Tag Archives: green

Wednesday Walls – Devil’s Dyke screenprint by Sue Haseltine

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There are landscapes and locations in each of our lives that instantly conjure up thoughts and memories of days gone by, both long past and relatively present. Having been born in Brighton, the South Downs hold a very special place in my own heart and it was with delight that we spotted this wonderful Devil’s Dyke screenprint by local artist Sue Haseltine at the Artists Open Houses.

Sue Haseltine Devil's Dyke Screenprint

Whilst the view is beautifully stylised, if you have visited the Devil’s Dyke you know exactly where it is. Personally, I know that central path well. Over the years I have walked, run, ridden a horse, ridden a downhill mountain bike and even snowboarded down that path. And this print brings back those memories.

The Devil’s Dyke screenprint has a lovely graphic quality, reminiscent of an old transport poster or postage stamp  with a simplicity that allows it to be very contemporary in feel also. It would be perfectly situated within a modern family living room where you can all remember picnics, walks and kite flying in the middle of winter.

And at £45 for an unframed print, it will not break the bank. A truly stunning print from a local artist who knows the location well.

(image via Sue Haseltine)

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.

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)

Monday muses – Brighton and Hove become the world’s first One Planet City

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Every Monday here on the Ecospot we look at a slightly meaty issue and today we just had to be talking about the fact that Brighton and Hove has been declared the world’s first One Planet City – very nicely timed as today is also Earth Day.

earth

BioRegional, an independent sustainable accreditation organisation awarded the title to Council leader Jason Kitcat at a presentation last week, which took place at a sustainable housing project in Brighton.

But just what does this award mean?

In essence, it means that Brighton and Hove Council’s Sustainability Action Plan has been recognised for it’s plans to enable residents to live well within a fairer share of the world’s resources.

The Sustainability Action Plan sets out clear goals for Brighton and Hove – including how we can begin to live within the resources of one planet, rather than the current national average of three and a half.

To date, this has been manifested in a number of ways, with the council investing in updated insulation for council owned properties to allow tenants to benefit from lower energy bills and therefore carbon outputs and community growing schemes.

But the Sustainability Action Plan aims to to a great deal more over the next three years – helping residents and businesses in Brighton and Hove to become more sustainably resilient whilst boosting the local economy.

Ten key principles for being a One Planet City are:

Zero carbon - Making buildings more energy efficient and delivering all energy with renewable technologies.

Zero waste - Reducing waste, reusing where possible, and ultimately sending zero waste to landfill.

Sustainable transport - Encouraging low carbon modes of transport to reduce emissions, reducing the need to travel.

Sustainable materials - Using sustainable healthy products, with low embodied energy, sourced locally, made from renewable or waste resources.

Local and sustainable food - Choosing low impact, local, seasonal and organic diets and reducing food waste.

Sustainable water - Using water more efficiently in buildings and in the products we buy; tackling local flooding and water course pollution.

Land use and wildlife - Protecting and restoring biodiversity and natural habitats through appropriate land use and integration into the built environment.

Culture and community - Reviving local identity and wisdom; supporting and participating in the arts.

Equity and local economy - Creating bioregional economies that support fair employment, inclusive communities and international fair trade.

Health and happiness - Encouraging active, sociable, meaningful lives to promote good health and well being.

Many of these have already been initiated by Brighton and Hove City Council, with an increase in recycling collected from communual points within the city (which, although very controversial, appear to be working as a 70% increase in weight of recyclables have been reported), the Food Partnership projects throughout the city as well as them signing up to become a Living Wage employer.

How this accreditation will continue to manifest itself over the coming months and years will be exciting to see – and how Brighton and Hove can continue to grow as a city founded on sustainable principles.

REVISIT – sweet violets – the most beautiful edible flower for Spring?

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Despite the snow, there are a few plants which are beginning to come to life and remind us that spring is surely on its way.

One such plant is the stunning Sweet Violet, which we wrote about last year and is just starting to get going…

March 2012…

A few weeks ago we posted about the earliest edible flowers available to pretty up your plates and this weekend we spotted our favourites – sweet violets, or to give them their proper name, Viola odorata.

There is a large bank near our studio which sits right on the edge of a road, by a bus stop, which is completely smothered by a blanket of sweet violets which fills the air with the most amazing scent each March.

Given their demure size, the scent they produce is actually quite incredible, with a little bunch happily scenting a whole room.

The blooms are also wonderful added to spring salads to give a bit of colour, but our favourite way to use them is to place a single bloom on a chocolate violet flavoured cupcake – the dark brown icing really making the blue purple of the violet sing out. Or, as pictured to the left here, they can be crystallised and added as decorations (these cakes were vanilla with violet extract flavoured icing)

Sweet violets are a great addition to a garden and as they are happy in both full sun or semi shade there will almost certainly be a place that they would love.

Plus, as well as the standard violet coloured sweet violet, you can get white varieties too, which, if colour is not your thing, would be a brilliant alternative.

Get them here or here.

(top image from crocus)

Wednesday Walls – wooden peg board wall

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Utility styled design has to be a real studio favourite (right down to the new ‘utility’ fashion trend), with industrial, clean lined and organised interiors pushing our buttons. Great materials are key - timber, metal, exposed brickwork, peg board – and function is at the heart of all those selected.

And whilst at Ecobuild last week we found that this styling was being used for quite a few of the exhibition stands, with bare timber and steel fixings being employed very nicely indeed.

thread 1

There was another stand that caught our eye for it’s simplicity and effectiveness using just two materials - perforated birch faced plywood as a peg board and coloured thread.

thread 2

Using nails and thread, the signage had been stitched 3D onto the surface of the board, creating a very tactile section which contrasted well with the smooth birch.

