Sustaina-bling

Here are some better shots of the graduated trash bin, part of a ploy to get consumers to waste less or at least be more conscious of how much goes to waste. It puts your waste on display. POWER=WASTE. This is a luxury item, a big piece of glass. It takes a lot of money to show you care. It's expensive. It's bling. But it promotes sustainability. It's sustaina-bling.

Conspicuous Conservation: The Rise of the Sustainable Class

This Friday, December 7, 2007, I am presenting my master's thesis entitled Conspicuous Conservation: The Rise of the Sustainable Class to the industrial design department at Pratt. It's been three long semesters on this puppy. I'll soon have a link to a pdf of the document for any one who wants extra punishment over the holiday break. So keep an eye out for that one. In the meantime, here's the blurb I send out when someone asks what this thing is about:

This thesis explores how product design is used as a currency for demonstrating social power (conspicuous consumption). It looks at ways of reducing the amount of waste created as a consequence of this phenomenon; and it looks at rising environmental consciousness in consumer trends. It proposes "transparency" of the entire production chain as a model for sustainable design and manufacturing. It further proposes that transparent sustainability will become a new form of social ostentation that helps drive the sustainability movement (conspicuous conservation).

So there it is in a nut shell. My products are done. I cannot show the product that deals most directly with the transparency mentioned above yet because it may go into production soon-- very exciting-- and so there's proprietary information and logos and stuff and I could get into trouble.... But the second product is below. The graduated trash bin draws attention to waste, showing off the sustainable awareness of the user. And being glass, it forces more careful behavior regarding what we "throw" away. You don't want to break this thing. It's really expensive. I'll need to reshoot I think; the sandblasted graphics aren't popping yet. It's a prototype....

Another toy recall from China

via Molly M. Thank you Molly for this information. By spreading the word you shield us from cannibalistic pedophiles who pray on our nation's playgrounds.

Is this universal design?

I scratch my head....

And now a word from our sponsor

At Lexington Gardens in Newtown Connecticut, we have the clear decor philosophy you seek for your home improvement purchases. So come on down and...

A very industrious tree

"Pure Essentials" is classic greenwashing

The ingredients and text on the label is identical to original Tide, Downy, etc. products. Shame shame. Go and read it for yourself. Don't let them get away with this!

Everybody writes Stairway to Heaven once.

I designed these stools for a client and made them with me shopmatey a while ago:

They're laser cut steel legs slotted together and then some welding. Easy. What a genius! And then I went to ABC Home and saw these for sale:



An uncanny mid-century bummer as they say in the industry.

Flatiron Phallus

33 years as a New Yorker, countless passings and photos and I just plain missed this. Huh.

On Color 1: Helga Steppan

As blogged by hipstomp on core77 yesterday, Helga Steppan's new photographs in her series "Be Long A Part" are gorgeous portraits of her belongings arranged by color. (See them here.) Besides their being stunning works of art and examination of one's stuff, they provide an interesting look into what objects are typically what color. Color clearly has deep meaning for us in some amygdala place, and I ain't no color theorist so enough said on that; but I love scanning through Steppan's images to get a sense of functionality from the objects as an after thought to the sense I get from the colors themselves. For example the grey objects seem so predictably utilitarian, and the pink and yellow so joyful but unnecessary. There's got to be a lot to say about color and function, and a lot to read for that matter. Maybe someone out there will look at these photos and leave an interesting comment on this. Check em out.

Ice sinks to a new low!

K and I were shopping in what we thought was our local conscientious grocery store when I spotted Genets' IceRocks. Inside the cardboard box are vacuum formed ice trays containing spring water that's hermetically sealed beneath a plastic peel-off top. Just freeze, peel, serve, and waste! How gross! And what's worse folks is that this is not another diabolically ignorant company from our own republic. Do not be fooled by their name, the Water Bank of America, these people are Canadians! Socialists! Their mission is some bullshit about preventing traveller's diarrhea (no pun intended) and providing clean water to those without. From the looks of the packaging and website, this is among the most effete and wasteful luxury products I've ever seen. Obviously these guys are not reading about our plastic waste epidemic due to bottled water consumption. (Poor Seventh Generation paper plates got stuck on the bottom shelf in the photo.) I'll take dysentery over this any day.

How can I be sure I'm in a Hotel?

