Tag Archives: eco

SPOTTED – the Exbury Egg – a floating, self sustaining piece of micro architecture

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Alternative offices are far more exciting to work in than the standard desk and partition sort of space (and we would agree as we are currently moving into our new office, which used to be a public WC in Brighton and we are nicknaming Studio Loo). Having an interesting space around you really can boost your creativity and productivity. But offices do not usually get as alternative as the Exbury Egg…

This floating, self sustaining office is a combined project between British design firm SPUD, Perring Architecture + Design (PAD), boat builder Paul Baker, naval architect Stephen Payne, and artist Stephen Turner – with Turner being the lucky person who will inhabit the space for the next 12 months. He will use this time to document the tidal creek and humans own interaction with nature.

Two years in the making, the Exbury Egg now sits atop a tidal section of the River Beaulieu, where it will rise with the tides and rest on the estuary bed when the waters recede.

The cold moulded plywood and local timber create a beautifully organic space which although sparse, feels very cocoon like. 

Exbury Egg, PAD Studio, the SPUD Group, Stephen Turner, floating egg

The space is rather minimal, with a hammock taking up most of the internal space, along with a stove and working area. A wet room style bathroom is also included.

After the 12 month residency the Exbury Egg will become a travelling exhibition – hopefully it will travel close to Brighton so we have the opportunity to visit this beautiful piece of micro architecture.

(images via Inhabitat)

EVENT – the edible city – a free guided urban foraging walk in Brighton for the Chelsea Fringe…

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This event is now full – please email us if you would like to go on our mailing list for future edible city / urban foraging events…

We love a bit of local food and you do not get any more local than a spot of urban foraging, so for our Chelsea Fringe event this year we are celebrating the local hedgerow larder in Brighton.

edible city walk brighton flyer

Join us on a free guided walk around a little strip we know well in Brighton – we will help you to identify a few (very abundant) edible goodies that surround us all on a daily basis and give you some pointers on how to use them to boost your cooking repertoire.

We will also give you the run down on foraging and the law and there will even be a few light refreshments made by the studio from stuff we have foraged in and around Brighton.

When? Sat 8th June, 1pm – approximately one hour walk

Where? West Hove, Brighton (exact location TBC, but near to a train station, buses and car park)

Price? completely free – but please email hello@clairepotterdesign.com to book your place as spaces are limited.

Why? because we should all be urban foragers. it’s tasty and fun.

see the Chelsea Fringe website for details on more great events happening until 9th June…

Wednesday Walls – REBORN paints from Newlife Paints

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Today on Wednesday Walls we are very pleased to be featuring a new product line, REBORN Paints, from one of our favourite paint companies, Newlife Paints, who have won numerous awards over recent years for their innovative processes and very high quality recycled paint. We have used their paint on a variety of projects and have always been incredibly impressed with the product and delighted by their wonderful customer service.

Making an exhibition of ourselves

Their new range, REBORN Paints takes these years of investment in their recycled paint processes and combines it with natural minerals to create very chalky, flat, breathable, low carbon paint. It has high coverage (about 2.5 litres will cover about 30 sqm), low VOCs and dries in two hours. Pretty much perfect – and it is available in a great range of colours.

We literally cannot wait to get our hands on the Intense Slate shade – which we are pretty sure will end up in our new studio very, very soon…

Intense Slate

Plus, at £29 per 2.5 litres, this high quality, responsible paint will not break the bank…

Find out more at the new Reborn Paints website.

(image via Reborn Paints)

Weekend DESIGN inspiration – University of Sussex Product Design Degree show – Design 2013

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This week we are not talking about colour inspiration, but Weekend Design Inspiration, courtesy of the great Product Designers at the University of Sussex who are currently exhibiting their final year show – design 2013.

Ok. This is a little biased as I am privileged enough to both guest lecture and guest critique on the Product Design degree course, but the exhibition of the final projects produced by the dedicated students is well worth a visit if you are in or around Brighton this week.

A variety of projects are on show, from a conceptual product which edges into fashion and deals with personal privacy to a modern heirloom for a child which encourages imaginative play and memory attachment.

Interactive products have also been created, including a social interaction toy and a game to help combat childhood obesity, and products with great social value such as a sleeping bag / jacket product for rough sleepers.

It is free to attend and well worth the trip to the University of Sussex today or tomorrow  Check out the full design 2013 website here…

SPOTTED – screenprinted vintage mirrors of asintended

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We adore finding beautiful, handcrafted pieces to feature here on The Ecospot, or for the projects we work on with our clients. We are particularly in love with anything letterpress inspired, and this traditional way of printing often crops up in our projects in some way or another.

she stood in the storm

So we were delighted when we spotted these gorgeous letterpress inspired screenprinted vintage mirrors by graphic studio asintended, who we discovered on an Artists Open House trail in Brighton.

Using vintage mirrors  the studio prints inspirational quotes over the top to create a beautiful decorative, reflective piece with stacks of depth.

she stood in the storm

Perhaps not the mirror you would choose for a bathroom  but we are thinking about this for a hallway, or even a kitchen diner space to add a bit of extra character and to bounce the light about.

Stunning – and one we will be specifying without doubt. Contact asintended for further information on the mirrors or the other great letterpress prints in the studios collection.

(image via asintended)

a new, sustainable visitor centre for the Great Fens

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Visitor centres are funny beasts. They need to be pieces of architecture which are relatively stand out so they act as a kind of wayfinding structure for the site, yet they should be closely related to their locations and compliment the thing that people are actually coming to visit in the first place.

