MAKING GREEN FROM GREEN Shaping the 21st Century

Earlier this month, the Green Team attended a sustainable design talk event organized by the Sustainable Business Committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (CBSACNY). The panel discussion focused on how design innovation and its seemingly diametric relationship to business practices can come together to strengthen one another into the 21st century. Speakers included Eric Milot from branding agency, Wolff Olins, Ken Drucker from HOK, and Andrew Dent from Material ConneXion.

The discussion touched on many interconnected aspects of sustainable design for today's designers: using nature as a source for finding solutions to today's design challenges; understanding the idea that waste does not exist in natural ecosystems where closed-loop cycles mean the waste of one species is the source of food for another species; the importance of establishing core values that can be demonstrated through business practices; the necessity of quantifying the carbon footprint of a designed product from project conception to end. Andrew Dent spoke about having spent 15 months developing an ecofriendly shoebox design for PUMA made out of recycled material, only to discover later through detailed quantification that the manufacturing process by using the recycled material required higher energy consumption — Ultimately, the design went back to square one

Advances in design during the 20th century were driven by the feats of engineering with products created primarily to serve one purpose. Today, as the world becomes more populated, the consumption of energy, processes, and products will rise to unprecedented levels. It is estimated that about 80% of newly launched products fail in the marketplace today. The challenges in design will require careful management of natural resources so that we can products can be created to perform multiple uses while achieving eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness.

All in all, the event proved to be an eye-opening and thought-provoking session, leaving us feeling intrigued and inspired.

Society for Environmental GREEN Design

From the better-late-than-never department (meaning that I meant to post this last week), SEGD has some news on the sustainability front. First, they're compiling a Green Resource Guide, which they describe as "a forum for sustainable innovation in environmental graphic design." Sounds rather relevant, no? Second, they released their Sustainability Issue of segdDESIGN.

Thanks Anna!


-Kaitlen

A Different Kind of Treehouse

This is amazing. Architect/forester Roald Gundersen builds houses using entire trees, not pieces of lumber. The resulting structures are gorgeous, and the process is so much gentler on the environment than traditional logging (or building with steel supports). Here are some of the highlights:


"According to research by the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, run by the USDA, a whole, unmilled tree can support 50 percent more weight than the largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. So Mr. Gundersen uses small-diameter trees as rafters and framing in his airy structures, and big trees felled by wind, disease or insects as powerful columns and curving beams.

Taking small trees from a crowded stand in the forest is much like thinning carrots in a row: the remaining plants get more light, air and nutrients. Carrots grow longer and straighter; trees get bigger and healthier.

And when the trees are left whole, they sequester carbon. “For every ton of wood, a ton and a half of carbon dioxide is locked up,” he said, whereas producing a ton of steel releases two to five tons of carbon. So the more whole wood is used in place of steel, the less carbon is pumped into the air.

These passive solar structures also need very little or no supplemental heat."

Now go check out the slide show. (Nice work noticing this one, Anna!)

-Kaitlen

Grey is Great

Now this is a stylish, sensible, space-saving solution. This toilet/sink combo by Roca reuses the greywater from the sink in the toilet, but without all sorts of clunky pipes connecting two separate fixtures.

Incidentally, if you're interested in reusing greywater but can't shell out for a brand-spanking-new toilet/sink combo, there are ways to retrofit your current setup.

Via Cribcandy.

-Kaitlen

The Blue Fence Project

A new definition for recycling and innovation has been established through The Blue Fence Project by Studio Superniche. Such playful ingenuity is a breath of fresh air. Thanks Nick for this link!

Print Resource - Renourish

Renourish is dedicated to helping the graphic design community grow into a more sustainable industry. The site includes case studies, a project calculator to help effectively size your print jobs to minimize waste, a paper finder, a list of green printers, and much, much more. Check out renourish

100 Things Designers Can Do to Save The Earth

The School of Visual Concepts (Seattle, Washington) in cooperation with AIGA Seattle has created "100 Things Designers Can Do to Save The Earth".The article is FULL of great ideas and resources. Enjoy!

(Re)cognition

And here's another relevant design contest. The 2009 AIGA (Re)designAwards are around the corner—the call for entries is open until July 31. Time to submit projects that feature a sustainable design or social responsibility component.

-Kaitlen

Design It Greener, Design It Better!

This might just turn out to be a great resource: Designitgreener. The site boasts green design tips for architects and designers, a green design gallery, a discussion forum, a news section, a green glossary, etc. Sounds pretty useful.

Thanks for pointing it out, Anna!

-Kaitlen

Droolworthy Indeed

Check out TreeHugger's slideshow of 10 Droolworthy Eco Structures. Most are just concepts, but they're quite interesting. They range from totally gorgeous to a little, well, fugly. And #6, the Helix Hotel, makes me hungry for a tall stack of pancakes.

-Kaitlen

Make It Green

Yahoo and the Everyday Edisons TV show are sponsoring Make It Green, a contest where the goal is to submit an idea for an eco-friendly product that both improves consumers' lives and helps the planet. If your product is chosen for production, you win $2,500 and a percentage of the sales. Not too shabby. (Well, I guess that depends on just what percentage of the sales you get....)

-Kaitlen