I wake suddenly in the early morning, disoriented from a dream. I look around. Is my taste really this bad? Do I have friends who decorate their guestroom so hideously? Where am I? Ah yes. I see that tell tale product that lets me know I'm in a hotel somewhere. The door closer. Vacation... back to bed.

U2 guitarist sues AT&T for defamation of pseudonym

In the wake of poor public response to AT&T's "Edge" network which provides internet service to Apple's new iPhone, a lawsuit has been filed by Apple's own puppet and lead guitarist for the band "U2," David Howell Evans (aka The Edge). Mr. Evans, or The Edge as he refers to himself, claims that AT&T's Edge network "is slow and lame," and that its name is a defamaton of his pre-existing pseudonym and jeopardizes band loyalty. Furthermore, The Edge claims that the delay in loading a web page on AT&T's Edge network infringes on his signature guitar style. Neither AT&T nor The Edge could be reached for comment.

Sustainable Branding

Walking past The Trash Bar in Williamsburg tonight was a breathe of fresh air. What commitment they show to their brand image!-- unsightly people loitering, a huge pile of trash bags, and a man digging through their garbage, and right outside the front entrance! No big bucks spent on glittering signage, no flyers being handed out. This is the recommodification of trash in true form. The people behind Trash Bar aren't creating trash in order to grow, they're using existing and available resources from the streets of Brooklyn to build their brand image. Bravo!

24hr silence @ core77.com

It seems that a whole saturday has passed without a new post at core77. I smell blog dorks buried thumbs deep in their new iphones. Shit, why not? But I just posted this from mine. Ahhh, multi-tasking. I love this thing!

iPhone behavior forecast

I've had my iPhone up and running for about eight hours now and it's AWESOME! I won't waste time with all that can be read elsewhere, and get straight to the three new behaviors and uses I see occurring as unintentional results of this wonderful new tool-toy.

1. Women and men alike will begin using the sleek dark glass as a compact mirror almost immediately.

2. People will begin reaching out to their computer screens to wipe to the next application.

3. Someone will snort blow off of one of these before the night is through.

Rubbermaid-- get it?

No really. Rubber-maid. Get it? How weird is that? Not really that weird, considering the company started in the USA between the wars and around the time of the Great Depression when the plastics industry was developing and the country's class structure was changing; people couldn't afford maids to make their homes as presentable as may have been required for upward mobility. Can't afford a real maid? Get Rubbermaid! (Apparently Rubberwife was already taken by another manufacturer.)

There's little that's green about the Amazon

Amazon just sent me an email. Their algorithm figured that if I bought "Worldchanging" then I'm sure to like a whole slew of books about being green.... You know the drill.


And that's totally true. So in my best effort to be green-- halo adorned-- I'm going to order all of these books and have Amazon ship them to me in individual cardboard boxes that could each house a moose, stuffed with plastic balloons for stability, glossy coupons for my next internet purchase, and a little extra cardboard and plastic wrap for protection within the moose box. And I'm gonna make sure that Carlos, our UPS guy, takes separate trips to my door in his big brown super combuster, so the air in the east williamsburg industrial park prevents any need for future deforestation. When the books arrive, and I've absorbed all the lessons, I'm going to shoot myself for what I've done.

Writing about the iPhone can be sexy!

I just posted my first blog post in the "real world" of blogging. Click on the link now:

The Keyboardless iPhone: Less poking, more stroking

China celebrates Puerto Rican Day with export of 100 millionth Puerto Rican flag

Dear editors of The Onion,
I am still looking for a job.

1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design

Design guru Allan Chochinov is not only my mentor, and not only editor in chief at core77.com, but he is also a design guru. I cannot believe that I haven't posted this yet. Now I know why I only got an A-. Allan will split your head open with face-your-own-shit-and-stop-thinking-like-an-idiot g-force dialectics and send you cryin' for mama. Design is serious business folks. We cannot afford to overlook its influence and impact. And you cannot afford to overlook his manifesto. Come on, it's 1000 words! If you don't read it you'll be dumb.

http://www.core77.com/reactor/04.07_chochinov.asp

Read it.

10 design behavior questions for a successful first date

1. Do you progressively roll your toothpaste tube from the bottom or do you just squeeze on it wherever until it seems empty?

