With summer just around the corner, my mind turns to the camping season. It gives me the chance to get outside, be closer to nature and make the most of my fabulous new Bell Tent. But what we are also seeing in the design world is that there is a new found fascination with [...]
Category Archives: Natural stuff
Biomimicry: What eco design can learn from nature?
March 30, 2012 – 9:36 am
As a designer, there’s really no greater inspiration than the marvels of nature. Increasingly we’re seeing science taking its cues from the natural world in an effort to solve complex design issues in a more organic way. Hopefully creating better spaces for us to live in. In a nutshell (nice idiom right?), biomimicry or [...]
Eco Home Composting: future designs on home food waste
February 8, 2012 – 10:33 am
Ok, so my guilty secret is out. I really find it tough to recycle food waste and scraps from my kitchen. And I suspect I’m not the only one. It’s the smells coming from the compost caddy, the emptying into my enormous outdoor composter, and then getting stuck in to turn and farm this ready-made [...]
My favourite Eco-Friendly Christmas Decorations for this Year
December 9, 2011 – 4:59 pm
What’s not to love about this mid winter festival of ours, although every year I get hit with a pang of just how am I going to do all this decorating and Christmassy stuff and still make it sustainable. Creativity, inspiration and upcycling is what’s called for. When it comes to decorating my own tree [...]
Sofa, So Green
December 2, 2011 – 3:38 pm
Choosing eco home furnishings can be really tricky. Particularly for items that are a little more complex in their manufacture and don’t necessarily have a daily energy use. Subsequently, the provenance of manufacture and materials, embodied energy and durability of these pieces really comes into question. Sofas are a prime example of a high-ticket, [...]
Eco homes need eco heating: My Top Five Favourite Wood Burning Stoves
November 29, 2011 – 2:53 pm
With winter setting in and chilly temperatures just around the corner (this mild spell can’t last forever), I thought I’d share my favourite wood burning stoves with you. Come the winter, there aren’t many inanimate objects in my house that I love as much as my wood burning stove. There’s nothing like cycling home [...]
Edible Household – Playing With Your Food
November 16, 2011 – 10:45 am
So if we can’t explore a few crazy ideas in this blog, where can we? And with that liberating and mouth watering thought in mind, I thought I’d share with you a few designers who are cooking up a storm with their edible furniture and accessories. It’s clear, if you watch TV on ANY given [...]
Never Felt Better: The Many Uses Of Pressed Wool for eco homes
November 11, 2011 – 12:20 pm
Felt is one of those under-used but “designers’ favourite” materials. And as one of the earliest fabrics created, it has been for a very long time. Natural felt is made using wool in a wet or dry process and utilises the wool fibre scales and kinks to bond or matt the fabric together. For [...]
A Million Little Pieces: The Magic of Mosaics
November 1, 2011 – 12:00 pm
Patchworks are a key way to use materials in the world of eco design. And I just love them. Simply put, they offer the opportunity for small, otherwise unusable parts of material to have a new and useful life. Whilst big slabs of materials might look bold and impressive, they are also inefficient as they [...]
Vertical Environments – Not Just Tall Stories
October 26, 2011 – 8:42 am
Recently I was asked to get involved with a TV proposal looking to create an urban vertical farm from a disused tower block – codenamed ‘Pigs in Penthouses’. Sadly the show didn’t get commissioned, which is a real shame as it was brilliantly bonkers. But it’s thought provoking just how much aerial space has yet [...]
