Christine Lee with the spirit to create by hand and the ambition to make the thrown away useful:

From my tendency to engage in highly process-driven tactile endeavors and my training in the craft based disciplines of woodworking and furniture design. i explore stretch and refine the typical associations and intended functions of mundane materials. My architecture and the natural environmnet, particularly where a strong connection exists between structure and site.

Shims and a thousand uses for them.

Phonebooks and their many new uses.  Why do I find these on my apartment steps? Its time to create an ordinance that phonebooks can only be delivered at request.

A perspective of unwanted phonebooks and their depth or as Christine would eloquently put:

the outdated phone book represents the weaving of a visual pattern found in organized information with a behavioral pattern existing in repetitive processes

A closeup of names and her creation

Her repetitive process creates as though it came from nature

Steel case meets paper

via missleelee

A bed of nails never looked so good.  Meticulously placed, bent and then grinded by Jeahyo Lee, these benches are beautifully designed as works of art.

Looks like a flowing water current or wind sweeping across its undulating texture.

Finally, coins that fill my pocket and end up in a jar have some use.  Johnny Swing presents a piece made  from many coins, joined together in one piece.  Pay money to buy a product made out of money? Commerce has never been so confused.

Dubbed “Scream” because of its wide open mouth, this hand woven bench is made out of recycled aluminum placed over a mold.

Part of Project Import Export and one of Bannavis Andrew Sribyatta’s amazing designs,  it would be worthy of a good scream if gifted to me.

*Separated into categories for convenience

Art & Design

Even though these pig lights by Ariel Rojo are incredibly adorable, you might not be running to your piggy bank to buy them for $90 at the MoMA museum store.

This chair is one of many by Lebanese designers Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibr of Bokja made with antique furniture and vintage fabrics for the Quirico Company.  The furniture will be presented at Tent London from September 24-27.

The motion-powered PolarLight illuminates slopes (and keeps skiers a little safer from collisions)

Noonsolar bags look halfway decent and power your mobile devices.

This bracelet made by Finnish company Secco Shop, is one of a handful of eco-designs at the Mart exhibition in Copenhagen opening August 27th. 

Clicked an ad on Treehugger.com which led me to find these nice shoes marketed as “The first to market premium urban-casual footwear made in Africa”.  They are from Canadian-based company, Oliberté claiming to strive for sustainable and fair practices in Africa.

DIY

- Another way to repurpose your Apple G4 Box

- Baby’s all grown up?  Here’s an option to trashing all your old baby bottles

News

- 3 articles about colleges going green @ LA Times, Treehugger and Mother Nature Network

- Crews on bikes ride around DC tending to trees

Lifestyle

- The metrosexual in me wanted to post these 9 free and natural beauty tips

- Bixi bike share demo at Union Square in Nyc; not glamorous but at least they are trying.

- We love candles as an alternative to electric light and know you do too, but beware of paraffin candles

Second edition of some cool eco-stuff you might have missed over the weekend.

(Above picture) Plastic coffee stirrers upcycled into upscale designer tables by Studio Verissimo.  They also use this common coffee shop waste to make chairs and chandeliers in 3 colors.  Via Ecofriend

Marti Guixé, a Spanish designer, designed the Xarxa Sofa which is basically a chair which holds pillows that can be rearranged for personal comfort.  Via Freshome

Yesterday’s News’ set of 12 colored pencils made from recycled Chinese newspapers are available for a reasonable $10 as an alternative to wooden pencils.  Via Inhabitots

SRI International boosts the energy-efficiency of OLEDs with a new design, called COLED (“Cavity” OLED), which generates as much as five times the output of a standard OLED using the same amount of energy.  Via Gizmag

YoungWoo & Associates along with New York based architects LOT-EK, came up with a winning design for Pier 57.  The Hudson River Park board and community advocates chose their design (which incorporates used shipping containers) to revamp the old pier into something green that everyone can enjoy and close by  to the newly opened Highline.  Via Treehugger

San Francisco is finally going to start building its first zero energy house in 2010.  Designed by LSarc Architects, the home features a 1500-gallon water reclamation system which also collects rainwater to irrigate the backyard vegetable garden and an eight kilowatt solar array.  Via Ecofriend

Carhenge is a play on Stonehenge in Alliance, Nebraska.  The cars are actually placed in accordance with the real Stonehenge whose original function has been hypothesized to be for healing, burial and/or worship by a very early culture.  Via Inhabitat

By channeling the roots of trees across a river in the span of 10-15 years, a bridge is created in the rainforests of Cherrapunji, India. Via GreenUpgrader

Normal bike lights not making you feel safe enough while riding at night?  Not to fear, Lightlane is going into production pretty soon. Via WorldChanging

In other bike news, good news everyone! “Bike commuting rates have sky rocketed, going from 483,145 commuters nationally in 2003 to 664,859 in 2007. That’s a 37.6 percent increase in the number of people who take their bike to work.” Via Good

I often browse the comments under e-zine articles even though the things that people post can get upsetting sometimes.  Online forums and comment sections are notorious as places for people to voice their opinions which naturally lead to many disagreements.  These two fish tanks were similar enough to spark the age-old argument of who’s copying who.

The one on the left, designed by Benjamin Graindorge, is a straightforward fish tank with a natural purification system and does not need to change water.  The tank on the right was designed for raising fish at home to be eaten, according to designer Mathieu Lehanneur.

On the left: A reused jar with a screw on lid by Jorre van Ast.   On the right: Biodegradable plastic lids for reused standard cans by Jack Bresnahan at New Designers, a graduate art show.

Both of these products are aimed at children, both use paper pulp and have similar construction methods.  The chairs on the left, named The Parapu chair, were designed by a Swedish architecture studio called Claesson Koivisto Rune.  The playful stone-like seats and tables on the right are by Latvian designers, Merci Design and are meant to be moved around to form letters and numbers.

The question that I pose is that are these pairs too similar to each other to be individually relevant in the scheme of eco-art?  Is it worth arguing who’s came first?

Personally, I think these are all pretty nice designs that reduce our impact on the earth in a creative way.  They all fill a specific niche and have slightly different purposes.  For example even though one could use a jar and a can for the same thing, they are two different materials and come from different waste sources.  Metal might be better at storing one thing, glass another.  It’s similar to how Motorola came out with the first “modern” cell phone, and then other companies took that concept and improved on it.  Now everyone has one.

Back to talking eco, there does come a point where a particular resource or method might become trendy and overused while there are plenty of other kinds of wastes waiting to be reclaimed and upcycled.  But for now I think anything that helps reduce waste and brings us closer to living greener is good, unless you create something good and original, later only to find some blatant rip-offs.

Via Dezeen also here and here here here

Via Inhabitat