There can be a delicate line between these points. Stand out, yet not too shouty.

The new visitor centre which has recently been unveiled by Atelier CMJN for the Great Fens in Cambridgeshire strikes a nice balance.

Atelier CMJN, Great Fen Visiting Center, Cambridgeshire, rainwater collection, eolic turbine, fen, organic architecture, adaptation, Architecture, Green Materials, Daylighting, green Interiors, energy efficiency,

Constructed from locally sourced timber, the structure also plans to house water recycling, a water heat pump and rainwater collection.

There is also a very nice connection to place, as the side openings in the building allow visitors to see how the surrounding water levels and the landscape changes throughout the seasons.

This is exactly what a visitor centre should do – introduce the building / subject / location to the visitor in such a way that is supportive, not intrusive. The choice of the circular plan will allow this building to open to all of it’s surroundings and the material choice will give a nice vernacular feel to the structure.

A building that we would like to visit as much as the Great Fens themselves.

(image via Inhabitat)

Monday musings – shipping container homes as transitional housing gets go ahead in Brighton

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A few weeks ago, when we were still deciding what to call this series of Monday blogs, we wrote about a new project in Brighton which planned to use converted shipping containers as transitional housing. This project was still in planning, so despite the masses of value that we could see for such a scheme, there were no guarantees that the shipping container homes would actually be realised in the city.

shipping container homes

However, the end of last week saw some great news. The project by Brighton Housing Trust and developers QED has been given planning approval by Brighton and Hove City Council.

The project was described as an ‘imaginative and appropriate’ way to create temporary  transitional low cost housing in a location that is not suitable for permanent housing in the centre of the city.

Plus, when the land is required for part of the extended redevelopment of the New England Quarter in Brighton, the shipping container homes can be relocated with relative ease.

We are very excited that this scheme has been granted planning permission as it shows a real move forward not only for innovative architecture in Brighton, but also as it will provide real change for those who will call these shipping containers home.

We will be following this story closely, so expect updates as the project develops in Brighton.

Weekend Colour Inspiration – accidental combinations

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Colour is a very personal thing. Colours that I love together, you could absolutely hate. Colour links into the deepest of our memories – just like a scent can transport us to a particular point in our lives, colours can take us back there too.

But sometimes we think just a little too hard about colour – and colour combinations and what ‘goes’ well together. There is a great deal to be said for the accidental and the slight clashing nature of some pairings when you are just not thinking about it. And this can be really exciting.

This image we found illustrates this perfectly – when you look at each of the colours as they sit together, there are a few really odd sections, but overall? The colours sort of blend and work as a whole, because they are all part of a similar palette – in this case, almost autumnal.

This kind of treatment is perfect for a charity shop find, or to rejuvenate a cabinet that has seen better days and is very fitting for the eclectic interior design aesthetic that we tend to work with. If the cabinet is nicely battered too and has lovely cup handles like the example above, then it sort of gets a little industrial too, which is only a good thing in our books.

(image via 16 house)

another ethical tea towel…

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We have a bit of a confession to make. We are secret tea towel collectors.

That is right – we do not own a dishwasher here in the studio, with the crockery piling up over the period of the day until one of us gives in and washes the lot. Usually when we are having a grump at AutoCad or waiting for Sketchup to render our lighting or something.

Usually it sits on the drainer and air dries, but there is always a trusty tea towel on hand just in case we really have left it that long and are desperate for a cuppa and there are no cups.

But the choice of tea towels is quite important. Fair trade, organic or ethical cotton. It will possibly be vintage, could be hand screen printed, but it definitely will be patterned and graphical in some way.

Recently I wrote about ethical tea towel choices for EggMag, which included a great tea towel from the Radical Tea Towel Company, featuring a lovely print about Womens right to the Vote.

tea towel

But the one from the range we have in the studio? This lovely tea towel, which is of course, bright green and features the Yeats quote ‘tread softly for you tread on my dreams’. With the inprint of a foot and the inclusion of the carbon footprint down the side, it is obvious the intentions for this tea towel message are environmentally based, which is a nice thought to have when you do a bit of drying up.

Plus the tea towels from the Radical Tea Towel Company are sourced from ethical bases and printed in the UK using water based inks by a family run business.

So if you are looking to spread a message with your drying up, take your pick.

(image by claire potter design)

Open source design – the Sea Chair

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Great design is not highly polished. It is considered from start to finish. Great design adds to the world – for the better. Great design, to coin a phrase from Cradle to Cradle thinking – is elegant. And this very unassuming stool has to be one of the most elegant we have seen to date.

The Sea Chair has been created by Studio Swine and Kieren Jones and is one of the featured Designs of 2013 currently on show at the Design Museum in London.

The design is extremely simple. It is a stool created out of plastic, in a highly recognised and familiar form. But what is beautiful about this stool is the story of its creation.

Created by hand, each stool uses only pieces of waste plastic fished out of the sea – cleaning up our oceans whilst championing the beauty of the accidental and the hand made. It has a real raw beauty which we find stunning.

But the Sea Chair is not one of those very worthy designs which are made from recycled materials  by hand, but cost a small fortune to purchase.

The Sea Chair is also an open source design.

So, for anyone wanting to create their very own Sea Chair AND clean up a section of beach in the process, the full methodology of how to create the piece can be found on the Studio Swine website. Right down to how to create your own furnace and how to identify different types of plastic.

This type of project really gets us excited – using an otherwise waste material, a low tech process and a hand made finish to produce an item which will be different from the next.

Visit the Studio Swine website for full details on how to create your own Sea Chair.

(image via Studio Swine)