2. Do you use a soapdish?

3. Do you use separate sponges for cleaning the dishes and cleaning the counter?

4. Do you store trash bags at the bottom of the trash can?

5. Do you arrange your clothes by cut and function or by color and pattern?

6. Do you work with more than three windows open on your desktop?

7. Do you clean your mouse periodically?

8. If you bought a Breuer chair on Monday, having never heard of Breuer, would you tell a friend on Tuesday that you "just bought a Breuer chair?”

9. In the summer, do you close shop doors that have AC billowing into the street?

10. Do you pick up the check with your left hand or your right?


If you know your own answers to these of life's essential questions, then when you hear them answered by your date, you'll be sure to know if this is the one.

Furniture for Food for Thought

About a month ago I had this string of days when I repeatedly saw food and furniture being fused together. It was a bit strange to see these four projects back to back, but they're all really fun and they make me want to sit and eat. I share now.

First stop is theoriginalsushipillow.com.




I saw these at the cherry blossom festival. "The makers of these great pillows, Cindy Tomm and Mel Maghuyop, are actors who toured with the musical Miss Saigon in North America," and "it all started when Cindy mentioned wanting a pillow that looked like a sushi roll." So goes their website. I mean, doesn't all great work start that way? It was the first time I ever wanted to curl up with edamame. Collect them all!


Next stop was the presentation of industrial design master's theses at Pratt Institute. There, Judy Hoysak wowed us all with her exuberance and passion for vegetables. Her thesis began with the simple challenge of wanting to have a garden in the industrial park where she lives in Brooklyn. (Sorry Judy, it's an "INDUSTRIAL" park.) So she designed indoor planters that act as furniture. "Gardening is a fun, satisfying hobby, and indoor vegetable gardens can beautify the home while providing tasty and healthy foods. Lighting, soil substrates, and heirloom plant varieties were researched before determining successful combinations that would maximize existing negative space possibilities." What a sentence! Brilliant! Judy also won an award for this work from my favorite retail design nemesis, Design Within Reach. Go Judy! Pictured below are her "Vege Table" and "Bean Screen."



The third stop was the final furniture studio presentation at Pratt. There, 2nd year ID grad students Heather Taylor and Noel Spangler had a furniture-food-fight-off. "Stop designing with your food!" "Awe, Mom!"

Heather Taylor's "Take-Out Table" takes its cue from chinese to-go containers.


So the scenario is familiar: you take out the food from the restaurant; you take out the containers from the bag; you take out the food from the containers. But then where do you put the food? You take out the Take-Out Table! Put it down, open the leaves, and sit on the floor. Containers sit in removable stainless baskets within the table. Chopsticks sold separately.


Noel Spangler fired back with his Sandwich stool for kids.


"The piece is composed of separate stackable layers - or cushions - that the child can play with and use to create a stool of any desired height. The child can also change the design of the chair by changing the order of the individual layers."


So I gather it's okay to design with your food after all. Is this setting up a dinner table disaster or a new breed of Top Chef? Who cares? This is so much fun, it's obscene! I love it. How cool would it be if Noel's stools pimped out the inside of this ride?



The above designs make me hungry. But more importantly, they make me happy to see that young designers are working on the consciousness of eating in new and playful ways. Many thanks to the all who agreed to let me show their work herein. If you would like to contact any of these brilliant people, leave a comment and we'll get in touch.

And lastly, none of this would have caught my eye in quite the same way were it not for "Egg-blanket" by Cricket Ricardo, as previously showcased right here, on the IndustrialCircus.


Goodnight!

Waste not, want not

After last week's rant against DWR, I've had to explain myself to many people. And I've been doing some occasional kicking of the shins beneath the table, like when I get this in my email:


To a designer, getting a picture of Saarinen's Tulip line is the junkmail equivalent of hearing Abbey Road on the train because someone's ipod is cranked too loud. What am I supposed to do? Tell them to stop? I love it! But then again, why am I being forced to fetishize this? Saarinen is one of my heros; as a child, I made my first wages in nickels cleaning my father's white Tulip chair with Fantastic. Still, I cannot praise Saarinen tonight. I must resist temptation and vanity. But it's so beautiful, my precious....

Seriously though, let's talk about waste and wasted opportunities. Today, Saarinen's TWA terminal at JFK lies abandoned except to wilding hippies who manage to throw elite parties there. (At least that's the most recent activity of which I've heard. I wasn't invited.)


