00:29 -0400

We’ve covered lots of repurposing and reuse projects involving speakers, but agree that “Hamburg’s Soundpauli company has [its] own quirky aesthetic.”

More here: More Repurposed Speakers: Soundpauli - Core77

How can furniture react to times of crisis? The decorational...

dstitch — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:45:29 -0400

How can furniture react to times of crisis? The decorational elements that were once appreciated, suddenly become superfluous and should evolve to reflect a new era ofausterity; the objects become edible and offer themselves to be consumed when needed.

In four conceptual objects, Lanzavecchia + Wai repropose basic nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, sugar and chocolate as food reserves which at the same time complement and finish the objects by covering elemental metal structures.

A fun and provocative bit of decidedly unconsumption-esque design fiction:

AUSTERITY - Edible furniture for times of crisis (by Lanzavecchia + Wai)

Students and staff at Newcastle University have created a...

murketing — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:03:40 -0400

Students and staff at Newcastle University have created a pop-up cafe built entirely out of upcycled waste, including plastic drink bottles and cardboard boxes. The team spent three months designing and constructing the cross disciplinary project, which was contributed to by engineers, architects and social scientists.

The U-Cafe was designed to challenge our perception of waste and explore new ways of creating sustainable buildings. It features chairs made from plastic bottles, walls constructed using cardboard boxes, and staff aprons made out of recycled plastic bags.

Via: Pop-Up Cafe Built Entirely Out Of Garbage [Video] - PSFK

The O2 rocking chair by Hrvoje Vulama is made from leftover...

dstitch — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:05:00 -0400

The O2 rocking chair by Hrvoje Vulama is made from leftover pieces of discarded wood from earlier works.

More: O2 Rocker by Hrvoje Vulama - Design Milk

Australian office Kennedy Nolan Architects used recycled...

dstitch — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:45:12 -0400

Australian office Kennedy Nolan Architects used recycled bricks, concrete and rough-sawn timber to construct this courtyard house near the beach in Melbourne.

(via Merricks Beach House by Kennedy Nolan Architects)

Turn a worn or outdated hardcover into an awesome portable art...

murketing — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:45:26 -0400

Turn a worn or outdated hardcover into an awesome portable art studio with this recycled book art kit tutorial that Shaunte shared on Crafts Unleashed.

More: MAKE | How-To: Recycled Book Art Kit

Oslo Copes With Shortage of Garbage It Turns Into Energy - NYTimes.com

murketing — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:24:12 -0400

Oslo Copes With Shortage of Garbage It Turns Into Energy - NYTimes.com:

Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn.

For the past year, New York City-based product designer Matthew...

dstitch — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:45:17 -0400

For the past year, New York City-based product designer Matthew Waldman has been saving all of his used coffee grounds (like most designers, he drinks a lot of coffee, so it was no small amount to keep out of the trash). Waldman wanted to find a creative use for the grounds, and ended up combining them with resin to make a new material that he has formed into a line of plant pots.

More: Upcycling or Downcycling? A Planter Made From Used Coffee Grounds | Waste on GOOD

TheStooler by Andreu Carulla Studio allows you to reuse just...

dstitch — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:06:11 -0400

TheStooler by Andreu Carulla Studio allows you to reuse just about any object and turn it into a stool.

Consisting of four wooden legs with some adjustable ratchet buckles, you can create a comfortable place to sit with old newspapers, clothes, stuffed animals, a tree stump, a crate, just about whatever you can imagine…

More: Make Your Own Stool with TheStooler by Andreu Carulla - Design Milk

Frankly I find this a little bit gross, but certainly...

murketing — Sat, 04 May 2013 11:46:44 -0400

Frankly I find this a little bit gross, but certainly fascinating!

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira creates captivating sculptures made from wood that mimic the texture and shape of human intestines. Some of the installations are so large, that visitors are able to walk inside the intestine sculpture and explore around.

Oliveira’s sculptures are constructed using various salvaged wood pieces. Each piece is meticulously put together around PVC forms to create curvaceous shapes that imitate the body organ.

(via Giant Intestine Installation Made Of Salvaged Wood [Pics] - PSFK)

[Lance] Hosey points to a brewery that was retrofitted into a...

murketing — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:12:15 -0400

[Lance] Hosey points to a brewery that was retrofitted into a commercial and community space … . “There is a resistance in the industry of thinking of historic preservation and sustainability as the same thing,” says Hosey. “The most sustainable thing you can do is not build, but we’re accustomed to thinking that energy efficiency lives in a technical manual.”

Pictured: Pearl Brewery/Full Goods Warehouse San Antonio, Texas

The Pearl Brewery opened in 1881 and capped its last bottle in 2001, but the 67,000 square foot, LEED Gold structure has been retrofitted to provide professional offices and meeting spaces for the residents of San Antonio. Open air breezeways passively cool the space while ceiling fans and a customized heating system allow each room to be cooled independently. A building that used to be famous for producing liquids is now known for reusing them. Rainwater captured from the roof combined with grey water from the building and is used to water the plants on site.

More: Vintage Breweries, Salvaged Wood: This Year’s ‘Greenest’ Buildings Are Surprisingly Hip | Wired Design | Wired.com)