But these perforated boards are also really great additions to areas in need of organising – think kitchens, offices and workspaces – where they can have hooks, storage boxes and even adjustable shelves added. These have the beauty of being adjustable, so your space can alter to your exact needs.

plain plastic cups - drill 2 holes in them and use zip ties through the peg board to keep them in place...

And with any open display, you have to ensure that you are organised and tidy, so even though this type of peg board system is on show, you are far more likely to keep things where they live…

(images by claire potter and via associated links)

SPOTTED – a great, low tech green walling system

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As some of you are probably aware, we are pretty obsessed with the greening of our cities – be it with ornamental green wall cladding, or preferably with edible landscaping. A few posts of late have been dedicated to the art of green walling, from the highly efficient living wall systems of Biotecture to the very low tech DIY green walling systems using traditional climbers to clad a building.

And there are clear merits to each of the systems, from versatility, water recycling to just utilising natures own plants which want to scramble and climb.  They also come with very different price tags.

One DIY system we really like takes the green wall plants right off the face of the structure itself so potential damage from the plants climbing to the façade of the building is minimised.

green wall 2

So whilst wandering around Ecobuild last week we were delighted to see such a system installed as a demonstration stand around one of the lecture pavilions.

It uses stainless steel fixings which space a tensioned mesh away from the face of the building, creating a secondary skin across which a climber, in this case English Ivy can climb.  What is great is that these types of fixings are readily available, reasonably priced and can be customised to the space you need to clad.

green wall 1

It creates a very nice and clean detail – and some great shadows on the façade of the building, which in this case was large format tiles.

And this is the beauty of shows such as Ecobuild – finding ideas and inspiration for your own projects, so why not take this idea and apply it to your own buildings in need of a bit of green walling?

(images by claire potter)

more climber based green wall cladding…

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A few posts ago we looked at how you can create a green wall type installation using a basic framework, built around your existing building and allowing climbing plants to be grown up the structure.

As we discussed, this sort of installation ensures that damage to the building structure is minimised as the plants are grown off the façade.

It also creates a very interesting secondary skin to the building, which could be allowed to envelop large sections of the structure, or changed periodically to give differences in texture – or even edible crops such as squashes.

It does seem as though this type of ‘green cladding’ is becoming very popular, as we spotted another example at the end of last week, using this very framework based system.

Formerly an existing garage in the Italian Alps, architects Act_Romegialli were bought on board to convert the structure into a welcoming studio for their clients.

green design, eco design, sustainable design, Green Box, Act_romegialli, green roof, Italian Alps, vine covered garage, living walls

The resulting structure, called ‘Green Box’ is encased in a lightweight steel frame upon which climbing plants have been encouraged to grow – shielding the building and developing it into a piece of the landscape itself.

Privacy to the retreat section of the building is given by the growing vines and climbers themselves which filter light passing into the structure.

green design, eco design, sustainable design, Green Box, Act_romegialli, green roof, Italian Alps, vine covered garage, living walls

The interior of the building follows this simple theme, with reclaimed timber boards, stone and steel being used to create a very industrial yet rustic aesthetic.

What is beautiful about this particular project is the simplicity with which it was envisaged - using the natural growth of the plants to create the covering skin – an idea which could easily be employed with any small scale structure.

Garages, sheds, outbuildings – why not think about creating your own green wall cladding this Spring.

(images via Inhabitat)

the edible city – the future of our workplaces?

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This week we have been preparing for a talk we are giving at the University of Brighton for the Brighton Interior Architecture and Architecture Society, about the work of the studio and stuff that inspires us. One such element is the integration and development of the edible city and how this can inform public landscaping and workplace design.

When putting together the lecture, we were aware of just how many concepts there are for the integration of food growing, particularly beautifully rendered, high technology concepts, but just how little are actually built.

Is it that we are just thinking about the edible city but have just not got around to building it yet?

Also, the vast majority of the concepts are new build projects, usually in the vertical format. Towers, Sky Farms, layered buildings with horticulture and agriculture combined.

There is, of course a certain amount of building efficiency which can be planned into a new structure, but it does not necessarily mean that our existing buildings cannot be adapted to integrate localised growing into their footprints.

Dalston 1

We wrote about one such project here – the FARM: shop project by Something and Son in Dalston, London, which uses a standard retail location to produce fish through aquaponics, salads and even eggs from rooftop chickens – all of which is used in the on site cafe. They also run educational programs to encourage other people to grow.

But thinking of the larger, city workplace format, there is one project which is a very interesting example of what the future of our offices could be – and not in a new structure.

The Pasona HQ in Tokyo is based in a retrofitted 50 year old building, which has been adapted to be not only a working environment, but an urban farm.

Pasana hq1

Designed by Kono Designs, the building grows most of the food required to feed its employees, from broccoli, squash, tomatoes and even rice, through a variety of interior and exterior growing methods.

There are growing areas included throughout the building, from the main lobby to private offices and meeting rooms, with both soil based and hydroponic systems being employed.

Pasana hq2

Outside, the exterior of the building has a living facade which includes orange trees, which provides valuable seasonal solar shading and improves the air quality as well as being productive.

What is also great about the Pasona HQ is that the employees actually tend to the crops themselves  and are encouraged to spread the word about growing to other city goers through education – leading by example. The sight of someone cutting the rice paddy in the office reception is a welcome change to the usual piece of sculpture.

Pasana hq3

Overall, this existing building has been redesigned to include 43,000 square feet of ‘farmland’ with over 200 species being grown.

Could this become a model for the development of our edible city and workplaces?

(images via Inhabitat fron Kono Designs)