Susan Szenasy's blog

Turning Poetry Into Material
by Daniela Morell

Abhinand Lath has transformed the solid wall into a glimmering surface that responds to movements and colors around it. His company, SensiTile, makes panels from optic light channels that are embedded in concrete. The result, inspired by an eleventh century Japanese poem about sunlight streaming through a bamboo forest, is a visually kinetic surface. ...

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3041

Image: Courtesy SensiTile

Completing the Puzzle

As landscape architects get on board with sustainability, our hopes for a clean and healthy world grow.
by Susan S. Szenasy

The long line snakes then redoubles at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. At their annual meeting, appropriately titled “Designing with Nature: The Art of Balance,” landscape architects are eager to learn about a program that is sure to change the way they practice their profession. Walls are moved out of the way, and room is made for the overflow crowd. We settle in to learn about the Sustainable Sites Initiative, developed by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the United States Botanic Garden, and other organizations. The new metric will expand our growing knowledge of the built environment as put forth by USGBC’s LEED rating system, which on its own has begun to shift the methods of construction along with land use. ...

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3089

Illustration: Lisa Maione

by Michael Silverberg

When Tad Fettig and Karena Albers, castaways from the world of commercial advertising (they met in Hawaii on a shoot for Degree deodorant), conceived of a show about eco-architecture, they imagined a small-bore project: “Sort of like This Old House meets green,” Fettig says. But as they began research for what became the PBS documentary series e2 design—which, in its first year, featured Chicago’s green roofs and China’s growth—they found that environmentally friendly design was about much more than changing a lightbulb. ...

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3096

Image: Courtesy Arup

Private Islands

BioHavens add an aesthetic element to water features and natural landscapes that cleans and nourishes while you lounge.
by Mason Currey

Biomimicry, the study of natural processes for solutions to human problems, is a relatively young science—writer Janine Benyus coined the term in 1997—but it has already inspired some remarkable design strategies, including an office complex in Zimbabwe modeled on termite mounds. Good biomimetic design is often ingeniously simple, which is certainly the case with BioHaven floating islands, from the manufacturer Floating Island International, in Shepherd, Montana. ...

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3104

Photo: Courtesy Floating Island International

Hydro Wall by Virginia San Fratello

Shipbuilding Technology Brings Hydro Wall Out of the Computer

By Daniela Morell

When Virginia San Fratello won the 2006 Next Generation® Design Competition for her Hydro Wall, she told us that the biggest challenge to realizing the project would be getting it out of the computer. The complex rolling forms of the wall needed to be high functioning—harvesting rainwater to insulate the building and provide useful gray water—and they needed to look gorgeous.

Last week the first Hydro Wall panel emerged from the electronic box into the material world. At 42-inches tall this prototype is one third the scale of the final building. The mold, created in foam through the precision of rhino CAD and CNC milling, makes a finished piece that is a pristine, fiberglass object that requires no hardware or assembly.

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3027

Photo: Virginia San Fratello

Sonia’s Marine-Grade Wood 25 Tools for Greener Living

As the measures of sustainability grow even more sophisticated, these products rise to the occasion.

By Paul Makovsky

Going green is no longer just a fad. It’s a sign that more people realize the individual part each of us plays in reducing our overall impact on the planet. The daily actions we can take have long been understood, including buying dur­able water bottles instead of disposable ones and bringing your own reusable shopping bag to the grocery store. However, when it comes to long-term design decisions such as product selections, matters are a bit more complex.

While most designers know to opt for low-impact materials with recycled content, it is finally becoming easier to consider the full life cycle. Suppliers are making their environmental management systems known and are advertising the sustainable sources of their wares. Many sponsor take-back, reuse, and recycling programs. Another encouraging sign is the increased provision of “environmental product declarations,” which measure performance against numerous criteria. The selections culled for these pages go beyond basic sustainability—in both style and execution.

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2995

Dematerializing Samples
Tricycle expands its alternative sampling program with Tryk.

By Mason Currey

In 2002 the Chattanooga-based sustainable-design-services company Tricycle launched an alternative sampling option for the interiors industry; manufacturers outsource the process to the company, which produces and delivers extremely realistic paper samples—called SIMs—to specifiers instead of actual carpet slabs. The idea quickly took off and has become widely implemented (and widely imitated) in the industry. Tricycle estimates that in four years its service has saved about 26,000 gallons of oil and kept more than 155,000 pounds of waste out of landfills.

At this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, Tricycle launched a significant expansion of the program, called Tryk. Previously the company could only cre­ate samples of tufted carpet, but Tryk works with woven carpet as well as wall-coverings and fabrics. It also allows for different scales and larger sizes—and the image quality is improved. “We continue to move toward a more photorealistic image,” says Michael Hendrix, Tricycle’s creative director and chief brand officer. “If you could see an image from three years ago, the tufts looked flatter. We’ve been able to improve the perception of volume in the overall look.”

The company is also launching a new Web platform, which will be fully functional by January. “It’s more robust,” Hendrix says. “It’s giving more features to the user, and it’s actually better integrated with the business practices of manufac­turers.” The end result is an even more efficient, easy-to-use, and realistic tool for designers to sample materials—without wasting them.

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3005

7 Steps in the Lifecycle of a Green Product7 Steps in the Lifecycle of a Green Product

Despite claims to the contrary, products with zero environmental impact do not yet exist. But
these new approaches to green design point to a day when that might just be possible.

By Martin C. Pedersen

As we set out to create a green-products issue, we were confronted with a pair of dil­emmas. Amid all the hype and hot air some real progress was being made, but as Ray Ander­son told us in 2004, “No one should be claiming sustainable products. There is no such thing yet in terms of zero footprint. What you can do is demonstrate reduced footprint.” This remains true today—and yet the dizzying array of new efforts boggles the mind. There is no shortage of products claiming the green mantle. So how do we mark this vast but imperfect moment? Borrow­ing from the Okala Design Guide (www.idsa.org/whatsnew/sections/ecosection/okala.html), we’ve organized our stories around the life cycle of green products. Since there is still no perfect product, think of these as seven pieces of a Platonic whole, a set of best practices, and a possible road map for a new model of twenty-first-century manufacturing.

More at: http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2998