We can blame the tragedy of this wasted gem of modern architecture on the failed business practices of TWA, OR we can blame its vacancy of the inability of its design to remain a viable transit hub for a new airline in today's traffic of air travel. Yes, yes, it's my favorite building in New York, second only to... but its flaws must be reckoned with, and Eero's shortsightedness along with them. I suggest we take a look at some triumphs of long term vision in New York design.

We begin in 1832. A Cholera epidemic has erupted in London, the result of contaminated drinking water from the Broad Street Pump. Similar outbreaks occur in New York City. In 1835, the Great Fire of New York wipes out large parts of the city, burning to the ground the newly framed wooden homes of the city's immigrant poor. Insufficient water supply was blamed for the failure to extinguish the inferno. In 1837, in response to mounting concerns about disease and fire, Municipal Engineers in NYC damn the Croton River to create the Croton Resevoir, and dig an elaborate water distribution system to supply water to the growing population of the city. These were thinkers of enormous imagination. They pushed for a scale of construction and innovation unthinkable at the time. (Look at the little dude in the huge tunnel!)


These are the very tunnels that continue to drip and quench us today— 8 million strong! That's forward thinking.

Let's flash-forward to 1930 when a New York urban planner, without a driver's license mind you, envisioned our city consumed by automobiles— the mass transportation means of the future. Robert Moses gave us inner-city transit ways like the BQE, Henry Hudson Parkway, Belt Parkway, and the Triborough Bridge among others.


Thank god he was stopped before unleashing his dream of a freeway across Canal St. (I reveal my elitist attitudes.... He left us Soho. Errr. I have second thoughts...) Moses is often hated for ripping through working class neighborhoods to provide leisurely paths of driving for those with cars. Of course he saw it as leisurely— he never drove himself. His roads remain with us, but alongside are countless poor neighborhoods, often attributed to his developments, which are slowly returning from generations of urban blight. So here's my Colbert "Tip of the Hat" to Moses for creating roadways that continue to be used and wanted, and "Wag of the Finger" for roadways that continue to bypass, alienate, and waste working people needed for our city's growth. To boot, his visions encouraged decades of oil and auto lobby interests, resulting in our current air quality and climate dilemma.

But then there's Mies. Pretty, utopian, fascist Mies and his Seagram Building, all too overlooked for its role in Stanley Kubrick's 2001.


Long story short, in 1958 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe convinced a rich and greedy tycoon to forfeit almost one half of his Park Avenue lot to public space. Unconscionable! From my measly perspective, the only blindspot in his foresight is that he would be less thoughtfully imitated. Park Avenue is now lined with ugly step-back boxes of glass pushed up against the sidewalk. There is no public space except for that left by Mies in '56.

How wonderful was his foresight though, that our crowded mid-town has an oasis of flowing Croton water for the pleasure of those who drive upon and sleep beneath the roads of Moses. For the cost of height, Mies gave open space. The Seagram Building is an enduring success of municipal design. It houses the man and hosts the working stiff. No municipal or technological revolution, nor increase in corporate trading has rendered its generous space out of date.

We return to DWR and poor Eero, whose airline terminal was lyrical, but insufficient over time. Perhaps he was too concerned with his own gestures— his planes and curves, his organic twistings within. Perhaps he was not yet related to air travel and its customers. So to DWR, learn from Saarinen and Moses; some designs of the future are fated to fail and others to succeed while they fail others. Let's look to Croton and Mies for the foresight to provide infrastructure and design to all who need it. And when we take a little here for one party, lets give a little back to the other.

Dear DWR,
Please tell me in your next junkmail how you are working to support public education of design history while disseminating consumer suggestions for sustainable living.
Sincerely,
Ringleader

Read the fine print

My friend Maxo took a look at last week's post about the smokestack humidifier and was like, "wait, is that the Amadana humidifier?!" Huh? "Amadana's this great Japanese home appliance company," he continued. "I've been trying to find their stuff in the states, but only see it in Japan." Well, I can't corroborate any of that, but he did some snooping and directed my attention to the disclaimer at the bottom of this page on the Amadana website:

http://en.amadana.com/product/fh109/fh109.html

For your ease of research, here's the product (a small desktop humidifier):

And here's the disclaimer: