Zipper8Lighting saved hundreds of soda can tabs to create these shimmering eco-friendly lampshades, which emit a warm glow from beneath the layers of reclaimed materials. The tabs are carefully attached to a cylindrical plastic shade, and when the light shines through it creates a simple but dazzling effect. Hopefully the designer didn’t have to drink all of that soda on their own!

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This week 12 contemporary designers will unveil 12 fresh new designs made entirely of lumber reclaimed from blighted New York City buildings! Dubbed 12 x 12, the exhibition will feature a chair made from a Park Avenue water tank, a desk made of wood salvaged from the Brooklyn Bridge, a coffee table made from Cony Island boardwalk planks, and a bar cart made of old wood casks from a distillery in flushing. All 12 designs will be unveiled this weekend at Wanted Design during New York Design Week – hit the jump for a video preview of the show featuring our very own Jill Fehrenbacher, who served as one of the competition judges!

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From afar, Hong Seon Jang’s sculptural cityscapes look like models from a city planner’s office. But upon closer inspection, we can see that each rising building and skyscraper is capped with a letter of the alphabet! The mini metropolises are in fact meticulously arranged conglomerations of disused typesets.

 

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Do you enjoy camping but find it hard to get a good night’s sleep? The Pakmat is a comfortable, eco-friendly, and compact product ideal for outdoor enthusiasts, as well as for emergency use during disaster relief efforts. There is no need to carry a separate pump or rely on an electrical power source, because the PakMat uses a handheld pump with human energy to inflate the bed. It’s the first air pump that is specifically designed to act as a clean storage unit for the airbed it is designed to inflate.

+ AeroBed Pakmat

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“Wij krijgen Kippen,” which roughly translates from the Dutch to ”we pick up chickens,” has an unusual educational tool for informing the public about energy usage — their giant egg wanders through the streets of Amsterdam, and nests itself everywhere that local energy is generated. The group’s objective is to help the borough of Amsterdam Zuid transition from traditional energy sources to new, locally produced green energy. Supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Wij krijgen kippen is comprised of a growing group of civilians, entrepreneurs and civil servants. As for their giant wandering egg, it serves as a public meeting point where individuals can learn about the non-profit and their green energy goals, while at night it is transformed into a large-scale projection unit for outdoor movie screenings.

+ Wij krijgen Kippen

Santa Monica-based LivingHomes has launched the C6.2, an affordable prefab house that is certified LEED Platinum. Previously, LivingHomes had introduced the C6, an affordable three-bedroom home, but the company rolled out this smaller version for homeowners who want a smaller and more energy-efficient option. The sleek, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home is a good fit for smaller infill lots common in cities or for eco-conscious homeowners who want to save on construction and installation costs.

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Benjamin Rollins Caldwell’s new LED chandelier fuses the structure of mid-century modern style with modern innovation. The Halide Chandelier recycles disused industrial elements into a dazzling, energy-efficient light. The piece will make an appearance at BRC’s display at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC next week.

New York-based artist Tom Sachs has teamed up with Nike on a capsule collection that combines Sach’s DIY ethos and his preoccupation with space exploration with the sportswear giant’s yen for performance innovation. Together, they’ve come up with a series of limited-edition sneakers, bags and jackets that are made using fabric from Mars Excursion Rover airbags, mainsails for boats, and even NASA spacesuits. The joint venture, dubbed NikeCraft, will launch on the eve of Sach’s Space Program: Mars installation at Manhattan’s Armory Park.

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Overhead electric lines that power buses and streetcars are a common sight in California cities and towns, and they could soon be expanding to highways. At the 26th annual Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles last week, Siemens unveiled the “eHighway of the Future,” a system of electric lines that would be used to power specially-designed hybrid trucks. The eHighway is currently being tested in Germany, and pilot projects are planed for Los Angeles and Long Beach.

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The term ‘building science’ is used quite often now in sustainable building circles, but much of what we understand of it can be traced back to the work of Dr. Joe Lstiburek, founder of Building Science Corporation. He is anything but your typical engineer or scientist who spends time crunching numbers or hiding away in a lab. Lstiburek has spent most of his career out in the field, testing and examining what works and what doesn’t. Many of the building standards today — from building codes to ASHRE to testing methodology — have his finger prints all over them, and his tough love criticism of building design is undercut with his wry humor and, of course, an encyclopedic knowledge of building construction. Read on to learn where buildings go wrong and what we can do about it.

The French energy giant Total announced today that it has finally stopped the natural gas leak at its Elgin platform in the North Sea, 150 miles off the coast of Scotland. The Elgin leak, which started March 25, released gas at a rate of 7 million cubic feet a day at its peak and led to the evacuation of its workers amid fears of an explosion. The leak has cost the company $3 million a day and could deny the United Kingdom as much as six percent of its natural gas supplies this summer.

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